Mark Benjamin. City and Community Builder 1950 -2013

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Mark Benjamin.  1950 – 2013   

Mark Benjamin
City and Community Builder

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist 

Mark Benjamin was a guy with an easy going manner and a work hard ethic.  He began in the construction business as an apprentice carpenter at Morley Builders, a family company started by his father in the 1950’s to meet the post WWII housing boom.   Mark Benjamin went on to become the CEO of Morley and to be the founder of Benchmark Contractors.

In their mission statement Morley Builders define themselves as being “an innovative and entrepreneurial company of individuals with integrity, working together to build quality projects with pride and dignity. The overriding principle we all share is integrity of character. From this flows the traits of honesty, respect for others, ethical behavior and being profitable without being predatory.”

Mark Benjamin lived the principles of the company.  He was known for the integrity of his work.  He also lived the principles of his company in the many ways he contributed his skills and knowledge and support to his local community.

Morley and the second family company, Benchmark Contractors, were major construction companies in Southern California.  Under Mark’s leadership the companies expanded and he was known for incorporating sustainable building practices and new technologies. 

Their clients included: studios 20^th Century Fox and CBS; institutional buildings for the California Institute of Technology, California Institute of the Arts, the California Science Foundation; medical buildings for City of Hope, Huntington Memorial Hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Saint John’s Health Center; libraries and exhibition and performance spaces for the City of Santa Monica, Huntington Foundation, LA County Museum of Art, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Hollywood Bowl.

Mark Benjamin was also committed to community building and his company adopted Grant Elementary School, four blocks from their home office in Santa Monica.   Benjamin is an original supporter of the ACE Mentor Program in Los Angeles. This program introduces high school students to career possibilities and learning opportunities in architecture, construction and engineering.

Mark supported Habitat for Humanity, the Los Angeles Music Center, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, City of Hope Medical Center and the Idaho Conservation League.

In Idaho, where he had a second home, and in Southern CA where he supported Nature Bridge, Yellowstone Association, Wood River Land Trust, and the Malibu Foundation for Youth and Families, Mark found ways to demonstrate his support for environmental protection and enhancement.

Mark Benjamin’s professional credits include serving as president of the American Council for Construction Education (ACCE), providing leadership to the Architectural Guild at the University of Southern California, contributing to the work of the Structural Engineers Association of California, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, and the American Institute of Architects and the American Concrete Institute.

Mark Benjamin, 63, was killed, along with his son Luke, 28, two family friends and his golden retriever, when the jet he was piloting crashed on landing at Santa Monica Airport on Sunday, Sept. 29, 2013.  He is survived by his son, Matthew.

Santa Monica has lost a talented, generous and kind member of the community.  We were so very fortunate to have his presence in our lives and in the life of our City.

What Say You? Saint John's Open House and Health Fair

Saint John's Health Center
Rendering Courtesy of Saint John's Health Center

  “When you move to a new house you call your friends and neighbors to come see what you’ve done.  We happen to have a lot of neighbors and we’ve invited them all, all the people of Santa Monica and we’re going to have fun,” said Sister Maureen Craig of Saint John’s Health Center, speaking about the Saint John's Community Open House and Health Fair. The Open House will be held on Saturday, October 5, 2013, from noon to 4 p.m.  

John Robertson M.D., the Medical Director of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at Saint John's and the Chair Elect of the Saint John’s Health Center Foundation Board of Trustees, enthusiastically talked about the Open House, saying, “Visitors will be able to tour the hospital, including the open-heart surgery and orthopedic operating rooms, the Women’s Health Center, and the Chapel.  I will be there, along with Saint John’s medical staff to meet guests and provide information about services and departments at Saint John’s.  Special activities for children include face painting, arts and crafts and, of course, healthy snacks.”  

http://www.smmirror.com/articles/seven-days/Saint-Johns-To-Host-Community-Open-House-Health-Fair-Oct-5/38510

The 1994 earthquake that caused severe damage in Santa Monica and in Los Angeles also severely damaged Saint John’s Hospital.  After almost 20 years of rebuilding, using the rebuilding as an opportunity to incorporate the new technology in health care, construction of the new hospital is complete. 

