1983 (1982) (1984) (1970-1980) (1980-1990) Table of Contents
John Cage and Lois Long Mud Book, Abrams: NY, 1983 with an afterword by John Russell. See Text
Allen David Heskin* After the Battle is
Won, Political Contradictions in Santa Monica, UCLA Lecture and
unpublished ms. Fall, 1983. 1983, 1982,
1981,
1980,
1979,
1977, 1970s
See
Text
Frank Gruber* When More was Okay The LookOut, 10 October 2005, 2005b, 1983 See Images : The Baron's Castle, Phillips Chapel
Excerpted Los Angeles Herald Examiner 1983 editorial : Victory Defeat: Santa Monica gives L.A. a lesson in lively politics: See Text
James W. Lunsford The Ocean and the Sunset, The Hills and the Clouds: Looking at Santa Monica, illustrated by Alice N. Lunsford, 1983, 1982, 1981, 1979, 1978, 1977, 1976, 1975, 1973, 1971, 1970, 1970s, 1966, 1964, 1962, 1961, 1960s, 1958, 1956, 1952, 1951, 1949, 1948, 1947, 1943, 1942, 1941, 1940, 1940s, 1939, 1938, 1936, 1935, 1934, 1933, 1930s, 1928, 1927, 1926, 1924, 1923, 1922, 1921, 1920, 1920s, 1919, 1917, 1916, 1914, 1913, 1912, 1911, 1910, 1908, 1907, 1906, 1905, 1904, 1903, 1900, 1894, 1893, 1890s, 1890, 1885, 1884, 1882, 1880s, 1880, 1875, 1828 See Text
John Muir Elementary School: Mrs. Herman's Grade 4 Class, 1982-1983 See Image
Jenny Pirie*, Peter Kastner* and Jeff Mudrick* A Short History of Ocean Park, Ocean Park Community Organization, 1982, (With a 1983 update.) 15pp. 1983, 1982, 1981, 1980, 1979, 1978, 1976, 1973, 1970, 1970s, 1967, 1960, 1960s, 1957, 1950s, 1940s, 1930s, 1926, 1920s 1907, 1904, 1900s See Text
Santa Monica Planning
Division Santa Monica Landmarks Tour,
2003.
33. Santa Monica Pier See
Text
Andrea Schulte-Peevers and David Peevers Los Angeles, Lonely Planet: Oakland, 2nd ed., 1996(1999), 351pp., 1999, 1996, 1983 See Text
Derek Shearer a battle, but not the war, 1983, 1982, 1981 See Text
Jeffrey Stanton Santa Monica Pier: A History from 1875 to 1990, Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1990, 1983 See Text
Documents
John Cage and Lois Long Mud Book, (with an afterword by John Russell) Abrams: NY, 1983
"Mix dirt and water until it stays where ever you put it instead of running the way water does without any dirt in it . . . dandelions make nice candles if they are dried up. . . . If it is too sloppy-squeeze it until some of the water gets out."
Allen David Heskin* After the Battle is Won, Political Contradictions in Santa Monica, UCLA Lecture and unpublished ms. Fall, 1983. 1983, 1982, 1981, 1980, 1979, 1977
Assoc. Prof., Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, UCLA
"In 1981, a coalition of groups referred to as Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights (SMRR) won majority control on the City Council of the City of Santa Monica. Having won this battle, however, SMRR faced a new challenge, that of governig the city. This paper examines some to the political contradictions that have become apparent in SMRR's approach to this task. Its perspective is shaped by the author's research in preparing the book, Tenants and the American Dream (1983) and employment in the city by a community organization to develop a community development corporation from mid-1982 to mid-1983. In 1983, SMRR lost its first election after gaining control. While it still has a majority on the council, SMRR and its member organizations are searching for the reasons for the electoral turn around. It is this author's belief that part of the problem lies in SMRR's failure to resolve the contradictions discussed in this paper.
