Brentwood News 7.31.2020

July 31 – August 28, 2020

Brentwood to Have More LA Marathon Action in New Course Event finish line moved to Century City

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By Sam Catanzaro A new Los Angeles Marathon course will include double the amount of distance through Brentwood.

On Friday, the McCourt Foundation– owners of the LA Marathon–revealed plans for the 2021 course that begins at Dodger Stadium and finishes at Avenue of the Stars in Century City. Since 2010 the race has finished in Santa Monica. The course will follow its traditional route until Brentwood, where runners will double back on San Vicente, Sepulveda and Santa Monica boulevards before finishing at Avenue of the Stars.

“This exciting change allows for a more vibrant and interactive finish experience than previously possible. It will provide the opportunity for much greater spectator participation for family and friends with enhanced post-race activities including the Finish Festival with concerts and sponsor activations and puts runners close to hotels, transportation, and nightlife in West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and the best of LA,” reads a statement from the McCourt Foundation.

“We had a footprint challenge in Santa Monica, just from a space perspective,” added Murphy Reinschreiber, the chief operating officer of the Foundation. “We realized that there’s so much more we could do if we just had a bigger footprint at the finish line.”

“We had a footprint challenge in Santa Monica, just from a space perspective,” added Murphy Reinschreiber, the chief operating officer of the Foundation. “We realized that

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Photos: LA Marathon (Facebook)

LA Marathon participants make their way through Brentwood.

there’s so much more we could do if we just had a bigger footprint at the finish line.”

The race–which has finished at the intersection of Ocean Avenue and California

Avenue since 2010–has long been an economic booster for the City with 2,000 guests booking hotel rooms each year by some estimates and thousands visiting local

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restaurants and businesses. It has, however, presented residents and officials with hurdles including traffic, stretched security and neighborhood disruptions.

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Iconic ‘Golden Girls’ House up for Grabs in Brentwood

Photos: Brandon Valente, Brandon V Photography / Courtesy of Rachelle Rosten, Douglas Elliman

2,901 square-foot, four-bedroom home hits market

By Toi Creel

Whether you were a faithful Golden Girls fan and never missed an episode, or

you simply caught occasional reruns, one thing that can’t be denied is the elegance of the appearance of beloved character Blanch Deveraux’s mid-century home.

Though fictionally located in Miami Florida, the 2,901 square-foot, fourbedroom home is actually located at 245 N Saltair Ave in Los Angeles, California.

The manor is listed for a mere $2,999,000 through Douglas Elliman real estate.

This is the first time the home has been placed on the market and is exciting for many people.

Though technically the inside rooms were never viewed on Golden girls episodes, it is a part of television history.

The home does have a 50s exterior with an array of palm plants, but the interior features several modern upgrades with Japanaese and Hawaiian influences. In fact though made to look like a Miami luxury home, the property was actually constructed in 1955 and custom built by a Hawaiian architect as a tribute to relatives.

Westwood Property Included in $100M Federal Embezzlement Lawsuit “The Mountain” property, Westwood apartment among assets sought by Justice Department

By Staff Writer

Two Westside properties are included in a federal lawsuit against former high-level officials in Kuwait’s Ministry of Defense.

The Justice Department has filed seven lawsuits seeking the forfeiture of real estate, a private jet, a yacht and additional assets purchased with public funds allegedly embezzled by former high-level officials in Kuwait’s Ministry of Defense (MOD), part of which were transferred to California bank accounts operated by the son of a convicted felon.

According to complaints filed Thursday in United States District Court in Los Angeles, between 2009 and 2016, individuals who were high-level MOD officials at the time and their associates used the MOD’s London attaché office to open at least

six unauthorized bank accounts and then transferred more than $100 million of Kuwaiti public funds from the National Bank of Kuwait into the unauthorized London accounts.

