The year just ending saw a civic makeover of sorts in Hermosa Beach. The iconic main drag underwent a complete and sometimes agonizing overhaul, private businesspeople stepped in to run and expand popular community events that City Hall would no longer fund, and a punk fashion landmark closed its doors amid tearful farewells.
The shadow of a bad economy continued to hang over all, making itself known in early retirement deals that saw the end of 11 city employees and left 15 percent of City Hall’s positions unfilled. Even the Police Department, described by council members as a top priority, remained five positions down.
Despite continuing cutbacks, the Police Department earned an elite accreditation for meeting high standards in all its functions, from policies and procedures to management, operations and support, highlighting changes that have occurred under Chief Greg Savelli.
Along the way, the town shuddered at the soft-soil burial of a worker on a construction site, and thrilled to the exploits of an ultra-endurance athlete who broke a world record with a mind-bending 24-hour run on the beach.
Main makeover
Hermosa’s main drag was the center of attention through much of 2010 as City Hall performed a $4.3 million makeover of upper Pier Avenue.
Motorists groused and many shopkeepers reported losses as the eight-month project closed sections of the avenue and filled the air with dust and the sounds of back-up bells from heavy machinery.
In October, city officials unveiled the result, with wider sidewalks, a palm-lined center median, succulent flora in expanded planters, and a cutting-edge system to keep dirty storm water out of the Pacific Ocean.
“This is a great day for Hermosa,” Mayor Pete Tucker said to more than 100 people – including numerous city officials and businesspeople – who gathered for a sun-splashed ribbon cutting.
Private sector saviors
In June the economy prompted the City Council to discontinue three popular community events, the yearly St. Patrick’s Day Parade, the summer concert series at the pier, and a Christmas tree lighting ceremony on the Pier Plaza attended every year by Santa himself.
The business sector stepped into the breach, with the Chamber of Commerce agreeing to produce St. Paddy’s parade, Allen Sanford of St. Rocke producing the summer concerts, and Spyder Surfboards producing the tree-lighting event, and expanding it with 50 tons of machine-made snow that turned the westernmost slope of upper Pier Avenue into a run for snowboard demonstrations and community sledding.
The greening
The city approved a water conservation ordinance, and won environmental kudos for the water-saving and pollution-fighting aspects of the Pier Avenue makeover, and for a cutting edge storm-water filtration trench that workers placed under the beach sand.
In October officials from City Hall, federal and state offices, energy utilities and environmental groups gathered to break ground for a Hermosa family’s innovative “Green Idea House,” which is being rebuilt and redesigned to produce more energy than it uses.
Councilman Michael DiVirgilio, a strong proponent of green causes, called the house project “the tip of the spear” in a push to make Hermosa a “carbon-neutral city.”
Disaster strikes
In March a worker fell into a trench, was buried in loose dirt and killed at a large building under construction at Cypress Avenue and Sixth Street, in a mixed commercial-industrial area near South Park.
The death of 29-year-old Alejandro Valladares of Hawthorne devastated Dave Shaw Concrete & Block Company, which was fined nearly $129,000 for alleged safety violations. The owner, a longtime area businessman, said the allegations were inaccurate in some areas, and painted a misleading picture in others. A number of area contractors leapt to his defense as well, describing him as “one of the good guys” who did not cut corners to get jobs done.
Prior to Valladares’ death, the last construction fatality in Hermosa occurred about six years before, when a worker fell from scaffolding at a partially-built home on the walk street portion of Eighth Street near The Strand.
Shrines shine
In April a sun-splashed crowd was treated to tales of epic waves as James “Tiger” Makin was inducted into the Hermosa Beach Surfers Walk of Fame in a sun-splashed ceremony at the city pier.
The soft-spoken Makin, 58, was honored with a bronze plaque on the pier for an aggressive style and daring approach that drew widespread attention to his big-wave prowess, and brought him to competitive heights including a fifth-place finish in the U.S. Surfing Championships.
In August another Hermosa sports institution was promised its day in the sun, as the California Beach Volleyball Association Hall of Fame declared it would reside inside the Hermosa Beach Historical Society Museum.
Since 1992 the association has been inducting beach volleyball greats into a Hall that has existed only online. Some beach volleyball artifacts already have been collected for the Hermosa digs, and organizers foresee museum features such as touch-screen monitors showing contest footage and interviews of players.
World’s best
In September Hermosa ultra-endurance athlete Christian Burke, 44, broke a Guinness Book world record and raised more than $9,000 for the schools with a 83.04-mile run in soft sand. With friends and supporters alternating to run alongside, Burke began his 24-hour fundraising run at noon on a Sunday, making the 3.4-mile round trip between the Hermosa and Manhattan Beach piers over and over again.
In Memorium
The victims of a terror attack nine years ago and 2,800 miles away were recalled on Sept. 11, 2010 with the unveiling of a memorial bench on the greenbelt parkway near City Hall.
A gathering of more than 200 people, including U.S. Air Force personnel, airline pilots and flight attendants, Hermosa police and firefighters, and city officials were on hand for the first sight of the bench, which is festooned with 2,998 buttons representing each victim of the 9-11 terror attacks, along with flight attendant wings from American and United airlines, and badge pins from the New York police and fire departments.
Police honors
In November, following a lengthy review process, the Hermosa Beach Police Department received an elite accreditation for meeting high standards in all its functions, from policies and procedures to management, operations and support.
The Hermosa department joined only 15 other law enforcement agencies in California to hold the honor from the nationally recognized Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement, Inc. The three-year accreditation is the result of an extensive audit of conduct and standards by outside experts, an in-depth agency-wide self-evaluation, and the adoption of new directives and standards by the department.
Judgment deferred
As it has for more than a decade, the specter of city bankruptcy continued to hang over the city in the form of a judgment – one day – in a $500 million breach-of-contract lawsuit by Macpherson Oil Company, which once held a contract to slant-drill under the ocean from Hermosa land.
Early in 2010 an appeals court sent the oil company’s lawsuit back to square one, allowing the city’s lawyers to argue once again that it did not illegally breach the lawsuit in the first place, and the whole matter should be dismissed.
The next courtroom action would have to wait until 2011.
Into the sunset
In May, Linda King, a fine craftswoman and a helpful friend to artists, perished in a fire at her framing store and gallery on Aviation Boulevard. She was 68.
The fire sent flames and smoke out of the windows of King’s Gallery. Firefighters knocked down the blaze and rescued King, who lived in a small apartment within the building. She was found unconscious and in full cardiac arrest not far from the locked front door. She died the next day at the Southern California Regional Burn Center at the USC Medical Center.
In July Paul Hawkins, a decorated city firefighter who won the admiration of his peers, the thanks of countless victims of fires and other emergencies, and the gratitude of a Mexican sister city whose emergency services he helped to revamp, quietly worked his last shift and slipped away into retirement.
The Halloween season saw the end of the Re:style punk and vintage clothing shop, a Hermosa icon for three decades and another fading remnant of the funky, scruffy vibe of the town’s yesteryear.
“Rodge” and Danielle Rodgers vacated the business on upper Pier Avenue to travel back home more often to, respectively, South Wales and Nice, France.
“It’s going to be a bit weird man, a bit weird,” Rodge said. ER
