Exclusive | Santa Monicas secret, charming Gilmore Girls shopping district is thriving just blocks from retail apocalypse

It’s a tale of two Santa Monicas.With quaint boutiques, bustling cafes, friendly shopkeepers and pampered pooches galore, the charming, thriving shopping strip on Montana Avenue has quietly become Santa Monica’s unofficial new downtown — a breezy, beautiful retort to the doom and gloom of the beach city’s beleaguered traditional retail core.Barely a mile away, the once-booming Third Street Promenade appears to be dying in broad daylight — plagued by empty storefronts, trash-strewn sidewalks, boarded windows, homeless people and an unsettling apocalyptic energy.At its lower end, the once-vibrant Santa Monica Place is dying — most of the mall’s high-end shops long ago shuttered.

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By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.Never miss a story But up along Montana, where the walkable stretch between 7th and 17th Sts.

brims with curb appeal., there are just seven vacant storefronts out of more than 150 — a sharp contrast to the put-upon Promenade, where 26 out of 98 currently languish empty.This affluent, tree-lined corridor comes off like a Stars Hollow-on-Sea, straight out of “Gilmore Girls” — bustling with locals, many of them hyper-wealthy, spending freely and chatting happily.Up and down the street, the retail trade booms — as if the widespread collapse of urban shopping districts around the LA region were happening on another planet, not a handful of blocks away.As other strips flail, Montana’s retail real estate is nearly impossible to get your hands on, according to commercial real estate broker Jay Luchs of Newmark.“For every space that looks empty, there’s a tenant going in,” Luchs told the California Post.

“There’s really no space.”The numbers back up the claim — four of Montana’s empty storefronts already bear signs announcing they’ve a...