Hometown Heroes: 21st Century Abolitionists

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

Human trafficking is unthinkable but, tragically, not impossible.  Human trafficking, the buying, selling, and smuggling of people—most often women and children; exists in the year 2012.  It exists around the world and it exists in the United States.

This was a hard column to write.  Every person I spoke with, every report I read, brought fresh horror to mind.  Thirteen year-old girls forced into prostitution under the threat of having a sister tortured and killed.  Men and women, desperate in their own countries, lured by fraudulent promises of a better life in America, the land of opportunity, locked in basements and only let out to do forced work.  Children who are kidnapped and sold for profit, their families desperate to find them. 

The FBI reports (http://www.fbi.gov/) “Victims are controlled physically, through beatings, burnings, rapes, and starvation; emotionally, through isolation, psychological abuse, drug dependency, and threats against family members in home countries; and financially, through debt bondage and threat of deportation.”

Thankfully, there are 21^st century abolitionists willing to come to the aid and defense of the victims of human trafficking.  One such is Valerie Martinez, organizer of the Santa Monica Bay Woman’s Club March 30 event to benefit organizations that work with victims of human trafficking. (www.smbwc.org/forfreedom) 

The organizations are: CAST, A21, and Saving Innocence.  All three organizations are local.  For Ms. Martinez this work started when she was in school in Australia and heard, Christine Caine, founder of A21, speak about human trafficking.  “I didn’t even know human slavery still existed.  I knew then I would do almost anything to help even one girl who had been forced into being a sex slave,” said Ms. Martinez.

CAST (Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking http://www.castla.org/about-us) was started in 1998 after their work in breaking the 1995 El Monte Sweatshop case where more than 70 Thai laborers were held captive behind razor wire, under twenty-four hour guard and forced to work 18 hour days.

CAST provides trafficked persons access to safe shelters, medical services, job training and education.  CAST is actively working with other organizations and government to prosecute traffickers and to promote legislation and regulations to end human trafficking and to protect victims of human trafficking.

The A21 Campaign, (http://www.thea21campaign.org/) calls for the “abolition of injustice in the 21^st Century.”  A21 has their first shelter in Greece, as it is the gateway to human trafficking in Europe.  A21 workers are the first people the Greek police call when they suspect a person is a victim of human trafficking. 

A21 workers go to detention centers and let the girls know that help is available.  They bring in food, clothing and hygiene products, provide legal representation, offer shelter programs, and repatriate girls who want to go home.  A21 works to provide each girl with the help she decides she needs.

Saving Innocence, http://www.savinginnocence.org/ officially founded in January of this year, began as a result of Kim Biddle’s volunteer work with child victims of human trafficking here in Los Angeles.  Ms. Biddle has so far been able to help 16 girls, ranging in age from 11 to 17, who were victims of human trafficking.  Most were arrested for prostitution but were, in fact, forced sex slaves. 

She follows the girls starting with when they are put in to juvenile hall, acting as their advocate as they go to court, live in group homes and begin to re-establish paths to safe and more normal lives.  Ms. Biddle said, “I feel I’m fortunate to be able to go to some of the darkest places in society and bring light to those places.  I’m committed to walking with these girls on their journeys.”

The work to abolish human trafficking is becoming stronger as the traffickers become a stronger force in the criminal world.  The actress Mira Sorvino, a Goodwill Ambassador to combat Human Trafficking for the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes said, “human trafficking is tied in 2^nd place with illegal sale of arms as the most profitable criminal enterprise in the world with an estimated illegal profit of 32 billion dollars per year and second only to the drug trade.”

In her role as a Goodwill Ambassador Ms. Sorvino has traveled the world attending conferences and working with governments to end human trafficking, but her focus is on the United Sates.  She said “people in the U.S. are not aware, and find it hard to believe, this is happening here and yet the numbers of victims of human traffic in the United States are as high as 300,000 persons.  I have spoken about human trafficking to legislators, attorneys general and police departments.  We need to pass strong laws and to provide education that will protect victims, prosecute traffickers, and end human trafficking.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is a world leader in the fight against human trafficking, estimates “it is likely that somewhere between 12 million and 27 million human beings are suffering in bondage around the world. Men, women and children are trapped in prostitution or labor in fields and factories under brutal bosses who threaten them with violence or jail if they try to escape.

