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JANUARY 3-4, 2015
Volume 14 Issue 46
Santa Monica Daily Press
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR SEE PAGE 4
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THE FIRST WEEKEND OF THE YEAR ISSUE
City looking for Homeless Count volunteers BY DAVID MARK SIMPSON Daily Press Staff Writer
ST. MONICA What are your plans for Jan. 28? How about walking around Santa Monica until 2:30 a.m. counting homeless people? City Hall is looking for volunteers for its
2015 Homeless Count, an initiative that’s entering its sixth year. Volunteers will gather at 10:30 p.m. on Jan. 28 at St. Monica Catholic Church’s Grand Pavilion. The count kicked off in January of 2009. About 260 volunteers canvassed the city try-
ing to figure out how many people in Santa Monica are without homes. The count helps provide scope to the homeless problem and arms City Hall with numbers that can be used to receive funding from the federal government for social services. Last year, more than 250 community vol-
ARB comments on 4th/5th/Arizona project
unteers covered every street in the city, more than 226 linear miles. Volunteers are outfitted with whistles, lights, maps, and clipboards but they’re not allowed to approach the homeless people. SEE HOMELESS PAGE 7
Quirky add-ons a common feature of celebrity homes SOLVEJ SCHOU Associated Press
design “stunning” but said she’s nervous about the building’s height, which is proposed to be 148 feet, and the impacts it could have on traffic Downtown. Boardmember Kevin Daly said he had reservation about the project’s proposed programming and said that the 1,100 parking spaces “sounds like a catastrophe” for
LOS ANGELES Actor Mark Wahlberg’s Los Angeles mansion has a putting green. Tech billionaire Bill Gates’ Medina, Washington, abode includes rooms where guests can customize the music, lighting and climate. Actress Shirley MacLaine’s on-the-market New Mexico ranch includes a stone labyrinth. Celebrity homes are a bright slice of the high-end real-estate market well beyond Hollywood. And for stars with money and imagination to spare, unique or quirky addons are routine. Neverland Ranch, the late Michael Jackson’s former Southern California ode to childhood — amusement park, bumper cars and all — is not alone as an example of personalized architectural opulence. Many celebrities “are recession-proof ” when it comes to conceptualizing and paying for a niftily outfitted dream home, says Santa Monica, California-based architectural designer Kevin J. Cozen, who has designed for high-profile clients for more than three decades. For 89-year-old Hugh O’Brian, star of the 1950s and early ‘60s Western TV series “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp,” Cozen reduced the scale of the actor’s house in the hilly Los Angeles neighborhood of Benedict Canyon to resemble a low-slung Prairie home, with lots of wood and glass to showcase nature-filled views. “He wanted a Western influence, so it looked like you could tie your horse out-
SEE ARB PAGE 7
SEE HOMES PAGE 8
Courtesy image
PROPOSAL: The Architectural Review Board had mixed reactions to the proposal for the land on Arizona Ave. between Fourth and Fifth streets.
BY DAVID MARK SIMPSON Daily Press Staff Writer
DOWNTOWN Members of The Architectural Review Board (ARB), City Hall’s first line of development scrutinizers, lauded some improvements but questioned aspects of a large Downtown development recently. The ARB got an update on the plans for a development on publicly-owned land at
Arizona Avenue between Fourth and Fifth streets. Developers explained some of the basic improvements they’ve made, taking into account previous suggestions from the board. Many board members said they appreciated the changes but expressed concern about the broader impacts of the project. Boardmember Amy Rothman called the
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