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Where should the driveways be in the new condominum project on Overland at National?
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The proposed "live-work" project at Overland Ave. and National Blvd. seems like a winner. It would replace a tacky old gas station and convenience store with a nicely modern structure that would provide an attractive entry point for Palms just south of the I-10 Freeway.
It has already been suggested to the developer that the project bear the name of our community — like Palms Gateway or Richfield Palms (after the gas station that served Palms drivers in the really old days).
 The neighbors are worried about the traffic, though. Developer Aaron Swerdlow says the city wants all the cars to enter and exit through one driveway on National.
This doesn't seem right somehow. Exiting vehicles would have to make an awkward left turn out of the driveway and then scoot across four lanes of traffic to get to the I-10 entrance ramps. There's also a Culver CityBus stop in the way.
A right-turn-only rule wouldn't work for exiting tenant traffic onto National either. Autoists would have to drive forever to find their way back to the freeway entrances (see map).
The Sun wondered at first why traffic couldn't go in and out of the alley at the rear. We were told that there's a 12-foot rise there, but we thought something could be accomplished with deft engineering.
Then project architect Steve Collins and one of our readers took separate looks at the alley. Here is what they told us:
Is the alley a squirrel cage . . .
'We'll keep working on our access solution.'
Thank you for your support and suggestions for the project, which we really appreciate. I'm adding your suggestions for signage/naming and driveway access to our list of site characteristics to be integrated into the project.
The driveway issue is a particularly difficult one. I didn't mean to come off as off-handedly disregarding your suggestion for access from the alley. It is something that we need to continue considering.
On the other hand, I went there again last night after the meeting. That alley has its own problems of congestion and parking, being the only parking access for half a dozen good-sized apartment buildings, with cars squirreled away all over the place.
We'll keep working on our access solution and I'll keep you posted on it.
STEVE COLLINS
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. . . or a rabbit warren?
'Keep in mind once the zoning is changed the owner is free to build whatever is allowed under the new zone.'
I, too, am concerned about the safety issues connected with the single ingress/egress onto National and wondered why not use the alley until I walked the alley early one morning. I suggest you do it, too. You'll see what I mean.
It is very narrow and leads into a virtual rabbit warren of parking/carports for about five apartment buildings. Adding more trips to the alley doesn't make sense. Has Palms NC done outreach to these apartment building tenants?
As for the bus stop, . . . the benches that are there now will have to be moved. Has Palms NC done outreach to the bus riders? Bus riders are frequently overlooked for their opinions yet the city tries to get people to ride buses. Riders need to be consulted re: any relocation of the bus stop.
Unless the city builds some kind of barricade preventing a left turn out of the old Arco property, drivers will do it. I rode the MTA, formerly RTD, bus from that stop for seven years. While I waited for the bus to arrive I saw most drivers leaving Arco turning left (in spite of the No Left Turn sign). Those of us who waited for the bus called it our "morning thriller." More of a jolt than a cup of coffee.
I think RSA's concept is a good one but needs to be scaled down in size, and the prices don't sound affordable to me. Do you recall the square footages?
Also, Palms NC needs to ask how any signage and lighting impacts the adjacent community. We got Blockbuster to modify their plans so there was no intrusion on the adjacent properties.
Keep in mind once the zoning is changed the owner is free to build whatever is allowed under the new zone. They don't have to build the pretty pictures they showed us.
NAME WITHHELD BY REQUEST
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Based on these observations, we would now have to conclude that a driveway onto Overland would seem to make more sense than egress and ingress onto National.
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The Richfield sign is from this site, and there's plenty more where that came from.
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The Mar Vista 'Conquest' Plan: spinach and the hell with it
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How is the 405 Freeway
like the English Channel?
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Dispelling the Palms certification 'conspiracy myth'
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BY GEORGE GARRIGUES
Today the Voice of Doom wants to warn everybody about the continuing crusade for what the Voice likes to call the Mar Vista Conquest Plan, which at one time seemed to have as its ultimate goal the placing of big "Mar Vista Community Council" signs all over the darned place — as far north as the I-10 (West L.A.) and as far east as Overland Ave. That's in Palms, if you didn't know.
Yes, the good folks on the Mar Vista Community Council Urban Planning Committee apparently want to mark their territory all too well with this expansive idea.
Its official monicker is the Mar Vista CONCEPT Plan, and there was a big stakeholders' meeting on Sunday, Jan. 23, to drum up support for it.
 The Concept or Conquest or whatever offered a typically Mar Vista-centric title for the fun fest, too: "The Mar Vista Blueprint — Planning Our Community."
Hm. A Mar Vista Blueprint for Westdale, North Westdale and Westside Village? Sounds mighty peculiar. What's next? The Greater East Mar Vista Co-Prosperity Sphere?
The whole thing is reminiscent of the famous New Yorker cartoon in which a society mom attempts to persuade her kid that the green goop on her plate is broccoli, but the little snip recognizes it for what it is and answers cheekily, "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."