“I have seen firsthand the suffering that human trafficking causes. Not only does it result in injury and abuse—it also takes away its victims’ power to control their own destinies. In Thailand I have met teenage girls who had been prostituted as young children and were dying of AIDS. In Eastern Europe I have met mothers who lost sons and daughters to trafficking and had nowhere to turn for help.” http://www.state.gov

As a nation we believe that all people deserve, in Secretary Clinton’s words, “to live free, work with dignity, and pursue their dreams.”  Yet, today we face dangerous, criminal organizations trafficking in human beings.  They are the new slave traders.  May we all be the new abolitionists.

What Say You? Miramar

The original Miramar. 
Home of Senator John P. and Mrs. Georgina Jones
Santa Monica 1890
Photo credit:  Wikipedia

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

“Senator Jones built a mansion, Miramar, and his wife, Georgina, planted a Moreton Bay Fig tree in its front yard in 1889. The tree is now in the courtyard of the Fairmont Miramar Hotel.”  Wikipedia

The Fairmont Miramar, a luxurious and iconic Santa Monica hotel, evokes images of weddings in lush gardens, turtles in the fountain amusing generations of children, the bungalows with their fabulous stories of famous guests, lunch by the pool, gala events in the ballrooms and, of course, the signature Moreton Bay Fig.

Michael and Susan Dell, owners of Dell Computer Corporation and relatively new owners of the Miramar, would like to redevelop the Miramar Hotel.  Their representative, Allan Epstein, appeared before the Planning Commission at the February 8 ‘float-up’ to explain their new vision to the Commission and to an audience that filled both the Council Chambers and the lobby of City Hall.  (‘Float-up’ is the term used for initial meetings, which are for introductory discussions only.  If successful they are followed by a public review and approval process.)

The request the Miramar filed with the City (Development Agreement application 011DEV-003) in April of 2011 is for “550,000 square feet of project development. 265 guest rooms, food, beverage, meeting, and spa facilities, retail space along Wilshire Boulevard, approximately one acre open space area at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Ocean Avenue, up to 120 condominiums on the upper floors of new buildings, up to 484 on-site subterranean parking spaces.”  City Staff Report
 

The Miramar Hotel currently “has 262,284 square feet of floor area located on the 4.5 acre site, with 296 guest rooms, restaurant, spa, and banquet facilities and160 surface parking spaces on site.”  City Staff Report

At the float-up meeting, Allen Epstein told the Commission they intend to “preserve the 1920’s Palisades Building, and to create a one-acre park around the Landmarked Moreton Bay Fig Tree.”  The park is planned to be open to the public when not being used for hotel functions.

He also presented their intention to include an affordable housing component, with up to 40 units, to be built at 1127-1129 2nd Street, directly across from the hotel on property now being used as a surface parking lot for valet parking.  

And he spoke about the place the Miramar has in the Santa Monica Community.

That place in the community was confirmed by the many supporters of the Miramar redevelopment proposal who spoke movingly of the long history of the Miramar in Santa Monica.