"From 1979 to 1981, Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights (SMRR), an electoral coalition in the City of Santa Monica, scored an impressive set of victories at the polls. They passed and defended a tough rent control law, elected a full rent control board, elected school board candidates, and gained a two-thirds majority on the seven member city council. SMRR had combined an almost military mobilization of the population and the latest in computer aided electioneering to score their victories. However, having won these battles, new challenges awaited them, that of governing the city, and while governing, consolidating the victories they had scored. During the second year of SMRR's first two years in control of the city council, I worked in Santa Monica for the the Ocean Park Community Organization (OPCO). My responsibility was to establish a communtiy development corporation and help formulate neighborhood housing policy. While carrying out my assignment, I had the opporunity to closely observe SMRR's actions. My view was from the neighborhoods and, from my perspective, what I saw was an organization with a lot of problems in danger of squandering an extraordinary base of support.
"In the Spring of 1983, SMRR's first election since "taking power", my fears were realized. SMRR lost a seat on the city council, failed to unseat two oppositon incumbents, and failed to gain a majority on the school board. While retaining full control of the rent board and narrowly defeating the latest attack on rent control, they are clearly worried. In two years, all their remaining seats on the council are up for election while none of the opposition's seats are in jeopardy.
"When the results of the 1983 loss are compared with the results of the 1981 victory, two worrying facts emerge. The first is that the shift in voters appeared to be nearly city wide. Only in one part of the city, which historically had not been a SMRR stronghold, were the result not more favorable for the opposition. Even in the SMRR stronghold, Ocean Park, there was a negative shift. In 1981, 72.3% of the Ocean Park voters voted for SMRR council candidates and 21.8% for the opposition. In 1983, this changed to 64.2% for SMRR and 27.2% for the opposition. This represents a 12% loss in votes for SMRR and a 23% gain for the opposition. In other parts of the city, the shift was greater. The second fact is that the opposition was able to mobilize an unusually high voter turnout (8% increase in the high-income, north of Montana homeowner district), while SMRR either held steady or suffered a slight drop-off in turnout in its strong areas (Ocean Park, a 1% decline).
"Some of SMRR's problems resulted from the particular circumstances of SMRR's emergence in Santa Monica, and others from the strategic choices it made. Their problems were compounded, in my opinion, by the inability of community organizations to adjust to the change in governments. SMRR had two options open to it when it took control. It could have taken the approach of becoming a mass based organization and continued to organize and politicize issues in the city as it had during elections, or it could have acted as a political machine, building wards with a system of patronage. It chose neither. Instead, it maintained its electoral battle format of a cadre-centered organization, and focused inward on the development of additional cadre to meet the needs of city government.
"The communtiy organizations, for their part, never adjusted to the SMRR victory. They maintained an Alinsky stance even though the nature of SMRR made it nearly impossible to carry on in this manner. They tried to maintain the illusion of autonomy (independence) and struggle while rejecting the dream of most community organizations, community control.
"Santa Monica is a rather nondescript but pleasant little coastal city of about 90,000 people on the edge of Los Angeles. It has its lower-income neighborhoods, but the terms ghetto and barrio do not have real meaning in the city. If the term "middle class" has meaing to you, then Santa Monica is a middle class town. It is not a city with a rich history of political movements or widespread neighborhood struggles. While there have been moments of protest, the city's politics were, until 1979, typical of many small towns whose goverment is controlled by business and real estate interests with an electoral base in the home-owning population. This was true even though 80% of the town's population rented their homes. Within this background, the emergence of "progressive" politics in Santa Monica is surprising.
"What protest there has been has been primarily concentrated in the heavily renter, "alternative lifestyle" beachfront neighborhood of Ocean Park. A redevelopment project in the neighborhood which was intended o create a Miami Beach high rise beachfront has been a source of discontent for years, and efforts to privatize the very popular recreational pier and build an enclosed suburban type shopping mall in the areas that adjoin the neighborhood were major issues. Much of this, however, is more related to coastal politics that led to the formation of the Coastal Commission than to traditional urban politics. Outside of Ocean Park, including the more working class and minority Pico neighborhood, no such history of protest is known.
