Mail call
Dear ER:
Your post office story is so true (Postal problems,” ER August 21, 2014). About five or six weeks ago, we did not received mail for three days. I asked some of my neighbors if their mail was delivered? “No” was the answer. So I went to the main post office and told the clerk why I was there. She said the supervisor was out, but he would call. I am still waiting for the call.
Richard W.Murphy
Redondo Beach
Healthy Logic
Dear ER:
There is an oil island roughly the same size as the one proposed for Hermosa directly across the street from Cedars Sinai Hospital. If the oil island was built first, as I suspect it was, why was Cedars Sinai built right across the street from it? The most logical explanation is the oil island must have been considered completely harmless. But if the hospital was built first, why was an oil island allowed to be built across the street from it? Again, the most logical explanation is the oil island must have been considered harmless. And it must still be considered safe since it is still in operation.
My question to the oil opponents is: why would an oil island in Hermosa that is surrounded on three sides by industrial buildings and a wide greenbelt on the fourth side be considered hazardous to a healthy population when one directly across the street from a hospital full of sick people is not?
I’ll be waiting for your reply. But I think I will be waiting a long time.
John Szot
Hermosa Beach
Buzz killers
Dear ER:
Driving to work Tuesday morning I hear about a fun event this Saturday at Hennessey’s Tavern on Pier Plaza just a few blocks from my home. On Saturday, I turn down an invitation to see long time friends in Pasadena. I arrive 30 minutes early and things seem quiet. Too quiet. A quick check on my phone reveals the explanation. The KLOS bikini contest has been canceled, one day in advance, by the city of Hermosa Beach due to concerns about crowds. Crowds? This is Hermosa Beach, crowds are what we do! And you cancel a quiet, indoor event one week after the horrific show that was the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week FinFest because of crowds? A few weeks after a man is nearly killed by a great white just next door? Speaking of sharks, have you stood outside Sharkeez on a Saturday night? There are bigger crowds there all summer long than you are going to see at any radio station event.
Bikinis are what the beach is about, folks. If you disagree, you need to have the HBPD to start enforcing a new dress code in an evenhanded manner and stop singling out groups you disagree with.
Sincerely,
Kevin Glenn
Hermosa Beach
A smoking shame
Dear ER:
Step up, Redondo. I went to concerts in the park in Manhattan Beach last night and the announcer gets up on stage just prior to the show and says, “If you haven’t heard by now, Manhattan Beach is now a smoke-free city, so if you want to light up, drive on down to Redondo Beach to smoke.”
As embarrassing as it was (since I live in Redondo), I loved it. Hermosa went smoke-free first, and now Manhattan has. Why not Redondo? Aren’t we supposed to be a “Blue Zone” city? Smokers stand on the sidewalk and smoke in Riviera Village and it blows right into the restaurants through the open windows. At intermission, the announcer apologizes for the comment he made about smoking in Redondo Beach and said he didn’t mean to offend anybody.
Clearly, someone said something that led him to make that apology. No apology necessary in my book. Get with the program, Redondo.
Kelly Charles
Redondo Beach
A better neighbor
Dear ER:
In response to Chevron’s full page “Proud to be your Neighbors in the Beach Cities,” I thank Chevron for its support of our community. At the same time, it is disheartening to learn that Chevron is scaling back its commitment to renewable energy (source: Bloomberg), which suggests that the company wants consumers to remain dependent on fossil fuels rather than working toward creating cleaner solutions. One of those solutions is keeping transportation fuels regulated under California’s groundbreaking climate law, AB 32. Chevron has spent more than $14 million since 2009 lobbying in California to derail clean air standards, including AB 32. Its top lobbyist, Western States Petroleum Association has spent another $25 million lobbying against those same policies (source: CA Secretary of State).
It is wonderful that Chevron supports the Manhattan Beach Botanical Garden, one of the treasures of the South Bay, with its drought-tolerant plants and landscape. But being a good neighbor also means addressing the underlying cause of increased droughts in California – climate change. I urge Chevron, and any other oil companies making investments in my community, to stop resisting implementation of AB 32, an eight-year old law that voters support, and instead make every effort to reduce its greenhouse emissions and other pollution.
Jane Affonso
Redondo Beach
Two signature gathers walk into a market…
Dear ER:
Ran into my first AES signature gatherers today — two young guys aggressively approaching everyone entering and exiting a Redondo grocery store. Their opening pitch? “We’re just trying to get some affordable housing built in Redondo Beach!”
Not even thinking this could be the AES initiative, I paused to ask, “Whose proposal is it?” This elicited an unknowing shrug. I spotted the “Harbor Village” heading and burst out laughing.
These were hired college students who had clearly not just been misled by their employer AES. They were quite interested in the more accurate explanation of the AES initiative I respectfully offered.