 
Employees of the hotel, a union hotel, spoke of the good working conditions and the feeling of being part of a ‘family’ when they worked at the hotel.  Long time local leader Irene Zivi, saying she is a pragmatist, spoke of the many benefits that would come to the City and to the schools because of the increased Transit Occupancy Tax.  She also talked about the many occasions when the Miramar generously supported community events.  The chef at Fig, the restaurant at the Miramar, talked about the hotel supporting his work with students on healthy foods projects.  Patricia Hoffman, of Santa Monicans for Renter’s Rights, talked about the importance of affordable housing to the City.  Neil Carrey spoke of his long tenure on the Recreation and Parks Commission and his support for the proposed one-acre open space at Wilshire and Ocean.  Nat Trives, former Mayor, co-chairs Friends of the Miramar. http://www.friendsofthemiramar.com/

The many people who spoke against the project also confirmed the place of the hotel in the community.  They voiced concerns focused on the proposed scale and design of the new hotel.  People spoke about a ‘’wall of development” that would create a barrier between the site and the residential and business community just east of it.  They mourned the loss of the bungalows.  They raised concerns about the proposed 4 years of construction work and the traffic and environmental problems that would create.  They talked about the scale of the project and the impact that would have on Palisades Park. They spoke of the scale and height of the proposed project and its impact on neighbors.  They spoke of their memories of the Miramar and its place in creating the character of Santa Monica and expressed their fears that the redevelopment of the site would change the character in ways that would diminish Santa Monica.

This project is being proposed at a time when the City is taking a new look at itself.  The new LUCE (Land Use and Circulation Element) is now the guiding land use document.  The proposed Miramar redevelopment will have to show how it meets the vision of the LUCE.

A new plan for the Downtown District is under study.  Questions will have to be asked and answered as to how the proposed Miramar redevelopment should relate to that plan.

And the negotiation of a Development Agreement is complex.  Development Agreements are different from traditional zoning approvals in that the Development Agreement is a contract where existing zoning rules can be changed in order to achieve community benefits.  In Development Agreement negotiations the Council represents the people of the City.

It seems to me that the project, as initially designed, asks for more square feet of building rights then is appropriate for the site, given its place in the history and the future of Santa Monica.  The drawings that were submitted with the application are, appropriately, schematic.  As the project takes shape and form, design will be a central issue.  It seems to me that the design itself needs to pay homage to the history of the site and to serve as a guide to the future character of the built environment in Santa Monica.  That is no small task. 

You may be reading this and wondering whether I’m a yea or a nay on this project.  I’m wondering myself.  But I intend to stay informed and to do my part.

I’m anticipating a robust public process, and given the quality of all the participants to this negotiation, I’m hoping for a successful resolution for a great hotel and a great city.

What Say You?

Hometown Hero: John Byers, Santa Monica Architect

Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica
18^th and Arizona, Santa Monica
photo credit:  Carol Lemlein

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

John Winford Byers, Santa Monica’s most important architect and builder in the period between WWI and WWII, told the LA Times, “Buildings of adobe are replete with a delicate and elusive charm and there is an easy plasticity about the material that makes it particularly suitable to the Spanish or California type of architecture.” (May 17, 1931)

Byers was noted for his work with adobe and was a leader in its use as a California building material.  Today we would label adobe “green.”  It’s local.  It provides great insulation – keeping buildings cool during the day and warm at night.  And it is an all-natural material.

Byers was a self-taught architect.  After receiving a degree in Electrical Engineering from of the University of Michigan he went on to do graduate work at Harvard University.  Byers also had experience as a teacher and had worked at the North American Academy in Montevideo, Uruguay before coming to Santa Monica in 1910 to chair the Romance Languages Department at Santa Monica High School.  It is thought that during his time in Latin America he became enamored with the architectural vernacular he called, “Latin Houses.” 

After his working day at the High School was over, Byers would work as a translator for the Mexican workmen on construction sites and through working with them he learned how to build with adobe.  His began his architectural career building residences for his own family and for his cousin.  His first commissioned design, in 1916, was a house for W.F. Barnum, the principal at Santa Monica High School.

Byers relied on the building traditions of Hispanic cultures, building in the Mexican Colonial the Spanish Colonial and the Monterey styles.  When he couldn’t get the curved, clay roof tiles he needed for these buildings he established his own workshop and employed the traditional technique where workmen used their thighs as forms to shape the wet clay for the curved tile shape needed for rooftops.  The workshop also produced decorative tile, wrought iron and woodwork.  He named his company the “John Byers Organization for the Design and Building of Latin Houses.”

