Auto-tailoring business customizes Job Center site

A trio of local businessmen are breathing a little Aloha spirit into the old Costa Mesa Job Center site.

Brothers Gene and Dave Ahlo, natives of Hawaii, have teamed up with cousin Bryan Calvero to open X’Quizit Designs, an automotive custom tailoring garage at the corner of 17th Street and Placentia Avenue.

X’Quizit installs car stereo systems, redesigns interiors, and puts on custom bumpers, rims and exhaust systems.

Once ground zero for Costa Mesa’s ongoing immigration debate, the building has been transformed by the three businessmen, who use island-style hospitality to welcome customers into their extended ohana.

X’Quizit’s owners repainted the center and added some decorative wood to give the garage a Tiki feel.

“We get people driving by trying to figure out what this place is,” Calvero said. “Is it the Job Center? Is it something different? What is it?”

Calvero said the location ? in the hub of the city’s automotive district ? is helping the site shed its old identity and join the area car culture.

The three have worked in the Orange County car business for four years. Gene Ahlo is a professional surfer who first migrated to Santa Cruz from Hawaii’s Big Island with his brother. The pair worked at different shops in the state before launching their own business with Calvero, a native of the Philippines, in a small warehouse just across the street from the old Job Center.

For nearly 17 years, the Job Center operated in the 1940s-era gas station, connecting day laborers with contractors or homeowners looking for help with building or landscaping projects. The city ended its lease of the facility on Dec. 31 at the prompting of Costa Mesa Councilmen Gary Monahan and Allan Mansoor, who argued that the center no longer meshed with an area slated for revitalization as a business district.

Gene Ahlo monitored the debate and approached the landlord after the city shut down the Job Center, eventually brokering a lease.

He said he’s had few problems with people confusing X’Quizit with the old Job Center, although dozens of day laborers still congregate in front of his business and at the adjacent intersection.

“Right now, I’m just trying to work with them,” he said. “We try to be pretty nice and make friends with everyone. It makes people nervous when they pull in and there’s a bunch of people hanging out near the entrance.”

Mansoor acknowledged that day laborers still congregate near the old Job Center, but he believes the situation is improving.

“The sky didn’t fall as some predicted,” Mansoor said. “Some people thought there were going to be huge numbers loitering, and it’s the same or less for the Westside.”

Mansoor said he supported the new business venture.

“It’s a free-market endeavor, and it’s nice to a have a tax-revenue-generating business there,” he said.

So far, X’Quizit is doing decent business, Calvero said, customizing five to 10 cars a week and making plans to buy the space and convert it into a high-end showroom.