If Las Vegas were built for kids, it might look something like the John’s Incredible Pizza that opened in Buena Park last week.
The 58,000-square-foot restaurant and arcade has the look and feel of a casino, right down to the funky carpet. There are blinking lights, a pizza and dessert buffet and games and amusement rides that work off special debit cards.
John Parlet, owner of Rancho Margarita-based John’s Incredible Pizza Co., picked out the carpet with stars and colorful shapes, along with his controller, Lori Stowe. In fact, he and Stowe picked out the entire decor, from the arcade’s purple walls to the themed dining rooms.
The $8.5 million restaurant was more than a year in the making. It’s the first in Orange County for John’s Incredible, which has eight others across the state. The next nearest one is in Montclair. One is under construction at a former Mervyn’s in National City.
The restaurants seek to be a cut above Chuck E. Cheese and others geared toward family entertainment.
The Buena Park restaurant seats 900 people in six different themed rooms and 10 party rooms. It employs about 190 people.
For Buena Park Downtown, a struggling shopping center that used to be known as Buena Park Mall, John’s Incredible is something of a godsend.
The restaurant takes up the entire bottom level of the mall, which used to be a ghost town with a half-empty food court, a tacky discount store and a scrubs shop for nurses.
The mall,next to Knott’s Berry Farm,thrived in the 1980s. But outdated tenants and competition in the 1990s caused it to fall out of favor. Despite a major makeover, which finished in 2003, the mall hasn’t been able to regain its luster.
Buena Park Downtown’s owner, Ohio’s Developers Diversified Realty Corp., signed on John’s Incredible in 2007.
The restaurant is the first in a mall for John’s Incredible. Mall manager Cyndi Taylor said she expects it to attract shoppers and new stores.
The company is looking at South County for another restaurant location, Parlet said.
The recession has left a lot of big retail buildings empty, but lending still is tight, according to Parlet. Once the Buena Park restaurant gets under way, he said he’ll seek ways to finance another in OC. He said he even might consider taking on investors, something he hasn’t done yet.
Auto Sales
Local auto dealers got hammered in May, but word is June numbers will be better.
New auto registrations, a barometer of sales, were down 49% to 6,112 autos in May from a year earlier, according to the Costa Mesa-based Orange County Automobile Dealers Association.
Nary a brand was spared, except for Land Rover and Subaru.
But even there, the gains were negligible for the small brands: Subaru sold three more autos in May than a year earlier for a total of 89, while Land Rover sold 69, one more than a year earlier.
The Japanese brands that dominate sales here edged out domestics for the biggest percent dip. Japanese brands fell 53% to 3,263 autos, while domestics were down 52% to 1,140 autos.
Luxury brands also saw big declines. BMW had the biggest percent drop, down 52% to 302 autos. Lexus fell 51% to 273 autos. Mercedes-Benz was down 40% to 443 autos.
The two South Korean brands with their U.S. headquarters in OC,Hyundai and Kia,also were down, although they’ve fared better than others during the downturn.
Hyundai was down 12% to 257 autos, while Kia was off 6% to 88 autos.
There are some signs the hard-hit auto sales market is bottoming. National sales in June were up 2.3% from May, according to the Commerce Department.
New Name
Orange-based David Wilson Automotive Group recently changed the name of its Honda of Santa Ana dealership to David Wilson’s Freeway Honda.
The name change comes with a new management team that started last month. Jeff Voechting now is general manager. Previously, he was the general sales manager for Toyota of Orange, Wilson’s flagship dealership.
Wilson’s auto group has owned the Honda dealer since 2006.
Cash for Clunkers
Local auto dealers could sell 1,500 more autos under the so-called Cash for Clunkers program, a federal program that starts this month and runs until Nov. 1 or whenever funding runs out, according to John Sackrison, executive director of the Orange County Automobile Dealers Association.
The program, formally known as the Car Allowance Rebate System, offers up to $4,500 on a trade for a new vehicle with higher miles per gallon.