By 1926 Byers was a licensed architect.  Among his clients were Norma Shearer and Irving Thalberg, Shirley Temple, Joel McCrea, Laurence (Buster) Crabbe and King Vidor.  He went on to design Ray Bradbury’s house, a ranch house at the Getty in Malibu, and the Club House at Brentwood Country Club, where he was a member and an avid golfer.

One of Byers important public buildings in Santa Monica is the Miles Playhouse.  Designed in 1929, the Playhouse was the vision of J. Euclid Miles who wanted a memorial for his daughter, Mary A. Miles, and Miles bequethed $25,000 to the City to fund the Playhouse.

Justin Yoffe, the Cultural Affairs Supervisor for the Playhouse said, “Three years ago we started “Fireside at the Miles”  We opened up the main hall so citizens could experience the intimate auditorium the way citizens did when it was first built.”  This January and February “Fireside at the Miles” will feature six weekends of music and dance at the Playhouse, located in Reed Park.  www.milesplayhouse.org

The Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica is another important public building designed by Byers.  Restoration architect Ralph Mechur, talking about the Church, said,  “Its plaster exterior and dark wood ceilings and beams create a sense of early California.  The Church has kept the sanctuary building intact as the congregation has grown.  It was exciting to create a campus for the Church, knitting together the church building, a modernist addition and the adjacent 1914 bungalow.”

The Santa Monica Conservancy will meet in the Church on Sunday, January 29, 2012.  "We are pleased to be holding our Annual Meeting in the John Byers designed Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica. He is widely recognized as one of, if not the most influential Santa Monica architect of the first half of the twentieth century,” said Carol Lemlein, President of the Santa Monica Conservancy.  www.santamonicaconservancy.org

 

A third Byers’ public building is the office he designed and built, located at 246 26^th Street.  The building, a Santa Monica landmark, is currently being used as a restaurant.  He worked there with Edna Muir, also a self taught architect.  She  worked for Byers for 11 years before getting her license and then becoming his partner in the firm. 

“During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Byers became a major proponent in Southern California for the revival of traditional adobe construction, and in addition to designing his own houses, acted as consultant in this capacity for the development of Rancho Santa Fe and several other major projects in California, Nevada and Arizona,” said Ken Breisch, an architecture professor at USC.  “Much of Byers' and Muir’s early work exhibits traits of the Spanish Colonial Revival, while during their later years they also worked in other American Revival styles to produce some of the most beautiful and graceful adaptations of historic revival architecture in Southern California.”

At the time of his death in 1966 he lived at 2034 La Mesa, an elegant Montery Revival design and the third home he built in Santa Monica for his own family.  He was 91 years old.  John Winford Byers, architect and builder, designed some of Santa Monica’s most treasured residences and public buildings.

Byers’ designs defined the architectural landscape of Santa Monica in the years between WWI and WWII and they continue to influence the architectural landscape of Santa Monica.   In many ways we are exploring and rediscovering how to express the respect for the landscape of California, the understanding and use of materials that adapt their buildings to the climate and, hopefully, the grace that was the Byers legacy to the City.

Honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.        January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968
Photo The Seattle Times

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

The Civil Rights Movement captured the imagination of the Country.  It was 1965, the Rev. Martin Luther King, working to get voting rights for African-Americans, planned to lead a 50-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.  

It was, finally, the right time to do the right thing.  I wonder how that happens.  How is it that something intrinsically right can take so long to be possible?  The prejudice, segregation, and Jim Crow laws were always wrong.  How did they last so long?  For that matter, how did they ever begin?

Eight of us, all college students, drove in a University of San Francisco station wagon from San Francisco, California to Selma, Alabama to be part of the march.

We knew Alabama State Troopers had turned the marchers back each time they tried to cross the Pettus Bridge onto the highway to Montgomery.  Photographs of the marchers had been front-page news in papers across the country.   Now, students, teachers, religious leaders and civil rights workers, from all over the U.S., were coming to Selma to join the march, forcing the focus of the nation on the right of the marchers to proceed and on the issue of voting rights.

