City National Bank Reopens Its Palisades Branch After the Fire

It's one of four major banks back on Sunset Boulevard, and the Palisades chamber's chief says that confidence now has to reach fire survivors.

Evelyn Peera's bank never stopped serving its Pacific Palisades customers after the fire, the branch manager says. It just couldn't do it from Sunset Boulevard.

That changed Oct. 5, when City National Bank reopened its branch at 15273 W. Sunset Blvd., inside Palisades Village, the Palisadian-Post reported. It isn't alone. Four major banks now operate near the Palisades Recovery Coalition on Sunset, its founder, Maryam Zar, told the Santa Monica Daily Press, which reported Monday. Zar, who also runs the Malibu Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce, called the banks a sign of faith in the neighborhood and then raised the bar: "That confidence must translate into capital, resources and real recovery solutions for fire survivors," she said.

City National had kept a branch in the neighborhood for over ten years until the fire pushed it out. The rebuilt space is 1,423 square feet, with two private rooms for mortgage and personal banking talks, three service desks and an ATM, the bank said in its Oct. 6 announcement. Peera said a customer who needs to refinance or apply for a business loan can now just walk in.

The bank also gave qualifying clients a three-year pause on payments for mortgages and home equity lines of credit if the fires left them in hardship or destroyed their homes. With its parent, Royal Bank of Canada, it gave $3 million to relief. Rick Caruso had already reopened the shopping center that houses it in August.

A bank lends one borrower at a time. The bigger money Zar is talking about would be public. A proposed Palisades Disaster Recovery District would keep future growth in Palisades property taxes in a local fund for infrastructure and recovery instead of sending it to the city's general fund. That could add up to somewhere between $325 million and $1.9 billion, Council District 11 staff said, according to the Palisadian-Post. A council recovery committee passed it Oct. 9. Next comes the Budget and Finance Committee, on Nov. 3 or Nov. 24. The full council has to adopt a resolution of intention before Jan. 7, the fire's second anniversary, or the plan doesn't go forward.

Councilwoman Traci Park said she expects budget members to ask what the shift would cost the general fund. It's a fair question, and the city has answered it before. After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Los Angeles set up five recovery districts within 11 months, and it hasn't used that kind of tax financing for a disaster since, said Craig Bullock, planning director for Council District 11. He said the council first declined to pay for the feasibility study a district requires, which slowed things down.

"We can't afford to have a recovery that drags," Bullock told the Pacific Palisades Community Council on Oct. 15. Northridge got its districts in under a year. The Palisades is more than 21 months out and still waiting on a committee date.

If it passes, the district would be run by a board of five or more, with elected officials holding three seats and people from the neighborhood holding the rest. Several community council members said they'd need to know who those members are before they could back it. "Specifically, who those people will be," said Elissa Ashwood, who represents Area 3.

Source: smdp.com, retrieved October 26, 2026. Other sources: palipost.com, prnewswire.com, palipost.com (2).

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