The idea to build a new hospital in Santa Monica began in 1939 when a group of Santa Monica doctors went to Kansas and asked the Sisters Of Charity to come to Santa Monica to help start a hospital.

The nuns came and their first task was to go door to door in the City to get the money to buy the land for the new hospital.  It was a difficult time because of the war but the city wanted the hospital and it was built with charitable donations.

Supplies were also hard to get and couldn’t just be ordered.  In response a group of women in the community formed the Women’s Guild of Saint John’s.  The Guild made sheets for patient beds, curtains for the rooms and bandages for burn victims.

Saint John’s first opened its doors on October 26, 1942 with 52 beds.  By 1952 they had to add another wing to the hospital.  It was the end of the war and the hospital was serving a greater number of patients and the many doctors who had come home from the war and joined the Medical Staff at Saint John’s.

Fifty years later, as part of the Jubilee Year Celebration in 1992, almost a thousand people attended a community open house very much like the one planned for the celebration on October 5, 2013.  Medical Staff were there to meet and greet, to explain services and equipment, and visitors toured the hospital.

“One thing that hasn’t changed is that whenever a baby is born we play Brahms’s lullaby on the PA.  If twins are born it is played twice.  People just stop wherever they are and smile,” said Sister Maureen.

“In the early days of the hospital where was a different relationship between doctors and patients, maybe because people had to stay in the hospital for longer periods, maybe because people knew each other from being part of the same community.

“The Open House is a sign that we want to continue to make people feel welcome, at home, and that we care about our neighbors and the City.  Our mission is to make everyone feel at home,” said Sister Maureen

In the last few years Saint John’s has also gone through a change of ownership. The storied hospital received competing bids from UCLA Health System, Ascension Health Alliance and Dignity Health as well as a bid from Patrick-Soon-Shiong, a bid made with the support of the local Archdiocese, and from Providence Health and Services.

Saint John’s now will be part of Providence Health and Services, based in Washington, Providence Health owns other hospitals in California, Oregon and Washington.  The CEO of Providence Health will be at the Open House to help welcome visitors to Saint John’s.

John Robertson M.D.

Dr. John Robertson was keen to have the Open House and to make sure everyone felt welcome.  “This is a way for Saint John’s to open our doors and invite people to see how beautiful the new hospital is.  It's a say to say thank you to the public for being there for us through all the years of construction and all the problems that created.  We are back better than ever. We’re excited about being with the Providence Group.  We are one of the top 50 hospitals in the country and we plan on getting better every year,” said Dr. Robertson.

Sister Maureen Craig SCL

Underscoring Dr. Robertson’s invitation to the community, Sister Maureen said,  “Our venue may have changed, the technology may have changed, but our values have remained the same – great care in comfortable surroundings in a community we love.”

Among the many reasons we have to be grateful for living in Santa Monica is the excellence of the health care in our city.
We are truly fortunate.

What Say You?

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Janet Salomonson M.D. FACS
photo credit:  Susan Cloke

St. John’s announced with great sadness the death of Dr. Janet K. Salomonson.  They said, “our beloved Medical Director of the Cleft Palate Services and gifted plastic surgeon, passed away yesterday, September 10th after an illness. While an intensely private person, she was known throughout Saint John’s and the surrounding community, and internationally, for her deep devotion to her patients, their families and her associates.

“At Saint John’s, she held the position of Section Chief of Plastic Surgery and served as a member of the Surgery Committee, the Pediatric Committee, and the Surgical Value Analysis Team.”

There will be a memorial mass at Saint John’s on Thursday, September 26th at 12:00 p.m. in the Sister Marie Madeleine Chapel. 


Donations may be made in her honor to the St. Johns Cleft Palate Institute, Faces of Hope and Rotoplast.

In 2011 Dr. Salomonson agreed to be interviewed for the Hometown Hero column.  She wanted people to know about the problem of cleft palate and  that it was a solvable problem.
What follows is the reprint of the 2011 column.

Hometown Hero: Janet Salomonson M.D.
SUSAN CLOKE
Columnist, the Mirror
April 29, 2011

Santa Monica plastic surgeon Janet Salomonson will be in Guatemala this coming summer performing operations to correct the birth anomaly of cleft palate.  “We never turn away any child who is healthy enough to go through the operation.   I stay for one or sometimes two weeks in the host country and typically perform about five operations every day.  We work until the work is done,” said Dr. Salomonson.