(For a more positive view of the Concept Plan, read Maritza Przekop, here.)
The Voice of Doom went to the meeting on Jan. 23 and distributed the following printed statement:
STATEMENT BY GEORGE GARRIGUES OF S-U-P-E-R AT THE QUARTERLY MEETING OF THE MAR VISTA COMMUNITY COUNCIL, JANUARY 23, 2005
Strong and United to Protect Everyone's Rights
(310) 839-7708 or www.WestmarSun.info/East/S-U-P-E-R.html
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My remarks here will take a little less than three minutes. I have timed them, and they are one of the crosses you will have to bear because the city brought me and my neighbors, unaware and unknowing, into the domain of the Mar Vista Community Council.
There's an acronym that I have a fondness for, and it is RAKU — Respect for All is the Key to Unity — and I truly do have respect for Maritza Przekop and Tony Navarro and the others who believe in making their part of the world a better and prettier place in which to live.
With the greatest respect, then, I would like to remind the Stakeholders that what Tony and Maritza have christened the Mar Vista Concept Plan is now being called (by some people) the Mar Vista Conquest Plan, and it has never been approved by the Directors of the Mar Vista Community Council, let alone the Stakeholders of any of the neighborhoods that make up that council.
I would also like to say that some people are opposed to this plan because they have never been — historically or geographically — a part of Mar Vista. For example, two hundred people in the area where I live, which is either Northwest Palms or Westside Village, depending on what you want to call it, have signed petitions to rid ourselves of the Mar Vista Community Council and to form a joint council along with Palms so we will have all the residential area east of the 405 in our own independent organization.
Would you consider France and England to be one country after William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel in 1066 and won the Battle of Hastings?
Of course not. Well, we on the Westside of Los Angeles have our own English Channel — you can see its waves and dangerous currents every day — and it is called the 405 Freeway.
Our area, Westside Village, was brought into Mar Vista without a vote by anybody locally except a handful of people from the homeowners' association and the signatures of only fifteen Westside Villagers. That is true, and you can look it up.
Very few of the hundreds of homeowners and thousands of apartment dwellers in Westside Village were ever consulted about our being annexed to Mar Vista, nor were our churches, our synagogue, our Neighborhood Watch nor our cooperative-apartment associations. No public notices were posted anywhere in Westside Village. We are all shocked that Mar Vista bowed to the proposal of the homeowners' association that all of us be swept willy-nilly into Mar Vista — homeowner or not.
I have copies of our petitions to rectify this error and would ask that all people interested see me during the afternoon to sign one of them.
This is all being done with the greatest respect for the people of Mar Vista who are working so hard to make their community council a grand success. But I must challenge the good folks of Mar Vista to place a copy of this statement in the next edition of the Mar Vista newsletter that is distributed — at public expense — throughout our entire district — including that area on the other side of our English Channel.
It's time to give the Stakeholders all the facts.
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As a 10-year resident of Palms (Westside Village), the Voice of Doom would again like to thank the six Directors of the Mar Vista Community Council who took the time to attend Palms's certification meeting before the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners on Dec. 14, particularly those who spoke on behalf of certification.
The Voice was a bit perturbed, however, about exactly how that joint appearance was brought about.
Was it through telephone calls, e-mails or smoke signals? Last month the Voice of Doom asked the Directors (under a public-records request) for copies of the e-mail messages that might have shed light on this matter, but none of them bothered to respond — except one, who said he wasn't a party to the affair.
Well, the Doom-Sayer guessed it was smoke signals after all, or mental telepathy, neither of which was covered by the California Public Records Act. So he dropped his request for all the e-mails that he figured had been flying around among the directors before the certification meeting, because the Voice knew he was not going to get any.
Now comes Tom Ponton, the MVCC Chair, who explains that it was his idea to delay the start of his Board of Directors on the same evening so that the Directors could go to the Palms certification to express their feelings. He sent along a copy of a request for support that he received from Lyn Nguyen, chair of the Palms Organizing Committee.
Dispelling the 'conspiracy' myth about Palms
Hi, George,
At the MVCC Board meeting this week Richard [Leib, a resident of Westside Village] asked how it was we all found out about the BONC [Board of Neighborhood Commissioners] meeting where Palms NC [Neighborhood Council] was certified.
I know you had made a similar type of request, except you wanted everyone's personal e-mails on the subject over a period of time, which seemed to me a bit intrusive. The City Attorney subsequently advised us not to respond until further notice.
Since that notice never came, and since you've now stated in your newsletter that your request has been dropped, I wanted to give a more thorough response to Richard's question at our meeting this week. . . .
First, several other Directors and myself were at the previous BONC meeting at Webster, where you spoke about the Palms certification and your petition [favoring unification of Palms and Westside Village under one neighborhood council], and where there was additional discussion about the upcoming BONC meeting in which Palms was up for certification.
