Pouring concrete
Dear ER:
Recently, a large chunk of concrete fell in the Pier’s underground parking structure. Curious, I took my camera down to the pier to take a look for myself and I was shocked. Regardless of whether citizens are for, or against, the waterfront proposal, the parking structure is a major liability. I don’t want to see the Redondo Beach on CNN because a tourist died due to our crumbling infrastructure.
Augustin P. Garnier
Redondo Beach
Pier to table
Dear ER:
You have probably heard a lot about the farm-to-table movement across the country. The closer you can get to consuming something that comes out of the ground, the better it will be if it is produce. Currently, restaurant operators in the South Bay have the option of buying produce from large distributors, or going to bigger Farmer’s Markets, like Downtown Santa Monica on Wednesday mornings. If produce is shipped halfway around the World, it could be two weeks out of the ground by the time you eat it. Locally produced produce options could be as little as 24-hours old.
The Hermosa City Council has the chance to bring a wider range of Farmers to the City of Hermosa Beach on Wednesdays. This move will not only help regular patrons of the farmers market, it will help restaurants across the South Bay, by giving them the option of buying larger quantities of produce locally. I for one will look forward to spending more money locally, and hope other restaurants will choose to do the same. Please support the trial move of the Farmer’s Market.
David Lowe
President
Hermosa Beach Hospitality Association
Marketing to kids
Dear ER:
Our family is asking that Hermosa Beach to continue to hold the wonderful Friday Farmers’ Market on Valley that’s been a tradition for many years. Few people want to lug heavy produce a mile or two up the hill to their residence. Drive? Find parking and pay for it when there is ample free parking at the current location at 10th Street and Valley Drive. The current location has given children the joy and independence to buy snacks and hang out on a Friday with their friends. This practice of budgeting is invaluable and one of the perks of the market being so close to Hermosa Valley School. The Farmer’s Market has a basketball court that provides a safe place for little children to ride their scooters and run around. Later, the older kids like to meet after school, have a snack and play some hoops.
I talked to a vendor who said that the proposed agency that will take over the Market will hike the rent for food stalls. This market isn’t super busy and relies on the influx of kids after school. Moving it, losing customers and then raising the fee could put those vendors out of business. According to one vendor when this was brought up at a meeting the agency said “Don’t worry we have our own vendors we can bring in.” I don’t want new vendors. Many of us know our vendors by name, they have watched our kids grow up, we trust them and their fresh, often organic produce, and delicious food.
It will be a sad day when I don’t meet my kids and their friends after school,sharing laughter and a fresh strawberry or two under the shade of a beloved oak tree.
Alyssa Unger-Silverman and Family
Hermosa Beach
Market day
Dear ER:
There is a Hermosa Beach City Council meeting on Tuesday , September 23 , 7 p.m. to decide on moving the Hermosa Farmer’s Market to the Pier Plaza and possibly continuing a Friday market. If you support a Friday Market for the community let your voice be known to the City Council via email, letter or in person. I also suggest you encourage the council to allow the Rotary Club to sponsor the Friday Farmer’s Market at it’s current location on Valley Drive and 11th Street. The Rotary Club shares its profits by funding our Hermosa Schools along with scholarships for our Hermosa graduates.
Jackie Tagliaferro
Hermosa Beach
Zero base reasoning
Dear ER:
The simple question I asked myself when looking into the move of the Hermosa Beach Farmers Market is, “If we started the market today, where would we put it?” The answer seems clear. Our beautiful Pier Plaza is the centerpiece of town and the obvious choice. We have fallen behind in the quality and energy of our Farmers Market compared to neighboring cities. A move to Pier Plaza will breathe new life into the market, bring locals to the Plaza during the daytime and be a big positive to for Hermosa Beach.
Andrea Jacobsson
Hermosa 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
Not there yet
Dear ER:
Oil production in Hermosa Beach will help reduce our environmental impact. The key is to focus on the world environment instead of just our environment. Much of California’s oil demands are satisfied by production from very far from here. Fracking sites in America’s midwest, tar sands in Canada, Alaskan production, and loosely regulated overseas sources provide the majority of the oil we consume. Products from these sources not only have to travel great and perilous distances by ship or train, they are also produced in ways that have much worse effect on the world environment than what is proposed here. We are fortunate that extraction from our local oil field is less damaging and energy intensive than fracking or tar sands production. Additionally, the output will never have to be delivered by ship or train. As a native Californian and life-long environmentalist I challenge the Surfrider Foundation, Heal The Bay, and all other concerned citizens to think in terms of the world environment and to follow the primary rule of ecological protection: Think Globally and Act Locally. I’m no fan of fossil fuels. I look forward to the day we can live prosperously without them. Unfortunately we’re not there yet. Support this local production opportunity and devote your time and talents toward making it the safest and least impactful project it can possibly be.
Dan Inskeep
Hermosa Beach
Smooth sledding on Sepulveda, briefly
Dear ER:
For a short time, everything was smooth and not a bump in the road. Until recently. Like many, I have a love/hate relationship with Sepulveda Boulevard. It improved recently when Sepulveda was repaved. Crossing Rosecrans southward it was beautiful. The new paving was a pleasure to be on and made the whole area look new and fresh. But, that new relationship is over.