“For reasons we still don’t know, even though the human genome has been mapped, normal structures don’t form in the lip and palate and children are born with cleft palate.  Not only is cleft palate disfiguring, it’s important to have the structures in place as early as possible so the child can learn to speak correctly.  It’s best to do the operations in stages.  We do the lip first, especially with a child under 10 months and then return to repair the palate.

“If the cleft palate is not corrected when they are very young the child can still learn to speak, but often they can’t speak clearly and can have difficulty being understood.”

Salomonson has been to Nicaragua, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and the Philippines to perform cleft palate surgeries. This is her tenth year of working with Faces of Hope and Rotaplast, two Rotary sponsored groups, which arrange trips for teams of medical professionals to work internationally donating their much-needed medical skills.

“We go with a spirit of humility and with respect for the local culture.  We work with the local people.  Their knowledge is helpful to the success of our work.  We partner, whenever possible, with local physicians and are always on the look out for local physicians who want to be trained in cleft palate surgery.

“We bring the supplies, everything from sutures to anesthesia, our own scrubs, antibiotics, so that we are not taking from the local facility.” Doctor Salomonson noted.

The visits of the medical teams are announced on the radio, in the newspapers and on banners and flyers.  The radio seems to be the way most people learn about the program.

The organizing group goes ahead of the medical team and scouts out the situation in the host country to make sure that the basic requirements for operating and achieving good surgical outcomes can be met. They also make the arrangements for lodging and meals for the medical team members.

The daughter of Swedish immigrants to Minnesota she has the famous Midwestern straightforward manner and self –deprecating style.  Her mom was a stay at home mom and her dad worked on road construction. They wanted the American dream of education and a better life for their child.

Her parents had originally met when her mom was a ‘summer child’ on a farm.  It is a typical Swedish custom, kind of the Swedish equivalent of sending your kid to camp, for city children to go to farms in the summer.  On the farm she was given a kitten, the food was great and she had a wonderful time.  She liked the entire farm family, including the older son.  Years later, they met again and decided to marry.

Salomonson’s path to studying medicine was incremental.  She knew when she was in Maplewood High School in St. Paul, Minnesota that she was drawn to math and science.

This took her to the University Of Minnesota as an undergraduate to study Chemical Engineering.  Many of her professors worked in the field of bioengineering and medicine.  Salomonson admired their work and decided she would apply to medical school and become a medical researcher.

In Medical School, also at the University of Minnesota, she fell in love with the clinical work and decided that, as much as the research meant to her, it would mean more to work with patients.   One more incremental move took her to UCLA for a surgical residency, starting in general surgery and then specializing in plastic surgery.

She holds the hard earned and well deserved prestigious title, Janet Salomonson, MD, FACS, Plastic Surgeon/Medical Director of the Cleft Palate Center at Saint John's Cleft Center.

At the invitation of a beloved former teacher, Salomonson went back to Minnesota to give the commencement address at her old high school.   She told the graduates, “You won’t remember for long who won the super bowl or even the Nobel Prize, but you will remember the teachers who taught you about the world and the people who were important to you.  Fame is not what is important.  What is important are the people in our lives.”

Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights To Hold Annual Membership Convention

 

Evening Outlook Front Page SM Rent Control Wins
  photo credit: Outlook Archives

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, the Mirror

Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights (SMRR) began 34 years ago. They will hold their Annual Membership Convention this Sunday at 2 pm at the Church in Ocean Park. 

SMRR has enjoyed 34 years of political dominance in Santa Monica electoral politics. In anticipation of the upcoming SMRR Convention, today’s column features an interview with Patricia Hoffman, co-chair of SMRR. Future columns will feature political leaders in Santa Monica with other points of view.

What was the impetus for forming/organizing SMRR?

A group of local senior citizen retirees, calling themselves the Santa Monica Committee for Fair Rents, was alarmed at the rapidly rising rents and condominium conversions that had begun to plague the Santa Monica renter community.

They were chaired by Santa Monica Housing Commissioner Syd Rose, and initiated the first rent control measure in 1978.

