IMPERIAL BEACH, California — When Angela Frank opened an old-fashioned candy store in Imperial Beach in 2013, she didn’t realize it would become a cherished hang-out spot for many. Seaside Candy on Palm Avenue, just feet from the beach, was where veterans gathered for coffee in the mornings, students stopped by on their way home from school and families bought desserts after dinner. “This was a labor of love,” said Frank, who traded her full-time job in real estate for the candy shop that originally was intended to be a fun, side project.
Her recent vision was to expand the business by opening an arcade. But she let that dream go. The candy shop shut down in late May because of a significant decline in revenue, which Frank attributed to the more than 900 consecutive days of beach closures due to high bacteria levels in the water near where pollution flushes through the Tijuana River into South Bay.
“Sales were doing so good for many years, even right after COVID,” she said. “We got to hire more people. But last summer, when (the county) really started doing the closures at the beach, I would say our business dropped over 60 percent.
” A San Diego County report published earlier this year evaluating the economic impacts of the cross-border sewage crisis shows that Seaside Candy’s experience is not an anomaly. One year ago, the county Board of Supervisors asked staff to find out how badly the worsening cross-border pollution has affected South County’s econom.