Their open-eyed interest turned to heads dropped in shame. One even grabbed his cell phone and proclaimed, “I’m gonna have a serious talk with my boss – this isn’t right.”
Redondo voters, please invest the time to independently understand what the AES ‘Harbor Village’ initiative is, and is not, before signing the petition to place it on your ballot.
Gerry O’Connor
Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Gage closed
Dear ER:
The AVP Manhattan Beach Volleyball Open without Matt Gage under his big straw hat running the board? You can’t be serious.
Bette Mower
by email
Editor’s note: Matt Gage was the long time AVP tournament director.
Better than baby oil
Dear ER:
On March 3, Hermosa Beach residents will have an opportunity to vote yes or no on a proposed oil drilling project at the City Yard. Besides earning hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for the city, there is another huge benefit to this project — a cleaner ocean. That sticky, black tar that shows up in clumps on the shoreline and often ends up on the bottom of your feet is oil. It is found naturally beneath the ocean floor. They are a natural geological occurrence and are not caused by any human activity. The oil comes up through cracks in the ocean floor and washes ashore.
Drilling for oil will essentially suck up all that oil from underneath the ocean floor. We now have another benefit to the proposed oil recovery project here in Hermosa Beach — a cleaner ocean. Who can argue with that?
Lorie Armendariz
Hermosa Beach
Mutually exclusive developments
Dear ER:
I bought my first boat and a house in Redondo in the mid ‘70s and have lived in District 2 near Dive N’ Surf for over 20 years. Few things bother me as much as the proposed development at the Pier and AES locations. Former mayor Mike Gin and former councilman Chris Cagle wrote over 25 column inches pushing over-development at the AES site (“Support needed for pan to rid city of power plant,” ER August 14, 2014). On the two following pages were a color ad for the over-development in ‘King Harbor’ by CenterCal. Who else is sane enough to realize that these proposed developments are mutually exclusive?
I missed the February meetings to discuss an unfeasible boat ramp paid for by the citizens of Redondo and not CenterCal, as was originally promised. And what does 30 years free rent vs. a 10 percent ROI really mean? Please local people, start drilling your public officials for details rather than hot air and campaign slogans. Hermosa and Catalina Avenues, Harbor Drive, Torrance Boulevard, and Beryl and Herondo streets cannot possibly handle the traffic necessary to make both these developments viable. Why can’t Redondo’s current mayor and city council do some proactive planning for the benefit of our local residents? Why veto input from those same residents?
Dan Buck
Redondo Beach
Bringing Down the Roof
Dear Editor:
Hermosa Beach’s commercial downtown has long-needed a four-foot height-reduction measure, from 30-feet to 26-feet, similar to Manhattan Beach’s downtown 26-foot limit.
Developers are squeaking in overly-dense, out-of-scale, poorly-parked, architecturally sterile designs for Hermosa’s downtown, due to its 30-foot height limit. They’re proposing three or more stories for parcels where two-story architectural designs are more appropriate.
This happened with the 96-unit Beach House condo-hotel at 14th Street and The Strand and more recently with the big-box Clash Hotel approval for 15th and Hermosa Avenues. These two unremarkable hotels are being followed by the even more maxed-out and under-parked Mermaid-properties hotel, the Mangurian estate-properties hotel along 11th Street and the Strand, and a likely Sea Sprite properties hotel on the Strand.
Manhattan has one 38-room, two-story hotel (the Shade) in its downtown. Hermosa already has 160 downtown hotel rooms operating or approved. The Mermaid developer is proposing to increase that total to 271.
With the Mangurian and Sea Sprite estate properties developed, the number of room-units could escalate to 480, some 13 times the number in Manhattan’s downtown. They would bring over 1,000 hotel guests and workers, traveling in and out of Hermosa’s downtown 24/7, increasing late-night bars activity, trolling for taxicabs, and creating parking headaches and additional residential impacts.
To preserve the character of Hermosa Beach there needs to be a coherent plan, ensuring an appropriate mix of properly-scaled developments and uses, along with a 26-foot downtown height limit.
Howard Longacre
Hermosa Beach
If he’s so sharp…
Dear ER:
Andre Sharp acknowledges that oil production has rewards (“Blown away,” ER Letters, August 21, 2014). He then goes on to say it also has risks. He is correct. Virtually all human activity is based on a risk vs reward calculation. He then contends that the risks in producing oil in Hermosa Beach include: more earthquakes, increased truck traffic, oil spills, increased cancer rates among Hermosa residents and finally explosions and fires. Two lengthy, detailed, peer-reviewed, scientifically-based, city-contracted studies — the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and the Health Impact Assessment (HIA) — each investigated these risks and found none of them likely to occur (especially given the extensive, state-of-the-art mitigation measures to be used by E&B) and therefore not significant. If Sharp has verifiable evidence to the contrary all of us Hermosa residents would very much like to see it.
Jim Sullivan
Hermosa Beach