When the 1978 measure failed the organizers redoubled their efforts and supported the April 1979 Proposition A.

It was our first victory. Rent Control passed. SMRR candidate Ruth Yannatta Goldway became the first SMRR candidate to win a seat on the Santa Monica City Council. Cheryl Rhoden won a seat in the following November.

Rent Control came about because of a few things. The speculative market for property in Santa Monica, the ease and frequency of evictions of long time tenants and the belief that everyone should be secure in his or her home.

Did winning mean that SMRR held a majority of the Council seats?

In April of 1981, Ken Edwards, Dolores Press, Dennis Zane, and James Conn were elected for the first SMRR majority on City Council and Ruth Goldway became the first SMRR Mayor.

However, Goldway lost her seat and SMRR failed to win two other seats in the 1983 election.

In June of 1984, Santa Monica voters approved a measure to change the local elections from April of odd years to November of even years.

That November, Edwards, Zane and Conn were reelected but Press, who was a write-in candidate and got more than 13,000 votes, was replaced with Herb Katz. The SMRR majority was restored in 1988. And have mostly, but not always had a majority since then. 

Why did SMRR decide to focus on issues other than rent control?

Rent Control has always been the number one issue in SMRR. The Rent Control Board was established as part of the implementation of the Rent Control Law and is crucial to making sure rent control is implemented as intended by the people.

However, SMRR has always been a big-tent non-partisan organization. This has been both an asset and a challenge. The organization has one of the best platforms of any organization. It is a progressive document that looks at real needs of real people.

The only means of holding people accountable to the platform is the electoral process. This includes the democratic endorsement conventions to select SMRR candidates and the general citywide elections.

Do SMRR elected officials vote as a bloc?

SMRR-endorsed candidates often disagree on how to implement the platform. This has led to some fractionalization within the organization from time to time.

What is most important to you about Rent Control?

Since Rent Control, there are many more tenant protections from harassment and evictions. Rent Control was an important step in making Santa Monica child friendly. Before Fair Housing laws and Rent Control, tenants could be evicted for having children.

Why does SMRR run candidates for School and College Board elections?

The answer is simple. We care about education.

Renters knew that they were likely to be able to raise their families in place. That meant that they could participate fully in the schools. It also helped stabilize the existing decline in enrollment in our public schools. Rent control was, and is, good for the schools.

Santa Monica renters vote heavily in favor of school measures, both parcel taxes and General Obligation Bonds. Renters pay a significant share of these taxes.

Just as it is with City Council candidates, the School and College Board candidates are selected at the SMRR Convention. Their questionnaires and interviews are focused on education issues.

Do you, does SMRR, have regrets about things done in SMRR’s name?

It is hard to have too many regrets about a democratic process. There certainly have been candidates whom I did not support who won the SMRR nomination. There have been elected officials who have left something to be desired.

But we have also selected and elected some of the best officials Santa Monica has had.

I especially miss the leadership and guidance of Ken Genser. He didn’t start out as one of our best council members but he grew on the job. His death has made it much more difficult for the City to move forward with a coherent plan.

What will happen at the 2013 Convention?

The main business of this convention/annual meeting will be electing the SMRR Steering Committee. The focus of this meeting will be Rent Control and Housing.

How are other issues discussed and decided?

The Steering Committee conducts SMRR business between general meetings and addresses local issues of concern and statewide issues of importance to SMRR.

Quality of life issues have always been important to SMRR, as they have been to most of the people of Santa Monica.

There is significant disagreement on how to best protect and enhance the quality of life, though. It would help if we could have a common vision of what Santa Monica should look like in 5, 10 and 20 years. Unfortunately, the LUCE is too broad and doesn’t provide enough guidance.

What are the major challenges facing the City today?

There are a number of challenges facing Santa Monica today. Many of the worst have regional components but we also have local issues. We are suffering traffic congestion problems that are both local and regional. We have not completed re-writing the zoning codes necessary to implement our most recently adopted Land Use and Circulation Elements. We have too many Development Agreements in process and we are currently fighting a lot of battles about height and density of new development.

You have lived in Santa Monica since 1979, you are married to the physician Gene Oppenheim, and you have three children; Jonas, Lucas, and Jed. Why did you get involved in local politics? Why SMRR?