In order to disguise the nature of these transfers, some of them were falsely described as being intended for military purposes. According to the complaints, these funds were actually transferred to several California entities that had no business or contractual relationship with the MOD. With the complaints, the United States seeks to recover at least $104,380,000 laundered into and through U.S. financial institutions. The California entities that received the illicit funds are allegedly connected to a Los Angeles man – Victorino Noval, 58, formerly known as Victor Jesus Noval – who was convicted in 2003 of mail fraud and tax evasion in connection with a multimillion-dollar loan fraud committed against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Noval was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison and was ordered to pay more than $25 million in restitution.

According to the complaints, once in the

Photos: Getty Images

California bank accounts, the pilfered funds were used to purchase or contribute to the improvement of a parcel of land in Beverly Hills known as “The Mountain,” three homes in Beverly Hills, a penthouse and an apartment in Westwood, a private jet, a yacht, a Lamborghini sports car and approximately $40,000 worth of memorabilia of boxer

Manny Pacquiao. Each of these assets is subject to the forfeiture complaints.

“The Mountain”, a 157-acre undeveloped

property in Beverly Hills that was at one

point on the market for $1 billion–was once owned by the Shah of Iran’s family, then founder of Herbalife Mark Hughes.

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High School Sports Delayed

Photos: Morgan Genser

Brentwood’s Cole Louard (center) shoots a goal versus Viewpoint in 2019.

All California high school sports will not begin until mid-December

By Sam Catanzaro High school sports in Los Angeles and statewide will not begin until December due to the rise in the coronavirus cases.

On Monday, the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) and CIF Southern City Section (which includes Brentwood School and The Archer School for Girls) announced the delay of the 2020 Fall sports season until December. Rather than sports being divided up into three seasons that run from August to June, there will be two seasons (Fall and Spring) that run from December to June.

“Over the last several months, and

through the ever-changing situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been working on various scenarios to deliver Fall, Winter and Spring sports during the 2020-2021 school year,” said CIF Southern Section Commissioner, Rob Wigod. “From start to finish, the focus has been on how we can serve the young men and young women we are so fortunate to serve in the best way we possibly can, and I commend everyone involved for never wavering in their support of that philosophy.”

According to Wigod, regular seasons, some of which were 83 days (Soccer), 81 days (Basketball), 64 days (Football) and 57 days (Girls Volleyball) already had quite a range, in terms of the length of their seasons in previous years, but this year all sports will be around 72 games or less.

“We believe that to help with the overlap of seasons, affecting student-athletes, coaches and facilities, we would standardize the

length of the regular seasons to approximately 72 days, for those who previously had more days than that, while leaving the others with less than 72 days alone,” Winograd said.

“The total number of days in some sports will be reduced, approximately 5%-12%, but schools can still play the same number of maximum allowable contests, if they choose, in that smaller window.”

In addition to this newly developed sports calendar, CIF announced that studentathletes will be given the opportunity to participate with outside organizations during their season of sport, something not normally allowed.

The 2020-2021 sports calendars will be placed on the agenda as an Emergency Action Item at the next scheduled meeting of the CIF Southern Section Executive Committee on Thursday, August 13, 2020.

Cameron Jakob Woods of Brentwood flying high in 2019

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LAUSD Announces Remote Start to School Year

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School year to begin August 18

By Sam Catanzaro Four months after Los Angeles schools closed classrooms due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic the Los Angeles Unified School District has announced that the upcoming academic year will begin remotely.

“Four months ago today, we made the difficult decision to close our schools to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Much has changed since that time: New research is available, additional information on school safety experiences from around the world, and updated health guidelines from state and county leaders,” reads a joint statement from LAUSD and San Diego Unified School District released jointly “One fact is clear: those countries that have managed to safely reopen schools have done so with declining infection rates and on-demand testing available. California has neither. The skyrocketing infection rates of the past few

Photo: Sam Catanzaro

weeks make it clear the pandemic is not under control. Therefore, we are announcing that the new school year will start online only.”

According to LAUSD, the school year will resume on schedule on August 18.

Teachers will receive expanded training in online education to better meet the needs of students, the District says, and students will receive additional training at the start of the year to become better online learners.