"As a result, the Santa Monica "shift left" was much more a case of SMRR seizing the moment than winning after building through years of struggle. The moment was created by the passage of Proposition 13. The inflationary spiral in real estate was steeper in very few places than in Santa Monica. Buildings were turning over three times a year, condos were rising, and Santa Monica was on its way to becoming Beverly Hills by the sea. The stakes were high and the elected officials in power unwilling to compromise. Santa Monica was the focus of an immediate fight between those who were benefitting from the inflation and those [who] were not, i.e., between those who owned property and those who did not. Those who did not were in the majority.
"SMRR's early mobilization of people was extraordinary. In my random survey of 729 renters in Santa Monica in late 1979 and early 1980, an extraordinary 23% of the respondents reported they had been either active in the tenant movement or been otherwise politically active. The Santa Monican's for Renters' Rightss ended its first campaign with nearly five thousand names in its files of those who had helped.
"There was a base of spontaneous tenant organizing in the early period following the passage of Proposition 13 from which to build, but the mobilization was far from spontaneous. The campaigns were run like military operations, incorporating broad scale organizing and the latest electioneering technology. It was this combination of mobilization, i.e. people, and technology that proved so effective. Over a quarter of those who had disputes with landlords organized at the building level to fight the landlord (nearly 50% of the dispute was about rent levels), and over a third of these people were brought into the campaign. The technology consisted of polling and computer assisted targeting and getting out the vote campaigns.
"The result of this effort was an exceptional sense of efficacy in the Santa Monica renter population. Nearly half of the Santa Monica tenants I interviewed believed that if tenants became active and organized they could be very successful in gaining more rights. Another 40% responded that they would be somewhat successful. The question was no longer could it be done, but whether the tenant population wanted it done and was willing to work for it.
"They were willing to vote in unusually higher percentages. Nationwide, tenants vote only half as often as homeowners. In Santa Monica, with the help of computer-aided voter identification and massive get out the vote campaigns, only a few percentage points separated the two populations. Also, the tenant were willing to vote as SMMR directed. Nearly two thirds of those interviewed said they would be likely to vote for candidates recommended by their tenant organization, with only 10% saying they were not at all likely to follow SMRR's lead.
"This rosy picture, however, was not without its thorns. While the majority of the renter population was moving into the SMRR camp, there were those adamantly against the change, with 16.5% actually against rent control. When asked what were the major problems in the neighborhood, several respondents answered that radical rent control organizers were the number one neighborhood problem.
"Comparing the results of my survey in Santa Monica to a parallel study in Los Angeles County as a whole, the overall impression is one of politicalization and polarization in Santa Monica. The right (conservatives and moderates) moved to the right, and those on the left (liberals and progressives) moved to the left. Politics became more aligned with political identity than is the custom in this country. All this seemed to indicate that SMRR might have topped out and, needed to change people's overall political belief system in order to gain more votes. It also meant that they would have to take good care of the supporters they had.
"SMRR was organized after an unsuccesssful rent control campaign in 1977. It was structured for electoral purposes, bringing together the electoral resources then available in the city. It functions in the city much like a political party, but, since local elections are non-partisan, it is not a party which has registered members. The initial coalition of groups that formed the SMRR membership were the Santa Monica Fair Housing Alliance (SMFHA), largely made up of those who were unsuccessful in the 1977 try; the Campaign for Economic Democracy (CED), which had stayed out of the 1977 effort, but brought much of the technology to the successsful campaigns; and the local Democratic club.
"After the first victory in 1981, a fourth group was added, OPEN. The Ocean Park Elector Network (OPEN), was the product of the same organizing effort that led to the formation of the Ocean Park Community Organization (OPCO), for whom I worked. While OPCO's members worked in the first campaign, OPCO, as a tax exempt organization, did not participate. After the election victory, however, members of OPCO formed the Ocean Park political organization, OPEN, and petitioned SMRR for membership.
