The Plaza Metro Atlantic, located across the street from the Gold Line Atlantic station, is looking for new tenants. (Isabella Sayyah)

Carlos Godinez remembers a time when the Plaza Metro Atlantic was bustling.

“The building used to be all occupied at one point,” he said. “We probably had one walk-in a day.”

But since the Metro’s Gold Line extension was completed five years ago, Godinez said the Allstate insurance company branch where he is an agent has had maybe one to two walk-ins — total.

“It ended up that this floor was only this insurance office and downstairs there were probably three of four business[es] open,” Godinez said of the center during the worst part of the decline.

The plaza is a two-story, 22-space shopping center. In the mid-2000s, the center was full, according to BP International Inc., the company that owns the property. Patsy Ma, the company’s president, said Gold Line construction ran almost all the tenants out of business and when she bought the property early last year, only 30 percent of the spaces were occupied.

“During the construction, people suffered a lot because it was a whole mess, and they turned the street, it used to be a two-way, now it’s a one-way,” Ma said. “The Gold Line just blocked it.”

Ma, who said she bought the property at a severely depressed rate, is now attempting to return it to its former glory.

“We put in a lot of money once we took it over,” she said. “We did the parking, we did the exterior, we did the roof, so at least the whole building is cleaned up.”

The transition hasn’t been easy, however. Ma said the Gold Line devalued the building by 50 percent because of the one-way street and the new Metro parking structure blocking the center from view.

“It devastated some of the businesses that were flourishing in the past,” Ma said. “They all tried to hang on as long as they could, but in the end, 70 percent left due to money.”

Yvonne Chavez, who sits on the East L.A. Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors, said this has been a topic of contention since the Metro extension was built.

“It was great," she said. "[They said] ‘it’s going to bring people from the regions of the Westside to East L.A., they’re going to spend money. Don’t worry while we’re in construction, we’re going to make sure your business is not negatively impacted,’” she said. “Now it happens, and the business community doesn’t get anything.”

Chavez said she is advocating for businesses along the Gold Line to receive some services from Metro.

“These county departments, Metro, all these bureaucratic big entities, come in and pour money into the communities — that’s great right?” she said. “The issue is, for the most part, they do not include or solicit input from the community.”

Metro did allow businesses in the plaza to advertise for free in the trains for one year. Many, however, claim it did nothing to help the situation.

“We ask every client who comes here, ‘Who were you referred by?’ and ‘How did you hear about us?’” Godinez said. “Not one of them said, ‘Oh, we saw you in the metro.’”

Now, it’s up to people like Ma to try to ensure the success of the plaza. Though some businesses — Allstate, a tobacco shop and a video rental store — have remained, Ma is determined to find more tenants, taking in new small businesses and reducing rents by 60 percent.

“She took a risk on us,” said Lauren Quan-Madrid, co-founder of People’s Yoga, which opened in June. “Many places want financials, and we didn’t have that.”

New tenants are also using the situation to their advantage. Jose Juan Herrera, co-owner of JJ&G, a hair salon that opened a year and a half ago, was drawn to Plaza Metro Atlantic’s affordability.

“It’s a little more cheap upstairs, and in other shopping centers the rent is too high,” he said. Herrera, however, said he doesn’t have to rely on foot traffic as he and his partner brought clients with them from work they had done in the past.

“We have customers coming in from San Bernardino, Riverside, Palos Verdes,” he said. “We have new people coming in, but we already have clients from other cities.”

The Gold Line didn't disrupted business for all tenants, particularly not for those reliant on customers walking in. Carmela Ma, president of CJM Associates, Inc., an investment real estate firm, said she loves the site for the backend of her business.

“Staff immediately said, ‘Hey, this is wonderful,’ because they can come from one of the lines here, even from the Valley or Pasadena,” she said.

Despite these successes, Patsy Ma doesn’t see the center returning to its former prosperity.

“It’s never going to be like the early 2000s,” she said.

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