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OCTOBER 29-30, 2011
Volume 10 Issue 299
Santa Monica Daily Press
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THE CONGRATULATIONS SCHWENKER ISSUE
Community cries foul over large developments sans plans BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD Daily Press Staff Writer
CITYWIDE City staff are reviewing regulations that govern development within city limits, but community groups argue that large projects already in the works are doing an end-run around the planning effort before it’s completed. The review of the city’s zoning ordinance,
a tool to guide future development and design, is the first comprehensive revise in 25 years. It codifies the specifics on how to put the broad goals embodied in the city’s new Land Use and Circulation Element (LUCE) into practice, including design standards, regulations for buildings, the use of development agreements and currently undefined terms like “community benefits.”
At the same time city staff are pursuing the overhaul, several other large planning initiatives are taking place that impact both the effort and a number of major projects already in the planning pipeline. That’s a problem for community groups, who feel that staff are putting the cart before the horse by allowing major development in areas before the do’s and don’ts are defined. A prime example put forth by the group
Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City (SMCLC) is the Bergamot Area, which is both the center of a federally-funded planning effort and 1.4 million square feet of proposed development between the Village Trailer Park, Colorado Creative Studios, Roberts Center and Bergamot Transit Village projects. SEE PLAN PAGE 11
D.A. forced to seek governor’s warrant in beating case BY KEVIN HERRERA Editor in Chief
PUBLIC SAFETY FACILITY Two Arizona
scene straight out of Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller “The Birds,” featuring a life-like dummy being picked apart by crows. “It’s definitely PG-13, maybe even a little above,” she said Thursday with a smile,
men facing attempted murder charges in connection with the brutal beating of a Santa Monica resident last month are formally fighting extradition, forcing Los Angeles County prosecutors to seek a governor’s warrant, authorities told the Daily Press. Brian Scott Hale, 24, of Tempe, Ariz., and Brett Davis, 25, of Fountain Hills, Ariz., appeared before a Maricopa County judge Oct. 26 and chose to block attempts to transfer them from the Fourth Avenue Jail to Los Angeles County to face trial, said Santa Monica Police Sgt. Richard Lewis. The men are being held on a bond of more than $1 million. The two were arrested Oct. 14 by Maricopa County Sheriff ’s deputies using information provided by the Santa Monica Police Department, authorities said. Police believe the two men were drinking at a bar in the early morning hours of Sept. 22 when they randomly attacked a 45-yearold movie producer who was exercising with weights on the 3100 block of Santa Monica Boulevard. Police said Hale and Davis attacked the man from behind and used the weights to brutally beat him. The victim suffered a collapsed skull, several brain bleeds, a broken jaw and neck and back fractures. Police said Hale and Davis were in the Los Angeles area working for a moving compa-
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Brandon Wise brandonw@smdp.com
BOO! Tesh Rosenblath-Talaro and her friends Dodie Murphy and Paul 'Spooker' Gerthoffer stand amongst an elaborate Halloween display at an apartment building on California Avenue.
Courtyard becomes a graveyard Local woman crafts elaborate Halloween display for friends, neighbors BY KEVIN HERRERA Editor in Chief
WILMONT When it comes to Halloween decorations, Tesh Rosenblath-Talaro doesn’t settle. She goes all out. With the help of her husband, a pair of
childhood friends and a few enthusiastic neighbors, Rosenblath-Talaro has for the last 15 years transformed the courtyard of her California Avenue apartment building into a homage to horror with tombstones, demented clowns, skeletons, bloodied babies, a handmade guillotine and even a
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