"The opposition to SMRR has repeatedly charged that OPCO, with the formation of OPEN, became and continues to be a political organization. SMRR activists also complain about OPCO, but their complaint is about the separation and that OPCO itself is not political enough. In my experience, the differentiation between OPCO and OPEN was strictly maintained. However, the role of OPCO, as opposed to OPEN, and the other community organizations in Santa Monica in the political life of the city is a major issue in this paper and will be dealt with later.
"SMRR is organized on democratic centralist and concensus lines. When it's time to select candidates or issues present themselves, thorough discussion takes place both within SMRR and the member organizations. If any of the groups dissents, a candidate or a policy is rejected. However, once concensus is reached, all SMRR groups and all the members of a SMRR group and, for that matter, candidates that run under the SMRR banner are obliged to adhere to the decision. It has been a very disciplined organization. Much of this discipline has, in the past, been justified on pragmatic principles, i.e., we're winning and it's working so we should all go along.
"The most notable defector from this discipline is Bill Jennings, a former head of the Democratic club and former SMRR candidate. After his election, he refused to take instructions on how to vote and publicly broke with SMRR. In the last election much to SMRR's dismay, he was re-elected on the opposition ticket.
"Most policy questions are settled around election time with the updating of a document called the "Principles of Unity." The Principles of Unity are not in fact principles, but as noted by Mark Kann (1983) in his article on Santa Monica, "a document that promises something to all coalition members, but specifies neither priorities nor strategies for a more systematic transformation" of the city. In short, it is a list of agreed upon policies. In the casse of housing, a three-page list at least as detailed as the city's housing element enumerates SMRR's housing policies. Kann notes that lists without principles or priorties has led to ad hocism in the city. Again, this ad hocism has been justified on pragmatic political lines. Lists are used as the primary alternative to ideology (Schecter 1982), and discussion of ideology is officially shunned in the city as bad politics.
"This rejection of principle in the Principles of Unity and repression of ideological debate in SMRR should not be taken as an indication of either unity or the absence of ideology. Berkeley's left movement is famous for its complex ideological debates and, certainly, this has been missing in Santa Monica. In Santa Monica, there are ideological conflicts within SMRR, however. The conflicts are between progressives and liberals and among those holding the spectrum of liberal beliefs, particularly around issues of democracy, race and class.
"This failure to acknowledge a role for ideology in political and policy decisins may be detrimental to the Santa Monica movement as the focus on ideology has been in Berkeley. One extreme seems to lead away from potential coalition, while the other leads away from coherent debate and policy. Santa Monica's problem has been exacerbated by the lack of a history of urban policy debates in the city. Even among many people with histories of political activism, such as coastal or anti-war politics, there is often a lack of sophistication and coherence on urban policy issues.
"SMRR made the choice to try to fit within the perceived mainstream norms of its voter base rather than attempt to raise the consciousness of that base. The absence of ideological discussions would make consciousness raising impossible. It is never clear what consciousness should be raised to. If my analysis of SMRR having approached the limits of its voting strength is correct, this may have been a very hazardous decision. It is far easier for SMRR's opposition to appear to be in the mainstream than SMRR, and this is what they did in the last election.
"Conflict within SMRR is almost inherent in the nature of its structure. It is not an organization of like groups. Two of the organizations, CED and the Democratic Club, are both chapters in larger political organizatins, with CED professing to be a tendency within the Democratic Party. SMFHA is a local issue oriented group formed around support for rent control, and OPEN is neighborhood based and comes out of a community organizing tradition. They have different interests and different approaches. The consensus approach has masked much of this, but it has also meant that it has been very difficult for SMRR, as a whole, to develop a coherent program beyond rent control.
"Although SMRR has a mass of supporters, it has never seen itself as a mass-based organization. In fact, none of the SMRR groups is, itself mass based. SMFHA periodically makes moves toward becoming mass-based, but it has never succeeded in attaining this goal and has, in fact, a somewhat dwindling population of seniors as its major membership. CED has always been a rather exclusive club that has only recently seriously begun to discuss opening up membership. The Democratic club, while having all democrats as its members on paper, has always been run by a small group. And, OPEN, while theoretically an organization of all Ocean Park residents interested in SMRR, meets primarily in private at meetings attended by invitation only and is not open, as its name suggests.