Growing up in Van Nuys made living in Santa Monica seem almost perfect. I was excited about having the seats of government almost in my back yard. Participation was natural. It was exciting to be able to participate in a progressive movement. There were different groups meeting each week to discuss issues such as Rent Control, Social Services, the Arts, and Education. It was a wonderful time.

For more information about Sunday’s convention, visit www.smrr.org/news/2013Convention.html

What Say You?

What Say You: Martini Anyone?

La Posada Hotel Winslow AZ

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist

Route 66. La Posada Hotel, Winslow AZ.  Built between the railroad tracks and Route 66, La Posada Hotel was originally built in the late 1920’s by the Santa Fe Railroad and the Fred Harvey Company for the people riding the Super Chief on the Chicago-Los Angeles route. Through the good work of Allan Affeldt it has once again become a destination hotel.

In the first half of the 1900’s Harvey Company built hotels and restaurants along the routes of the railroads in the western United States.  Fred Harvey is credited with being a leader in promoting tourism to the Southwest.  Samuel Hopkins Adams’ novel about the Harvey waitresses, The Harvey Girls, was made into a film of the same name starring Judy Garland.  Her song from that film, On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe, won an Academy Award.

The famed Mary Colter was the architect for La Posada Hotel.  Colter designed the hacienda style Spanish Colonial Revival La Posada in 1929.  She designed the hotel, the 6-acre gardens, the furniture, the china, even the hotel uniforms.  El Posada was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

Colter may be most widely known as the architect of the 1922 Phantom Ranch buildings at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and the cabins on the rim of the Canyon and Hermit’s Rest.  

Colter also worked for the Santa Fe Railroad where she designed the Turquoise Room Dining Car and the now highly collectible Mimbreno china and flatware for the Super Chief Chicago-Los Angeles rail service.  

In the 1930’s and 40’s the Santa Fe Super Chief was the classiest train between Chicago and Los Angeles.  The idiom of the day was “I just chiefed in from the Coast.”  

One of her last designs was the Streamline Moderne cocktail lounge at Union Station in Los Angeles, which now can be seen on Los Angeles Conservancy tours.

The Santa Fe railroad closed the hotel in 1957 and used the facilities as offices, wrecking havoc on the interior of the building.

Along came Allan Affeldt and Tina Mion.  They bought the hotel with the intention of restoring it.  “Our friends thought we were crazy,” said Affeldt who calls himself a “serial eccentric entrepreneur”.  He is married to Tina Mion, whom Ed Ruscha called the “foremost figurative artist in the Southwest.”

Work on the hotel restoration is ongoing.  Also planned are the converting of the old train station to an Art Museum, planting a vineyard and making wine, a sculpture garden and a potager.  James Turrell is designing a “sky space” for La Posada and when Turrell’s Roden Crater opens La Posada will be the embarkation point for visitors. 

Allen Affeldt bought La Posada in 1997 and began work on the restoration of the original Colter design.  He said,  “I believe we save great buildings in the same way we save families, cities and nations: one day at a time, with constant investment and courage, undaunted by naysayers and long odds.  I believe in the sacredness of place, and in the power of great architecture to inspire creativity, kindness and civic responsibility.”

You too can “chief in” from the Coast.  This time on an Amtrak train.  You can still disembark at the front entrance of La Posada and enter the restored hotel and have a great meal at The Turquoise Room.  Named for the dining room on the Super Chief.  The Turquoise Room at La Posada is run by James Beard nominated chef, John Sharpe. 

Sharpe is developing a menu of Native American inspired foods such as cornhusk wrapped and baked salmon or locally sourced churro lamb for the squash blossom and lamb sampler platter.  Breakfast might be corn polenta with fire roasted tomatoes, fresh spinach poached eggs and corn salsa or waffles and pancakes served with locally produced prickly pear or mesquite syrup.  He brings the idea of eating locally and sustainably grown produce and products to the La Posada kitchen.

Each of the fifty-three rooms in the hotel is named for a famous hotel guest.   Presidents Roosevelt and Truman; actors Mary Pickford, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper; aviators Amelia Earhart and Pancho Barnes; Albert Einstein; all were guests at La Posada.