In addition, online supports for parents will be increased to make it easier for them to participate in the education of their students, according to LAUSD. Free meals will continue to be provided at the current distribution stations, LAUSD noted as well.

“The federal government must provide schools with the resources we need to reopen in a responsible manner,” LAUSD said. “The coronavirus has not taken a summer vacation, as many had hoped. Indeed, the virus has accelerated its attacks on our community.”

LAUSD said it will provide more detailed information about both online and at-school programs in the coming weeks, with final plans by the first week in August.

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Local Schools: Consider a Hybrid Solution for Now

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Founding Publisher What if coronavirus drags on for a year or two – or even longer?

Just about every prediction made so far has turned out to be wrong, and we seem to be operating on the hope that, within a few months, everything will be OK. But what if that prediction is wrong, too?

Seems to me we should hope for the best but plan for the worst. By planning for the worst, I mean we should start from the premise we’ll be in this situation for possibly years. If we get lucky, terrific; if we don’t get lucky, at least we can get on with things.

I’m thinking about schools in particular, at least to start, since fall is almost upon us.

Students could go on a rotating schedule.

One week, half the student body would go to school M-W-F; the next week, they would go to T-Th. On their off days, the students would

tune in via Zoom or whatever.

So half the kids will be on campus at any one time. Then everyone can spread out and use bigger classrooms, if needed. Of course, everyone would wear masks.

Maybe some will sit in a classroom that’s not where the teacher is and watch via TV monitor from another room down the hall.

If a student is parked in a TV room one day, next time he or she will get to sit in the “real” classroom.

Parents with big rooms in their houses could volunteer to set up “pods” there. Teachers and kids could gather in these locations daily.

If parents simply can’t keep a child at home, because of work needs and daycare limitations, they could use the school’s gymnasiums to park their kids on the student’s non-classroom days.

Students at home or in pods will be connected at all times to their schools via a two-way video monitor.

This hybrid system will keep students in school all the time, and on-campus half the time, spreading things out – but keeping

students accountable to teachers.

This isn’t an ideal solution, but it’s something – and better than waiting for the “all clear” signal (which might not come for a long time). If we do this, we won’t have lost much; if we just keep kids at home, we might lose a lot.

Managing and monitoring a rotating schedule with lots of moving pieces will be hard. But what’s the alternative, really?

Teachers should get a little added “combat pay,” that makes sense. ALL essential workers should.

Stores, banks, post offices and other enterprises have already taken the leap. Half the customers can enter at any one time.

Everyone keeps his or her distance. Everyone wears a mask. It’s not perfect, but it works.

Students need to socialize. So do adults. It’s time for the Brentwood Community Council to relax its long-held concerns about sidewalk dining. Our restaurants are getting killed in some cases.

Why not let them set up more tables outside?

Maybe a few parking lots could be used for

outdoor dining. How about an outdoor beer garden?

When it gets cold, restaurants with outdoor seating could set up big tents, with space heaters inside. Everyone would just have to spread out.

Servers would of course wear masks (and, like their teacher friends, receive “combat pay”).

Many of us have learned that working from home isn’t so bad – at least those of us who can do it. With more people working at home, that’s fewer people on the roads. Less traffic benefits all.

If we don’t need as much office space in the future, because people are working at home, maybe those office spaces could be put to good use solving the housing and homeless crises.

I don’t think we can shut down and just wait for the storm to pass. It might not pass – for years. So we should continue to proactively adapt.

We might never go back to business as usual. We might as well make the best of it.

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July 31 – August 28, 2020 |7

Brentwood Resident Josh Stephens Pens “The Urban Mystique”

By Jeff Hall Brentwood resident Josh Stephens has an unusual ability to take the mind-numbing topic of urban planning and make it interesting – exciting, even.

In his new book, “The Urban Mystique, Notes on California, Los Angeles, and Beyond”, Stephens pulls together, all in one place, a compendium of short essays he wrote over a several-year period for California Planning & Development Report and other publications related to urban planning and design.