"Previous to SMRR's emergence, a very small group of people ran the city and controlled all boards and commissions in the city. At one point before the rent control victory there was no tenant in this majority-tenant town elected to offfice or serving on any important board or commission in the city. SMRR had to, in effect, start from scratch in finding people to be candidates and commissioners. Their problem was compounded by their participatory vision of government that calleed for many more boards and commissions than previously existed, along with innumerable task forces on issues faced in the city.
"SMRR has taken heavily from the ranks of its member groups in meeting the government's needs. The result of this effort has been a near integration of SMRR and the city government. so much so that the term "the city" is used nearly interchangeably with SMRR. In fact, between elections, SMRR has become nearly invisible, operating in the shadow of City Hall. While this integration has surely been useful to some SMRR cadre, it can not be said that it has benefitted the organization.
"The focus on the needs of government has meant very little attention has been given to political organizing between elections. The result of his has been extraordinary, as Bruce Van Allen of Santa Cruz (who feared this might happen in his city) put it, to "depoliticize", "bureaucratize", and "neutralize" issues for the SMRR base (Rotkin and Van Allen 1980). With SMRR and its cadre in control and no element of SMRR doing "political" organizing, the SMRR base, while having been invited to participate in government, has been politically ignored. It has been the opposition that has had the political organizing field almost entirely to itself.
"The opposition managed to politicize the housing element debate by appealing to ideology, property values and public safety. They turned out 500 of their supporters at a city council meeting to oppose portions of the element. SMRR didn't organize, but instead called in a handful of loyalists to support the proposal and make statements for media consumption. Even on the bread and butter issue of setting the annual rent increase, one finds primarily landlords in the audience. No mobilization of tenants takes place.
"One of the city council's major policies has been the building of additional affordable housing. They passed an ordinance that required the building of affordable residential units along with all commercial development, but did not build a popular base for the policy. When I first started working in the city, an issue was before the council about whether a third floor should be added to a mini-shopping mart development for affordable housing. Everyone who appeared at the council on the issue, including neighbors, spoke against the requirement, but the council wanted to proceed. I asked one of the councilmen about the absence of any support. He was not concerned and stated that he and the other councilmembers could take the heat. However, it is the kind of heat no politician standing alone can long withstand.
"By failing to do political organizing, SMRR has allowed the other side to gain a political advantage. In moving their cadre inside City Hall and relying on the power of their council, they have lost the edge that they had when they came to power. The opposition now works harder with its base than it did when it lost, and SMRR works less hard. The opposition increased its turnout at the polls and moved voters to its side. SMRR lost a little turnout and lost voters as well. The process of depoliticizing, bureaucratizing and neutralizing deadens. It does not rejuvenate and keep the base of a movement alive.
"SMRR's reliance on the power of the city has had other negative consequences as well, For not only did it fail to organize its base, but on occasion, it uses its power against its own base as well as the opposition. With its disciplined democratic centralist approach, any criticism is treated as an attack. It is the kind of mistake Harry Boyte (1980) reported Dennis Kucinich made in Cleveland: "anybody who criticized tended to be lumped together." In Santa Monica, this lumping has become extreme because the integration of SMRR into the city has meant any criticism of the city administration, politicians or staff hired by the SMRR Council tends to be treated the same.
"The inclusion of this city staff in the scheme seemed to me to be a major mistake. The city has a "good government" city manager form of government, with a part-time council. While the SMRR councilmembers are loyal to SMRR and give more than could be expected to their positions, the staff, of necessity, plays a major role in both dealing with the issues of the day and establishing policy direction. The councilmember's loyalty to SMRR interferes with their ability to differ with the staff and respond to bruised constituents' problems. It is a situation too ripe for abuses that can only contribute to a decline in the SMRR base.
