“You can take $10 off all of the sweatshirts,” Sam Frederick says, as three shoppers walk inside.
Little Sam’s Island Beach and Fun is a tourist’s paradise. Surfboards and bikes line the walls, waiting to be rented. Plenty of Coronado merch hangs near the entrance as an invitation to indulge in a souvenir from the sleepy beach town.
Frederick opened Little Sam’s in 1997. His shop has thrived for over 20 years, even flourishing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, he sits in the middle of the store with few customers. When occasional tourists walk in, he often has to turn them away.
“They want to go to the beach and they come to my store and I have to tell them, ‘You can’t go out there, it’s closed,’” said Frederick. “I just had a family of seven in here and I had to tell them that. It’s sad.”
For the past two years, Frederick has been down about $30,000-40,000 in revenue. Owning a beach rental shop during an ongoing sewage crisis and frequent water closures means regularly turning away uninformed tourists.
“It’s the first two summers in my store that weren’t fun,” said Frederick.
An ongoing cross-border sewage crisis
Due to a lack of wastewater treatment facilities along the U.S.-Mexico border, millions of gallons of Tijuana sewage pour into the ocean and get carried north by currents. Over the past two years, county health officials have shut down the shoreline in Coronado and Imperial Beach, posting notices that the waters are unsafe. The Imperial Beach shoreline has been closed for over 900 consecutive days; the Coronado shoreline was closed for 169 days from June 3, 2023, to June 3, 2024.
While there has been no known attempt to quantify the economic damage, some merchants – especially those catering to tourists – say the contamination crisis has crushed business.
Revenue down across the island
Just down the street from Little Sam’s on Orange Avenue resides Charleston Shoe Co., a women’s footwear boutique that sits in the epicenter of commerce on the island. While its products don’t seemingly rely on open waters as much as a shop like Little Sam’s, store manager Zen Macias says Charleston’s felt the hit just as hard.
It’s like night and day. This whole year has been really bad. Every time it’s on the news that there’s a spill and the beach is closed, it’s like there’s no one in here.
-Zen Macias, Charleston Shoe Co. store manager
“It’s like night and day,” said Macias. “This whole year has been really bad. Every time it’s on the news that there’s a spill and the beach is closed, it’s like there’s no one in here.”
The Brigantine, a seafood restaurant chain, has been struggling at its Coronado location. Jack Hayes, the general manager since 2007, attributes it to the tainted beaches.
“The restaurant community on the island is definitely struggling this summer compared to the prior summers,” said Hayes. “We talk to people all day long. Guests are telling us that this is probably going to be their last summer coming to Coronado because of the beach issue.”
At Peohe’s, another common dining stop for visitors, general manager Bryce Maccharles says revenue was down nearly 10% in 2023 (the year frequent water closures began in Coronado) as compared to 2022, which equates to around $800,000. He speculates that about 20% of that decline stems from the sewage issue.
Reduced hotel inventory playing a factor
Hotel construction projects may be another reason for the business drop-off. Restorations are currently underway to the Victorian guest rooms in Hotel del Coronado, La Avenida Inn and Villa Capri by the Sea. Claudia Ludlow – the general manager of Glorietta Bay Inn – estimates the island is down about 450-500 rooms right now.
Ludlow said the demand for rooms at Glorietta Bay Inn has not dropped, but she suspects the overall reduction in island accommodations may be an explanation.
“Although we’re doing good, could we be pacing more because those other hotels are down? I don’t know,” said Ludlow. “The guests here are mainly from the Arizona area. Even if the [beach closures] were an issue for them, the last two weeks that have been 115 degrees out there have pushed them over here.”
Todd Little from Discover Coronado, a destination marketing company that partners with the local hospitality industry to increase the customer base for businesses throughout Coronado Island, said hotel occupancy on the island was down 11% in April, but attributed most of that decline to the reduced inventory of rooms.
“It’s kind of a million-dollar question as to why we are down,” said Maccharles. “Inflation is up, there’s the sewage issue, hotels don’t have as many people. Who wants to fly across the country, spend a thousand dollars on a room, but they can’t go to the beach?”