My thanks to Meaghan McNamee, the bartender at the Martini Lounge at La Posada, for her stories about the hotel.  A local resident, the daughter of a Scottish Irish father and a Navajo mother, she calls La Posada “a magical place.”

Martini Anyone?  On the Super Chief a martini was 30 cents.  Today, at the hotel they are a little more! 

What Say You?

What Say You? Shakespeare Santa Monica

Shakespeare Santa Monica Twelfth Night Players
Reed Park 2013
Photo Credit: Natalie Fong

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist

“Shakespeare is as much an attribute of summer as ice cream and BBQ,” commented Jessica Cusick, Cultural Affairs Manager for the City of Santa Monica, when talking about Shakespeare Santa Monica at Reed Park.  

I think the Bard himself would have been pleased with the sounds of merriment coming from the laugh out loud audience at the Shakespeare Santa Monica performance of Twelfth Night. 

Twelfth Night is a classical shipwreck romantic comedy. 

The grown twins Viola and Sebastian are separated when their boat is shipwrecked.  To survive until she can be reunited with her family Viola pretends to be a young man and goes into the service of the local duke, Orsino.

Viola promptly falls in love with Duke Orsino but he is in love with Countess Olivia.  As part of her responsibilities Viola is

required to woo Olivia on behalf of the duke when she would much rather be the one he wooed.

The complications of mistaken identity and the audience knowing the truth create great humor as the dramatic twists and turns of the play bring about its rightful end with the matching of the lovers.

Vincente Cardinale directs Twelfth Night.  John Copeland plays Malvolio to the hilarious delight of the audience.  Elizabeth Godley and Chelsea Brynd share the role of the enchanting Viola.

We see Copeland again in The Taming of the Shrew, this time

as Hortensio.  Lillian Beaudoin is Kate.  Her suitor, Petruchio, is played by Tim Halligan.

“The Taming of the Shrew is typically known as a battle of the sexes,” the play’s director, John Farmanesh-Bocca said, “Kate is a wounded bird – fighting for liberation.  And the story is one of two people, each of whom is given to trouble and how they become paired.  It is a case of a mischief maker finding another mischief maker and making a match.” 

John Farmanesh-Bocca, who is also the Artistic Director of Not Man Apart, the parent company of Shakespeare Santa Monica, said, “ To give perspective on the plays, in the late 1500’s and early 1600’s when these plays were first performed was also the time when the New World was being discovered and explored.”  He went on to say,  “Taming of the Shrew was an early play, simplistic, its adolescence is right there whereas Twelfth Night is a complex and heart centric play.”

Not Man Apart Physical Theatre Ensemble is known for use of athleticism and dance to tell their story. They communicate character and plot through intense movement.  All performers are both dancers and actors.  Not Man Apart has produced plays at the Getty Villa, the Kirk Douglas Theater and the Los Angeles Theater Center.

Every year they hold a “Fortnight Training”.  Louis Schneeder, Chair of the Classical Studio at NYU and Jean-Louis Rodrique, Chair of Master’s Acting at UCLA join Farmanesh-Bocca in guiding the actors’ workshop and to form the ensemble for Shakespeare Santa Monica.

When the Shakespeare plays were first performed The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were the players.  Often plays were staged in grass tennis courts with torches to light the action.

Shakespeare Santa Monica carries on the tradition by holding performances in the tennis court at Reed Park in Santa Monica.

The last two shows of this summer’s season are this weekend with Taming of the Shrew playing August 30 at 8:00 and Twelfth Night  August 31 at 8:00.   Suggested donation is $20 and 18 and under have free admission. For more information go to:    www.shakespearesantamonica.com

I think and hope the physicality and athleticism, the antics and high jinks used in the telling of these enduring plays will make you laugh out loud in this fun romp through Shakespeare.

Let me know!

What Say You? Rem Koolhaas in Santa Monica

Koolhaas/OMA proposal for 4th/5th Street and Arizona
Copyrighted Photo Courtesy of OMA

 SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

Rem Koolhaas is not a household name in Santa Monica.  But that is about to change.  Koolhaas, a Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate (think Best Picture/Best Director/Best Actor/Oscar) is the lead architect for the design of the public/private project at the 4^th/5^th and Arizona Street site.