"In my experience, professionals, such as those on the city staff, tend to assume they must take on too much responsibility for carrying out their assigned tasks. With this overburdening sense of responsibility comes and almost equally compeling need to control. It is the unusual professional who has enough faith in the people who he is to serve to share that responsibility with the population. The fear of failure and the danger to career is too great.
"As a result, such observers as Milton Kotler (1982) have noted that professionals often make poor contributions to political life. They have, in his experience, an almost desperate need to find "the answer" to a problem within the confines of their expertise. As Kotler put it, "They think politics is about solutions to problems." To Kotler, however, politics is not about solutions, but "about the discovery of the common good, about equality, about being together, about the future (p.32)."
"Kotler's observations seem appropriate to the situation in Santa Monica. Although there is a great deal of rhetoric around participatory democracy in the city, the disciplined nature of SMRR and the strong component of high-tech electioneering in the SMRR campaigns seems to encourage the professional approach. Problems are to be defined, controlled and then "solved." The definition stage is often the place where the hidden ideological struggles within SMRR are fought out. In the SMRR jargon, debates often revolved around the "correct characterization" of a situation. As we know, such a characterization usually dictates a course of action and forecloses alternatives. While this manner of combat is often appropriate to campaigning with an opponent, it is far less appropriate to the day-to-day political life of a city. It is least often useful when the conflict is within your constituency and the dominant definition of a situation has meant defining away the problem raised by a potential ally.
"The emphasis on professional solutions to problems would have validity if it were not that so many urban problems are what are called "wicked" problems that defy the quick, easy solution. The emphasis in Santa Monica is on simple, political and managerial solutions that actually submerge issues rather than solve them. Attacking urban problems is a very complex process of appropriate responses to changing conditions in which both professional and citizen have a continuing role. The "Answer" is not possible.
"In Kotler's view, the issue revolves around whether there is "faith in the people, in the people's practical wisdom." It is this faith that Kann observed may be missing in the Santa Monica movement. In my experience, although SMRR has a majority of the "people" in its camp, the role of the "people" has been an issue of contention. This is both because of the emphasis on professionalism we have just discussed and the hidden ideological debate within the city. While there was most often agreement that people could and should participate, many SMRR activists worry that the "people" lack both the competence and consciousness necessary to actually share in the power of the city.
"I encountered the question in debates over the composition of the board of the community development corporation OPCO was forming. The community organizations wanted a "people" dominated board made up of neighborhood activists loyal to the community organizations. The city staff wanted a public-private partnership board dominated by experts with substantial city control. SMRR and the SMRR council members split on the issue.
"I found it a particularly peculiar debate given the middle-class nature of the city. In Santa Monica, a people-dominated board meant three architects, one who served on the planning commission, one who was on the architectural review board, and another who worked for an advocacy planning firm; a housing professional who worked on relocation for the county; a Ph.D. who worked for an economic development corporation outside the city; a private attorney who was a school board candidate, the head of the English department of a community college, and the like. Still, the pressure remained to further professionalize the board.
"The stance of the communtiy organizations in this instance was unusual. Because of the fear of the potential of a community development corporation to run amuck in their neighborhoods and a strong sense of a need to protect their turf, the community organizations wanted control of the CDC. This was in contrast to their general position which was not one of community control, but rather one of organizational independence and an emphasis on empowering the people through organizing popular pressure on city-decision makers.
"Three major community organizations exist in the city. The Ocean Park Community Organization (OPCO), the oldest group and, to some extent, the model; The Pico Neighborhood Association (PNA), which is about three years old and represents the lowest income neighborhood in the city; and the Mid-City Neighbors, formed in the past year, which represents a white middle-class area of the city with the highest concentration of seniors. All three organization profess to employ an Alinsky style of organizing and are funded by the city out of general revenue spending and block grant funds.
"The existence of these organiztions is vey central to the participatory ethos of the city. From the city's point of view, it is the role of the community organizations to organize the "democratic participation" of the residents of the neighborhood. The organizations are supposed to ensure that the residents will have full input on issues before the council and ensure that additional issues are raised that speak to each neighborhood's needs. This element of the participatory program of the city is set forth in a task force report issued in March of 1982. OPCO and PNA were represented on the task force, along with other city residents, including people from SMRR's opposition.