Next I received the notice, attached, from DONE. I believe this may have been sent to our entire BOD. I later obtained an agenda for the 12/15/04 BONC meeting by going to the DONE website.
On Dec 8th, I received an e-mail from Len Nguyen asking me to attend and support Palms. . . . At some point after that, I received 3-4 e-mails from different people in Venice asking me to attend that same meeting and to support, or not support Grass Roots Venice NC, since their election dispute was also on the BONC agenda that night.
I believe many of the MVCC Board members are on the Venice group e-mail lists as well. I believe I deleted all but one of those emails, as well as one from Ken Alpern asking me to attend. I will forward the two I still have, one from Len Nguyen and one from Thomas O'Meara with GRVNC.
In closing, I would also like to point out, in case you didn't notice, I only saw 6 of our MVCC Board members at that BONC meeting, and I believe those were the same directors who were at the previous BONC meeting at Webster.
I hope this helps dispel the BONC meeting conspiracy myth.
P.S. I continue to get a some late night laughs by reading your Web site. I hope you'll keep entertaining us!
TOM PONTON
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The Voice of Doom is still miffed, though, about the remarks of Directors Maritza Przekop and Ken Alpern, who spoke as though the MVCC Board had made a decision to oppose the unification of Palms and Westside Village within the same neighborhood council, which it hadn't.
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The author is editor of The Westmar Sun and The Palms-Village Sun.
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KEN MARSH
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WESTSIDE VILLAGE:
Conflict resolution is all of our business
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George Garrigues has forwarded to all the members of the MVCC Board several e-mails he has received from residents of Westside Village who say they want to be extricated from the Mar Vista Community Council. [Read them here.]
Some seem to assume that the MVCC's Board of Directors has the power to, as one writer said, "let us go." We don't.
Sally Richman referred to a homeowners group that undemocratically voted to be a part of the MVCC. How do you prove that and how does the homeowners' group prove otherwise?
Richard Leib was concerned about MVCC signs being posted in Westside Village.
For the moment, the possibility of signs denoting areas of the MVCC is in the idea stage only. Discussions and more formal deliberations about signs will most definitely take place long before their installation, as long as I am a member of the Board.
The quarterly Stakeholder meeting on Jan. 23 was a grassroots planning forum considering a wide range of concerns. Its purpose was to begin to create a consensus plan to be submitted to the city's Planning Department.
In my mind, grassroots planning is an on-going process that will require such forums periodically.
With elections coming up in March for seven MVCC at-large directors, I encourage you and the readers of The Westmar Sun to seriously consider becoming a candidate and to vote. Everyone one in the MVCC area comprises our neighborhood council, not just Board members.
Neighborhood councils exist to give neighborhoods more power in the process of city government. If
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you are not participating in your neighborhood council, you weaken that potential.
If you don't like what the Board is doing, let us know, run for office, get on a committee, attend meetings, create your own neighborhood-based group, but please don't turn your back on this new layer of government that has been created as a platform for the public interest within our community and throughout the city.
As a member of the Board, and befitting what I stated above about boards and neighborhood councils, in view of what seems to be a feud among stakeholders living east of Sepulveda Blvd., can any of you suggest a strategy acceptable to all of you that we might adopt to resolve this issue before it becomes our own McCoys and Hatfields?
Conflict resolution is all of our business, except for those who want to make business from conflict.
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Ken Marsh is a Director of the Mar Vista Community Council. He lives in Westdale. His article and the response below have been shortened and edited. The illustration was chosen by the editor to bring a little light-heartedness to a serious matter.
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SALLY RICHMAN
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The mission of WVCA was never to represent the whole neighborhood
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As I stated at the Dec. 14 hearing by the Board of Neighborhood Empowerment in Palms [story here], for many years Westside Village Civic Assn. stated on its letterhead that it was an association for single-family homeowners and business property owners, which is certainly not representative of all the Stakeholders in our neighborhood.
There are many renters, condominium owners, institutions such as schools and businesses in properties that are owned by others. None of them were able to join WVCA throughout most of the 1990s and before.
Maybe that exclusionary language was changed in the past few years, but it does not negate the fact that the mission of WVCA was never to represent the whole neighborhood.
Since some of the most active members in our
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neighborhood want to join Palms Neighborhood Council, it seems that the best way to prevent a feud is to let us go.
What are the compelling reasons for us to stay together? Why would you want to stay institutionally connected to a neighborhood with activist members who will be a thorn in your side?
At the hearing, Commissioner Bill Christopher said that if we want "out," we need to persuade MVCC to let us go. So the question is, what do we need to do to make this happen if enough Westside Village Stakeholders decide they want to make the change.
And how much is "enough"? What is the process? Is there one?
Editor's note: There is a process, and the editor will reveal it in the February issue of The Sun.
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Sally Richman is a Westside Village homeowner. This article, like the one above, has been shortened and edited.
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