The trip across country was different from any other car trip I had taken in my life.  By the time we got to Texas it was clear to us that people knew who we were and many didn’t like us.  We drove straight through, stopping only when we needed to, quickly buying food in convenience stores and eating in the car.  We talked and talked - civil rights, philosophy, religion, the Vietnam War – in the way of college students everywhere. 

I talked about my father.  My family lived in Minnesota when I was in elementary school and we went to Florida for a winter vacation.  My father would hold the door for a black woman and say, ‘after you Ma’am’, he would address black men as “Sir”, he would tell a black person in a store that they were next and should go ahead.  I took it for granted.  It was just my father being his usual, polite self.  It wasn’t until I returned to the South as a young adult that I realized that his politeness defied the culture of the Jim Crow South where no white man ever held the door for a black woman and where all black people in a store waited until all white people had been served, even if those white people came in after them.  My father wasn’t a person for political action.  I never knew him to go to a rally or a meeting or write a letter to the editor.  But he was a man of personal responsibility.

After several days of driving we arrived in Selma and went to the Church that was the center of the Civil Rights movement.  We were expected and they gave us the name of the man who was going to put us up and cards that we could use for meals.  I still have my card.  It says, “Susan Cloke is a guest in Selma and is entitled to free meals.”

Our host seemed old to me, but I think that was because I was so young.  He lived alone and his house, really a cabin, was small.  He had cleaned the unpainted wood by washing the floors and walls with boiling water.  The stove was on the back porch and he had a pot of beans waiting for us.  I liked him right away for his kindness and his soft-spoken manner.  We sat on his front steps and talked with him until it was time to go back into town for the meeting at the church.

It was at the church that I first heard Rev. King speak.  I have long remembered, and thought about a particular speech, which I can’t find and so this is not an exact quote, but what he said, much more eloquently than I can, was “Morality is like a muscle.  If you don’t use it to make small decisions then, when you need it, it won’t be strong enough to do what needs to be done.  Don’t think, ‘well, I don’t have to do this right thing because it’s not important and no one will even notice I didn’t do it’ and then think you will be able to do the right thing when it is important.  That won’t work.  Do the right thing now and when you really need to act you will have the needed strength to see you through.” 

The Selma Montgomery March started at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.  The first attempt to cross the Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965, was led by John Lewis of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) and Rev. Hosea Williams of SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference).  March 7, 1965 became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ because Alabama State troopers beat and gassed and wounded the marchers. 

On March 21, 1965, on the third attempt, with a court order in our favor, we crossed the bridge and started for Montgomery.  On the fifth day of the march, near Montgomery, thousands of people joined with the several hundred marchers who had walked all the way.  To ‘give witness’ was the expression used.

King in his Montgomery speech said,  "I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” Somebody's asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?”  Somebody's asking, “When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?" Somebody's asking, "When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?" I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth crushed to earth will rise again. “How long? Not long, because “no lie can live forever."  How long? Not long, because "you shall reap what you sow.  How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

President Johnson, responding to the Selma Montgomery March took the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to Congress with these words, “Even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause, too, because it is not just Negroes but really it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

Martin Luther King Jr. stood next to President Johnson as the President signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965.  Rev. King was the leader of the Birmingham Movement and his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was a manifesto for the Civil Rights Movement.  He was a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He was a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, a leader of all Americans and a world leader.  He was 39 years old on April 4, 1968 when he was assassinated.

Rev. King’s message of non-violence gave people hope and inspiration. He would interweave stories from literature, from the bible and from history into his sermons on the power of non-violence to change the world.  Rev. King, in his own words, “Speak truth to evil.  Speak truth to power.  But speak without hatred.”