In his new book, Stephens covers everything from public transportation to zoning laws to the importance of local watering holes.

NIMBYism is contrasted with YIMBYism (“YES, in my back yard”) in the book.

Racism, local politics and homelessness are also addressed. So, too, the minutiae of setbacks (how close a building can be to the street, the sidewalk, and other buildings).

Here are the names of a few sample essays to give you a feel for The Urban Mystique: • Where Nobody Knows Your Name • Housing Crisis, Meet Transportation Crisis • Dumb Objections to Smart Growth

• Los Angeles’s Moral Failing • Searching for Los Angeles in Blade Runner 2049 Stephens, who grew up on LA’s Westside, was an English major at Princeton. He later went on to get a masters degree in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, with a focus on urban policy.

Stephens decided early on he didn’t want to actually be an urban planner. The minutia gets to him, even. But he never felt like the wheeler-dealer types who are typically drawn to real estate.

By writing about urban planning, Stephens gets to put his English degree to work on a topic he obviously loves.

He’s an optimist, really: He thinks LA has made huge strides in recent decades when it comes to public transportation and he sees the promise of smart growth and sustainability.

Stephens said he thinks it’s inevitable Brentwood (and most of Los Angeles) will see continued up-zoning in coming years; the demand for housing is just too acute.

“What people don’t always realize,” said Stephens, “is that denser housing closer to jobs can actually reduce traffic in the area.”

Brentwood Resident, see page 9

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Brentwood resident Josh Stephens, author of “The Urban Mystique”.

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Exclusive Palisades Country Club Receives Multimillion-Dollar PPP Loan While Collecting Full Dues

Photo: Palisades News Archives

The entrance to Riviera Country Club.

$2.5 to $5 million Paycheck Protection Program loan goes to Riviera Country Club

By Sam Catanzaro

An exclusive Pacific Palisades country club–who counts among its celebrity members the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury–received a multimillion-dollar small business loan from

the federal government while allegedly laying off employees and still collecting full dues from its members despite being closed due to COVID-19.

On Monday, July, 6 the Trump Administration released data showing all recipients of loans through the $669-billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Riviera Country Club, located at 250 Capri Drive in Pacific Palisades, is the only country club in the City of Los Angeles to receive a PPP loan. According to records, Riviera’s loan was between $2.5 to $5 million. In addition, records show Bel-Air Bay Club, also in Pacific Palisades but considered a beach club, received a loan of the same range while collecting dues, according to a source.

Multiple sources have confirmed that U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin is among Riviera Country Club’s current members along with Larry David–who raised over $150,000 for caddies–Jack Nicholson, Adam Sandler and Luke Wilson. Former members include Walt Disney, Dean Martin and Howard Hughes Despite applying for and accepting the loan, during its closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Riviera Country Club collected full dues from its members as confirmed by three members of the club who wish to remain anonymous fearing retaliation from the club.

According to one of these members, these dues range from $400 to $1,100 a month. In addition, a member says that after the club

was shut down every member was charged an activity fee.

“It is shocking to get your members to pay full dues and you still need to apply for a loan and you know you are charging this bogus activity fee that was just another line item for them to receive,” a member said. “The second they told us ‘we are looking at protecting our employees and not laying them off so therefore we [members] have to pay full dues’. I knew that was just an excuse. I knew that the second we came back we are going to see employees gone. The fact that they accessed this PPP loan is of no surprise to me. The fact that they were

Riviera Country, see page 9

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Riviera Country, see page 8 able to get it is a bigger surprise to me.”

According to a member, most Riviera Country Club members were under the impression that the club would not be applying for a PPP loan, saying multiple employees verbally stated that the club would not be getting a loan. In addition, a member told the Santa Monica Mirror that at the beginning of April some members received an email saying that they were paying full dues in order to keep employees on the payroll. A member, however, says that this does not seem to be the case.