Thomas J. Pritzker, President of the Foundation said,  “Koolhaas has been called a prophet of a new modern architecture.”   The Koolhaas firm, OMA, (http://www.oma.eu/oma) has built projects all over the world.  In the U.S. OMA may be most widely know for the design of the Main Library in downtown Seattle.

When the Koolhaas firm OMA was given the commission for the Main Library in Seattle the City was warned that they needed to “brace for a wild ride with a man famous for straying outside the bounds of convention.”  While it is true that the library is not conventional it is also true that it is a beloved public destination in the heart of downtown Seattle.  A beautifully conceived and executed space comfortably accommodating and welcoming large numbers of library users of all ages and an exemplar of green design.  

Looking at OMA’s conceptual proposal for the Santa Monica site we see how this proposal is specific to Santa Monica.   Specific to the climate, specific to the site, specific to the cultural of creativity and innovation that has been an historical tradition of Santa Monica. 

The open and porous building is designed to capture ocean breezes, offer spectacular views, express sustainable architectural principles, meet practical requirements such as parking and provide for restaurants and shops and housing at various income levels and more.   The oh so popular ice rink is included within a grand outdoor activity area designed to be programmed for markets and concerts and dinners and festivals and performances.  Koolhaas and his partner at OMA, Shohei Shigematsu, don’t live here but one gets the idea they know the City.

Santa Monica is in the midst of yet another building boom period.  Light rail, new parks, the Colorado Esplanade, many new hotels, Bergamot, the old Paper Mate site, Santa Monicans are discussing and arguing over size and scale and community benefits.  Under all the discussion and argument is the constant theme of how Civic identity is defined and protected.

It seems Koolhaas is offering a way to both build the City and to keep faith with the existing character of the City.  The building’s design expresses Santa Monica’s spirit of creativity, the high standards the City sets for itself in sustainability, and the identity of a City as an easy and fun place to live.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be discussion and argument.  The current proposal is conceptual.  One where the scale is human and understandable even though the building proposed is the 12 stories currently being discussed in a City-wide reassessment instead of the previously allowed 6. 

“OMA was chosen,” said John Warfel of the development company Metropolitan Pacific Capital (MPC) because we knew we needed to have a great piece of architecture.  The site deserves it and it will be welcomed in Santa Monica.  It couldn’t be just good, it had to be great and it had to be done right.”

MPC and its partner, Clarett West, will be before the Council at the August 27 meeting to seek approval to enter into exclusive negotiations for development of the 2.5 acre parcel which is currently the site of the Ice Rink, B of A, Chase Bank and Carlson’s.

City of Santa Monica Director of Housing and Economic Development, Andy Agle, said, “the City purchased these properties starting in the early 2000’s with the idea that we needed ancillary parking and other amenities to support the Downtown.  Soon after the properties were purchased we began the Community Visioning Process to set goals for the development of the properties.

“The Ice Rink had to stay, there was consensus on that.  We needed to meet public objectives for a very active public use of the site.  We needed to provide substantial public parking. 

“The City purchased these properties with Redevelopment Funds,” said Agle. “ Even though the State has now ended Redevelopment funding, previous contracts continue to be honored.  The City will own the land and the developer will build and run the project.”  City Documents, Staff Reports and developer proposals are available at: http://www.smgov.net/Departments/HED/eddContent.aspx?id=31664

2018 is the estimated move-in date.   There will be an ongoing public process.  Questions of scale, height, and the edge conditions of the property will be vigorously debated.  Programming of the property, the public uses and the public benefits will be vigorously debated.  Financial agreements should also be given great consideration.  Transparency is a keyword as this is City owned property. 

This City is changing.  In fact all cities change over time, for better or for worse.  It is up to Santa Monicans to make sure that the coming changes will continue to make Santa Monica an interesting, compelling and fun place to live.

Santa Monica City Hall displays signs boasting, “We Do the Right Thing Right.”  They are setting standards for their work and asking for public feedback.  That same motto could be applied to the Koolhaas proposal.  The OMA submittal to the City offers Santa Monica an opportunity to do the right thing right.   Great architecture needs a great client.  Koolhaas has made the offer.  Now it’s up to the City.

What Say You?