Hometown Hero: Barbara Stinchfield

Barbara Stinchfield
Photo by Annie Stinchfield

SUSAN CLOKE

Mirror Columnist

December 30, 2011

“I came to Santa Monica at a time of high activism in the City.  There were many ideas being discussed and many people interested in the things I was interested in: child- care advocacy, youth services and working with non-profits.  It seemed a good fit,” said Barbara Stinchfield, who will retire at the end of December from her long-term position as Director of Community and Cultural Services for the City of Santa Monica. 

Looking back on her work Stinchfield said, “I was living in Oregon and right out of graduate school, with a master’s degree in counseling, I worked on youth advocacy programs.  I worked on the founding of a shelter for runaway teenagers and the development of public alternative schools.

“When I came to Los Angeles I realized there wasn’t really a similar niche so I decided to get my MBA and that led to the job with Santa Monica.  Now that I’m retiring people keep talking about my legacy and it’s hard for me to get perspective on that idea.  What I am most proud of is that we have a strong department team and I know that when I leave there will be a smooth transition.”

She began in the Community and Neighborhood Services Division and was quickly promoted to be the manager.  It was a small division, funded by federal grants.

Soon after, the Council made a policy decision to fund non-profits doing work that furthered policy goals of promoting affordable housing construction, park improvements and the growing neighborhood associations in the City.   Monies from the General Fund were added to the federal grant monies.

“We helped OPCC (Ocean Park Community Center) fund a shelter for runaway youth and the Clare Foundation to fund a house for shelter and programs,” said Stinchfield.  “We also added a focus on human service planning activities and stewarded the writing of the Child Care Master Plan and the Youth Action Plan, working in coordination with the community.

“What started as a small division with a budget of about $600,000 grew to what it is today,  $7 million coming from grants and general funds.”

In the early 1990’s she was given the job as assistant director of Community and Cultural Services, a new department, the old division was disbanded and neighborhood services became the human services division of the new department.

Under Stinchfield’s leadership the Department developed the Open Space Element of the General Plan and the long range Parks and Recreation Master Plan. 

In the late 1990’s the then City Manager, John Jalili, appointed Stinchfield as Community and Cultural Services Director.  Sinchfield said, “my mission was to build a cohesive team with the common goal of serving Santa Monica.”

It was a time of a major building boom in capital projects.  It’s an impressive list: the Swim Center at Santa Monica College: the renovation of Douglas Park; the new children’s playground at Reed Park; the building of Airport Park and Euclid Park; the expansion of Virginia Avenue Park with a focus on a comprehensive center for the neighborhood and especially neighborhood youth; building the new promenade, bike path, parks and restrooms at the beach; the renovation of the northern part of Palisades Park; and the restoration of Miles Playhouse.

“It hasn’t always been a bed of roses,” said Stinchfield.  “For instance we thought people would be delighted to have a new park on Euclid.  But they weren’t.   We put up a tent in the parking lot to have a meeting with the neighbors, we listened to them and added community gardens and made it primarily for children.  People felt heard.

“I’m known for my frankness.  It’s gotten me into some interesting dilemmas.  People appreciate it but they sometimes wonder how I can be so frank.  It’s just an Oregonian trait.  Its something I’m known for with a chuckle.  It surprised some people, but ultimately people knew where I stood and that I would not go back on my word.

“The biggest example is the Beach House.  It’s well known that neighbors were concerned and there were many, many meetings and much hammering out of parameters.  Out of that came the settlement agreement we now live with and the neighbors are happy.

“In Santa Monica, we believe in major community participation.  My daughter, Annie, came to community meetings with me and was often the first to raise her hand.  Imagine my surprise when she told me she wanted to have a meeting at her nursery school about creating a quiet place.  But we had that meeting and today there is the Ellen Stinchfield quiet room at the Growing Place, named in honor of Annie’s grandmother.

“One indication of how I work is that I just have easy chairs and a coffee table in my office.  I did that on purpose.  I want people to feel free to come in and plop down and work things out together.  I want to listen, understand and find solutions.