“It’s the principle that is the problem,” the member said. “I care about the fact that they are charging us full dues and this activity fee and they are promising they are not going to lay off our employees and we get back and half the employees I don’t see anymore. So where are those guys?”

When asked what they hope the club’s response should be, members say that the club should prove that they actually needed it for the reasons the PPP was created, which was primarily for employees so they don’t lose their jobs and for businesses to be able to continue once they reopen.

“I am not sitting here being the judge or jury here, they just need to follow whatever the requirements of the PPP loan are. If they qualify for it, then they qualify for it, but they need to prove financials. The problem with a private club is they get to do everything in a black box. Nobody knows what they are doing,” a member said.

The Santa Monica Mirror has reached

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out to Riviera Country Club multiple times with questions and for comment but has not received a response at the time of publishing.

Bel-Air Bay Club has also not responded to a request for comment.

Members acknowledged that while closed the club had to maintain the grass on the golf course, Riviera likely had little overhead from the tennis side.

“The tennis courts have literally no maintenance. Every few years they have to resurface them. So when they closed for the pandemic, they literally removed the water fountains off the courts so they didn’t I think have electricity running,” a member said.

“So from the tennis side, even though their revenue may have gone down and they are paying employees’ salaries, they did not have additional overhead to cover either.”

While Riviera was the only country club in Los Angeles to receive a loan, several other golf and tennis clubs outside the city in Southern California were approved for PPP loans. With the exception of La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club, Toscana Country Club and Claremont Tennis Club, none of the other clubs received loans more than $1,000,000.

Other loan recipients, as detailed in the chart below, include Palm Springs Tennis Club, Glendale’s Chevy Chase Country Club and San Diego Tennis and Racquet Club.

Riviera Country Club and Mnuchin have both made local headlines in recent months.

In May, Riviera was shut down by the Los Angeles City Attorney for opening in violation of stay at home orders. Also in May Mnuchin made headlines when Brentwood School–where Mnuchin’s children allegedly attend–received and then returned a PPP loan.

Brentwood Resident, from page 7 He explained: If people can live close to where they work – and the Westside is a jobs magnet – then there needn’t be so many car trips in and out of the Westside coming from the south, east and the San Fernando Valley to the north.

Despite opposition, Stephens said he thinks the housing development at the Martin Cadillac site (Olympic and Bundy, close to the new Metro stop), could turn out just fine.

Here in Brentwood – which Stephens said is a “great place” -- Stephens said he thinks a “silent majority” of Brentwood residents would have preferred to have seen the Green Hollow Square project get built, but “the loudest voices in room” were able to successfully block the project.

Green Hollow Square was a proposed retail center with shopping, a bookstore and a few restaurants. It was to go where the Barry Building is now. The Barry Building is the site of the former Duttons Bookstore. The developer was Charlie Munger, a billionaire.

Stephens refers to Munger and the Barry Building controversy in his essay, “It’s Time to Stop Demonization of Developers.”

Once blocked, the property was boarded up and has remained so for years, with no obvious path forward at this time.

Stephens said he wishes NIMBYs could better define what they are for – and not just what they are against. “If not Green Hollow Square, then what?”

“Los Angeles is a complex place,” noted

July 31 – August 28, 2020 | 9

Stephens. Its urban development, culture and politics are complex as well, he added.

As LA moves forward from here, he said he hopes to see a real “sense of welcome” take hold – especially when it comes to members of ethnic minorities and those with lower incomes – people currently underrepresented on the Westside.

The Urban Mystique is available at Solimar Books: http://www.solimarbooks.com/ theurbanmystique.html

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OPINION

Nine-Bill Housing Package Derails Local Choices TOM ELIAS Brentwood News Columnist

The silver lining provided by some past pandemics has been that they opened minds, awakening entire nations and continents to what was wrong with the way things previously were.

So it was, for example, with the bubonic plague of the 1300s, also known as the “black death,” which produced labor shortages that started the demise of the feudal system, turning serfs into free people if they could reach the walled cities of the time.