Now Sepulveda is starting to look and feel like the old Sepulveda. Construction crews are cutting the new paving, digging and leaving incredibly rough patches for all of us to drive on.
It appears that whenever a road in the South Bay is repaved, within weeks, it’s a signal to tear it up again. Who schedules this work? I own a construction related company and have worked in the public right of way, so I have a good understanding of what is involved with roads and pipes. This is a true waste of money.
Maybe, a little coordination and planning could be used so we, the ones who fund these roads, could enjoy that “New Road” feeling months, not weeks!
Doug Clagg
El Segundo
Waterfront bluff
Dear ER:
The AES “Harbor Village” proposal will allow mixed-use and over-development, including 600 residential units in a small area. Those 600 units and commercial development will create thousands more vehicle trips per day in an already congested area. AES has spent millions of dollars planning and fighting for years to rebuild the plant. Why the about face and sudden appearance of this initiative? Because AES knows the odds of this plant ever getting rebuilt are near zero. AES has a losing hand and is bluffing. They say either accept this initiative or get a power plant. This plant will likely not be rebuilt, regardless. AES has applied to rebuild their three area natural gas plants, totaling 3400MW power. The CPUC has authorized contracts for only 1500MW of natural gas generation. With San Onofre shut down, their Huntington Beach and Alamitos plants are nearer to where power is needed. It is likely the CPUC would give contracts for those plants and not Redondo Beach. We can do better, smart development not over-development.
Jim Montgomery
Torrance
Advanced warnings ignored
Dear ER:
The Hermosa Beach City School District does not have enough classroom space again this year due to a lack of urgency and good planning by the district, not because of a lack of options. Since 2009 the district has been well aware of an enrollment bubble and the need for additional classrooms.
When the Facility Planning and Advisory Committee (FPAC) held its first meeting 21 months ago many ideas were put forth that could have immediately alleviated the district’s overcrowding, such as instituting a multi-track classroom schedule in which students attend classes in staggered blocks year round. Another idea was to use the 4.7 acre Pier Avenue School, now the Community Center. Pier Avenue School has 14+ classrooms, a gymnasium an auditorium, a pickup and drop off area, parking, tennis courts and access to the baseball field and basketball courts. The district can lease this property from the city. Yet another option was to house transitional kindergarten and kindergarten at a former district school such as South School or North School. The superintendent’s office could have been in the vacant Time Warner building next to Valley School instead of using valuable classroom space at South School.
Despite district administration claims to the contrary, there is no reason why those options should not have been put into action to provide urgently needed classrooms and relieve overcrowding at Valley and View schools this year.
Miyo Prassas
Hermosa Beach
Guilt by association
Dear ER:
There is an operating oil island roughly the same size as the one proposed for Hermosa directly across the street from the world-famous Cedars Sinai Hospital. So I posed this question to oil opponents: Why would an oil island in Hermosa surrounded on three sides by industrial buildings and a wide greenbelt on the fourth be considered hazardous to a healthy population when one directly across the street from a hospital full of sick people is not?
George Schmeltzer addressed my question by not answering it at all (“Drilling down,” ER Letters September 4, 2014). Instead, he cleverly tries to associate the explosion at the Ross Dress for Less with the oil island even though the oil island had absolutely nothing to do with the explosion.
John Szot
Hermosa Beach
Skate patrol
Dear ER
It has been over a year since Hermosa Beach City Manager Tom Blakeley and the City Council restored the personnel monitor at the city’s skate park. I would like to thank them for restoring order to the park after the three months of chaos that occurred when an attempt at self monitoring was implemented in April of 2013. The skate park has been in existence for 15 years and in all of those years, except for those three months, it has been an asset to the community. With the monitor in place and the implementation of rules that protect the riders as well as the city, a safe skateboarding experience can be had by young beginning riders as well as the the more experienced skaters.
I hear that the City of Manhattan Beach is looking into building a new skate park. I hope they will look at the history of the skate park in Hermosa and realize that it can be a great asset if done in the right way. I have grandchildren ages 5, 8 and 10 and enjoy taking them to the skate park here in Hermosa Beach.
Robert Dobbie
Hermosa Beach
Time to pay up
Dear ER:
I have heard some residents questioning the logic of Hermosa Beach and E&B Natural Resources entering into a 35 year contract, should the oil ban be lifted. The length of a contract between two parties is determined by capital investment on the part of the applicant, in return for certain guarantees by the property owner. With over $200 million in infrastructure, E&B needs the assurance that they can complete the goals of their project. Recovering the expected resources from Hermosa’s uplands and tidelands. Hermosa Beach needs the assurance that they will, in turn, receive substantial income streams and benefits over this duration.
Agreements, by definition, involve the needs of both parties. I want to make sure the needs of my city, Hermosa Beach, are in a tough, enforceable contract for as long as possible.
Martha Logan
Hermosa 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
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.