 “People like to work with authentic, honest and fair people and that’s what I’ve I tried to be.  You can have technical skills, but if you don’t speak the truth when the truth needs to be spoken you’re not leaving a legacy.”

What Say You: Ocean Park Green Street Celebration

OPA Board Members at the Groundbreaking Ceremony

SUSAN CLOKE

Mirror Columnist

This past wonderfully rainy December Monday, 50 people, members of the Ocean Park community and members of City Staff, came together at the Ocean Park Library to celebrate the groundbreaking of the Ocean Park Boulevard Green Street Project.

Ocean Park Boulevard has been redesigned from Lincoln Boulevard to Neilson Way with a new, sustainable and native landscape, over one hundred new trees, wider sidewalks, new parkways, new medians, bio-swales and infiltration areas to capture, infiltrate and clean storm water, new crosswalks, bike lanes, bike racks, and new, low scale, light poles.

The initial idea for this project came from the Ocean Park community.  Neighbors remember the first meetings, almost twenty years ago, in Bob Taylor’s living room, meetings at Jane Spillar’s, meetings at Peet’s, and at OPA (Ocean Park Association). 

Bob Taylor reminded everyone that Ocean Park Boulevard had been redeveloped to accommodate the traffic that the City thought would come with planned growth at the beach when Pacific Ocean Park was built.  But widening the street divided the neighborhood and left people without a safe place to cross.  Bob said, “We have the opportunity to add modern bells and whistles to our original concept which was designed to bring the neighborhood back together.”

“It’s a gateway for Ocean Park, it puts the park back into Ocean Park Boulevard,” said Peter James, the senior planner with the City.  “This project is not solely about making Ocean Park Boulevard a better place to bike and walk and improving water quality in the Bay.  Yes, it is about sustainability and that’s important to us, but it’s fundamentally about people and their changing attitude about the role of streets in the community.

John Kaliski, the project architect, believes the project is more than the design of a street, he sees it as creating greater community.  “One of the joys of working on the Ocean Park Boulevard project is that the community wanted more before we got involved, demanded the best from us, and dogged all at the City to make sure that our collective vision is implemented. I am very hopeful that the outcome will live up to all of our expectations to bring the community physically together on foot and on bicycles, create a new sense of neighborhood identity, realize heightened sustainability with regard to storm water mitigation, and craft a street and sidewalk that is integral to people's sense of home.”

The timing is finally right, money is available for storm water capture and treatment and for supporting bicycling as transportation.  The City has made a formal commitment to sustainability.  The health of the Bay is understood to be essential to the economic health of the City.  Most importantly, protecting the health of the Bay and being a sustainable City are demands made by Santa Monicans of their government.

Santa Monica Mayor Richard Bloom summed up the sentiment of the day saying, “This project weaves together the threads of sustainability and brings together the two sides of the neighborhood that have been split for so long.”

Santa Monica City Civil Engineer Carlos Rosales estimates that construction on the Ocean Park Boulevard Complete Green Street project will begin this week.  He said, “Construction will last just over a year, and one lane of traffic will be kept moving in both directions at all times.”

As an Ocean Park resident, I’m hugely optimistic about this project at the same time I also realize it is only a piece of one street.  Success will really be measured by its use as a model.  For the health of the Bay we have to infiltrate storm water citywide and keep polluted, pathogen and chemical carrying storm water out of the Bay.  If biking is to become a reasonable mode of transportation to offset our carbon footprint we have to be able to travel throughout the city safely and comfortably.  Every tree planted improves air quality and provides shade and beauty. Planting 100 trees is fantastic, but we need a citywide tree canopy to significantly improve air quality.

For connecting neighborhoods, for making a reality of our commitment to sustainability, we need to think about our streets differently and to put the park back, not only into Ocean Park Boulevard, but into all our streets.

What Say You?

 

The Ocean Park Boulevard “Complete Green Street” project  www.SMConstructs.org/OPB.

Construction manager Arcadis U.S., Inc.  310.857.4946.