"Not surprisingly, the opposition members of the task force objected to emphasis on community organizations in the city's plans. They were particularly concerned about the city funding these organizations. They believed that this would lead to a system of patronage. They also believed that the Alinsky style of the organizations would lead to a politicizing of issues making the organizations instruments in the SMRR electoral process.
"The community organizatins, for their part, pushed for city funding and fought for the participatory approach to city government. What was surprising here, however, was not this position, but that they specifically rejected a greater role for themselves or their neighborhoods by rejecting the concept of community control of plannning or other city functions. Community control is usually a central element of progressive political movements.
"In the Montreal Citizens' Movement, for example, participatory democracy is explicity rejected. The MCM insists on the application of priciples of direct democracy and community control. As they put it, in regards to an offer to participate:
"It has been suggested that these people should participate. But we must beware! We do not want a participation which will go no further than finding out what the population thinks. Because in this type of consultation, the higher authorities make the final decision.
"When participation or consultation is done in this, there is nothing progressive about it. On the contrary, it coopts. It is very profitable politically to let the people believe they have decided something . . . In such circumstances, consultative participation only serves the interests of those who have put it forward. It cuts short the movement of popular mobilization . . . (Raboy 1982, p.253).
"It is hard to understand why in Santa Monica, the community groups did not want control. The reasons given were that they wanted independence from the city; they did not want to be bogged down in the mundane issues presented by everyday planning; and they di not want to become the target of organizing of others rather than being the organizers. Given the nature of SMRR, a desire for independence can be understood, but it seems hard to see how that would be possible, particularly in the case of OPCO, and the opposition would hardly miss a chance to make the community organizations targets if it fit their purposes. While no group would want to be bogged down in details, it seems this problem could have been dealt with in the design of the neighborhood government structure, short of rejecting all direct power.
"Interestingly, the opposition also rejected the neighborhood power concept. It would have seemed that it would particularly fit their needs. Their major concern has been protection of the single family character of their strongholds. This could have been done by a neighborhood planning board. However, it also would have depoliticized this major issue and reduced their chances of retaking City Hall.
"Recently, PNA took a step beyond its "independence and influence" posture and demanded what would be tantamount to a veto power over development in their neighborhood. The reaction of the SMRR leadership and city staff shows that from their viewpoint, community control was not an acceptable approach. SMRR Councilman Dennis Zane was quoted as saying, "I think the council has the responsibility to all neighborhoods to assure that all development is environmentally sensitive and contributes to the neighborhood. But the council had the responsibility to the whole city, not just a single neighborhood. I don't believe it would be appropriate to grant any neighborhood that level of authority"(The Evening Outlook). Mayor Ken Edwards, another SMRR candidate agreed, "Duly elected officials of the city, as established in the charter, have those responsibilities." Mark Tigan of the city staff chimed in, "We support maximum neighborhood involvement in the process, but we would never recommend releasing the decision-making part to the neighborhood or providing them with veto control." Members of the Chamber of Commerce and developers agreed, but used stronger language.
"Kann notes that some of the SMRR leadership he talked with had a tendency to dismiss the community groups as "parochial, self-interested, and unable to view the larger picture." In my experience, this is due in part to the SMRR discipline and the needs of government discussed earlier. While both SMRR and the community organizations agreed on a participatory model, the dimensions of the model were not agreed upon. SMRR and the city staff had an orderly city participation model in mind. The community organizations had an Alinsky conflict model in mind.