But there is little evidence that California’s leading lawmakers have seen the many changes the coronavirus pandemic has wrought in California. No, even though COVID-19 has killed well over 8,400 Californians, current legislative leaders still pursue their old, pre-pandemic goals as if nothing were different.

That’s especially true in housing, where seismic change is about to occur as businesses increasingly abandon office towers, creating vast new vacant spaces that will inevitably become housing units. This will create the dense housing sought for years by the likes of Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener and fellow Democratic Sen. Toni Atkins of San Diego, the state Senate’s powerful president pro tem.

New and current reality, which sees office leasing around California at its lowest levels since the Great Recession, with more and more companies telling workers to operate from home, has not dented these folks’ thinking. They persist in fighting the last war, always a losing proposition for military leaders and often equally disastrous for politicians.

The best example of their thinking is a nine-bill package mostly sponsored by Wiener and Atkins, joined by other knee-jerk liberals like Berkeley’s Sen. Nancy Skinner and Assembly members Buffy Wicks of Oakland, Richard Bloom of Santa Monica, Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego and David Chiu of San Francisco.

As the Legislature sort-of returns from its second virus-induced recess of the year – a period when lawmakers ceded virtually all state authority to Gov. Gavin Newsom – the nine-bill housing package will start moving quickly through committees. It has backing from developers and labor unions, both major financial backers of many Democratic lawmakers.

Among other things, this package would effectively end single-family zoning in

Photos: Getty Images

“This package would effectively end single-family zoning in California,” writes Tom Elias in his latest column. “It does this by allowing four market-priced homes on all lots that now have just one, with neither affordable units nor new parking spaces required.

This alone could lead to wide disruption of residential neighborhoods.”

California, a longtime Wiener goal. It does this by allowing four market-priced homes on all lots that now have just one, with neither affordable units nor new parking spaces required. This alone could lead to wide disruption of residential neighborhoods if many homeowners take the wads of cash developers would soon proffer.

Another bill allows city councils to overturn laws passed by local voters which protect open-space on shorelines or other green areas. The package also allows cities to rezone any parcel they like to allow 10unit apartment buildings, in spite of any prior restrictions. It decreases the amount of affordable housing developers must include in a project to get it expanded beyond current local limits, giving developers a 50 percent “density bonus” if they build more affordable units than now required.

And it allows tall apartment and condominium buildings wherever neighborhood businesses now exist. So much for city- or county-imposed height limits.

This package aims to encourage more and more Californians to move into highrise buildings and abandon their cars for public transit. It comes just when, rather than flocking to mass transit and ride-sharing services, most urban Californians are opting to drive private cars. Fears of contagion on public transit of all kinds stoke this trend, which sees ridership on trains and buses greatly reduced from last year.

None of this is needed. As more and more office space becomes vacant, there’s ever less call for new construction. What’s more, when conversion of office towers to residential use heats up, there will be more new housing than required to fill the state’s needs, estimated at

about 3 million new units by 2025.

That timetable, of course, can be met easily by conversions, but not by new construction, which will inevitably be held up by lawsuits and environmental issues.

It adds up to a picture of blinkered, singleminded legislators pursuing old goals with little relevance in the post-pandemic world to come. That’s why the current housing package deserves to disappear, just like Wiener’s past failed efforts to rid California of single-family homes.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com.

His book, “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,” is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www. californiafocus.net

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Let’s start this fall together!

Earn a Degree or Certificate Online Classes start August 31 smc.edu/fall

SANTA MONICA COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT BOARD OF TRUSTEES Dr. Nancy Greenstein, Chair; Dr. Susan Aminoff, Vice Chair; Dr. Louise Jaffe; Dr. Margaret Quiñones-Perez; Rob Rader; Dr. Sion Roy; Barry A. Snell; Joshua Elizondo, Student Trustee; Kathryn E. Jeffery, Ph.D., Superintendent/President Santa Monica College | 1900 Pico Blvd. Santa Monica, CA 90405 | smc.edu