Previous column March 2009  “What Say You:  Green Streets.”   

 

Santa Monica Hometown Hero: Paul Rosenstein

Paul Rosenstein

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

“I always think of Santa Monica as a livable and sustainable community with a slow and thoughtful approach to growth, maintaining its small scale, minimizing auto traffic, and supporting biking and walking,” said Paul Rosenstein, two-time City Council member, former Mayor, former member of the Planning Commission and of the Pier Board and one of the founders of Mid-City Neighbors.

Paul moved to Santa Monica in 1982. His day job was as an electrician. He was a member of the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers). In 2000, when Paul finished his second Council term, he took on the more than full-time job of Political Director for the IBEW, moved on to be a national representative for the AFL-CIO and then on to work with the Coalition of Unions at Kaiser Permanente, where his job focused on improving the quality of health care. 

It was a series of demanding stints and when he retired in August 2009 he was able to turn his attention to his own neighborhood and to the City. He began going to the community meetings on the LUCE (Land Use and Circulation Element) to learn what was being planned for the future of Santa Monica.

“Overall, I was impressed with the ideas and the goals of the LUCE. At the same time the scale and the amount of development in the industrial area concerned me,” said Paul.   “I saw the City as hustling people and people in the neighborhoods as not knowing what was coming down. By that I mean that the City is in transition, many projects are being proposed, and notification is neighborhood-by-neighborhood, project-by-project, but only to those who live within a 500-foot radius of the proposed project. So lots of people who will live with project impacts are not notified. There is no requirement for citywide notification even though the cumulative effect of the many projects currently being considered will be citywide.

“I saw this as a problem when I was on the Council,” Paul said. “At that time, I had proposed that the larger the project the wider the notification area should be. But the idea to expand the notification rules was not adopted and it continues to be an issue.”

“When I began to figure out the scope of what was coming, I got up at the LUCE meeting at Virginia Avenue Park and asked why we were encouraging more commercial development as there are already several thousands of people working in the City who get caught, daily, in backed up traffic on the 10 (Freeway),” he said. “I asked if it wouldn’t make more sense to build housing so people who worked here could live here.

“By the way, to make it sexy, commercial development in the industrial district was renamed as creative arts office space. It sounds idyllic and sounds like a lot of small businesses, supported by neighborhood uses such as cafes and coffee shops, really it is a lot of commercial development that will bring an excessive amount of traffic into Santa Monica.”

Paul said the LUCE goal of no net new traffic was good.  “I feel very strange raising all these traffic issues because that is the issue for the anti-growth people and I’m not anti-growth, but I am for being reasonable,” he said. “I also want us to look carefully at the Civic Auditorium development. There’s an advantage to remembering past promises. The parking structure on Fourth St. was built to replace the parking slated to be lost when the civic center lot was planned to become Civic Auditorium Park. But that park has dropped off the planning table. And the company that has the contract to develop the Civic has insisted on a minimum of 100 spaces adjacent to the auditorium. What happened here?”

Paul has lived in Santa Monica for 29 years. His parents lived here and were active members of the community. He is married to Ada Hollie, an educator and a member of the Santa Monica City College Emeritus College Executive Council.

Paul was at the first meeting of Mid-City neighbors and spent 14 years getting to know the City through his neighborhood activism and his public service. What he calls, “learning the ropes.” “Through these experiences I learned how to build consensus,” he said. “It can be difficult to make decisions where there are competing issues, and there is usually more than one side to any issue, but the community must be able to have a say in the protection of the city. I support the goals of the LUCE but want to help make sure we don’t kill the golden goose.”

Now, Paul, once again, is offering to serve on the City Planning Commission. He has submitted his application to the Council for their consideration and, he hopes, approval.  His willingness to serve and his understanding of the community will make his voice an important addition to the Commission. Paul speaks for many Santa Monicans when he says, “Santa Monica is an urban village, having the benefits of a village and the amenities of an urban environment and that’s what I want to protect and promote.”