"The independent Alinsky-like stance of the community organizations was particularly unappreciated in City Hall. Like bureaucrats everywhere, they do not like to be yelled at. Perhaps even more, the staff, which sees itself as liberal to progressive, can not accept an attack. The elected officials, for example on the rent board, are little different. They believe they are doing what is best for the city as a whole. It seems to me a kind of liberal dance of political correctness rather than a process akin to Kotler's image. Participation is supported in principle, but at the same time mistrusted. OPCO is particularly disliked when it is aggressive. Ocean Park's white "middle class" and voluntarily poor population is often seen as legitimately having complaints. On the other hand, PNA is seen as legitimate in a liberal sense. However, PNA's more working class character i s seen as less professional in its approach. It was as if OPCO was white but not right and PNA was right but not white. This is a prime example of the ideological muddle in the city.
"Recently, the conflict between the two models came to a head with the Mid-city's organization. In the organization's newsletter and flyers, they attacked the city for a perceived lack of cooperation in controlling development in their area. The city staff and some of the council took this as an affront to the city and threatened the continued funding of the organization. Neither the delegitimization of OPCO or PNA or the direct attack on MId-City can contribute to building or maintaining a popular movement. Certainly neighborhood organizations can be controlled, but at the expense of their constituents' support when it counts - on election day.
"My experience at OPCO led me to believe that the worries of the SMRR opposition were unfounded, and, in fact, the existence of the community organizations more interfered with possible SMRR patronage and electoral strategies than were an instrument of these items. This was the case both because of the attempt at independence and the Alinsky style. At the center of the Alinsky style is the notion of empowerment. Empowerment in this context means that through stuggling for their rights, people learn the power of collective action and their own efficacy as individuals. Invariably, the target of this struggle is the city, and by inference, SMRR.
"In many environments, attempting to petition the government can be empowering, but in Santa Monica, it was an underestimation of the population and a miscalculation of the political situation. My interviews with Santa Monica tenants indicated an extraordinarily high sense of efficacy in the population without further community organizing. The city government, in the hands of SMRR, was, also, without much fuss, quite willing to give citizens whose support they wanted a full hearing and, in my observation, anything within reason they wanted. In this situation, the citizens were already empowered, and the act of Alinsky-style organizing often a charade.
"This is particularly true in the case of OPCO. Ocean Park has been the major SMRR stronghold in the city, and OPCO activists, both on their own and through OPEN, have immediate access to the council. Often organizing took place when a telephone call would have served just as well. In the extreme case, a SMRR councilperson was actually asked to feign skepticism to a neighborhood proposal so that it would seeem to the people being organized that they had won a battle rather than been granted a favor. If the favor was patronage, as the opposition feared, the style of OPCO masked this fact.
"Even in PNA's case, which has less connection with SMRR and less access to the council, there is a falseness about the empowerment rhetoric. PNA proudly states that an example of the fruits of their stuggle is the winning of a large share of the Community Development Block grant's funds for their neighborhood. However, they ignore that they won this fight when SMRR candidates gained a majority on the council and not before, and that there was no real question on the SMRR council that the Pico neighborhood should have the majority of the funds. It was a fight that was won, not in struggle, but in the change of governments, but this could not be acknowledged from an Alinsky stance.
"It should be noted that PNA's problem has not been having city funds allocated to it, but getting the funds, once allocated. As in most cities, it is in dealing with the bureaucracy, where the contractual details are worked out, that organizations like PNA often face difficulties that can only be resolved with political pressure. However, given the political structure in Santa Monica, problems of this sort are nearly impossible to resolve. There is no mediating political force, just the wall called the city. If PNA registers a protest, it is told somewhat ambiguously that it is "supported" by the city and that any direct action would only serve to hurt "the movement". This is a situation reminiscent of Blacks and the Democratic Party and produces the same level of frustration.
"The invisibility of SMRR between elections contributed to these problems. SMRR could have used its patronage power as the opposition feared and behaved as an old fashioned machine. However, one does not go to SMRR to get block grant funds or to get a stop sign. One goes to "The City." Although votes are often split, with the SMRR councilmembers voting to meet the neighbor's requests and the opposition voting against, this fact is almost always buried in the SMRR councilmembers' insistence that they "represent the whole city," rather than a particular constituency.
"The Alinsky position of the community organizations also contributes further to the ad hocism of the city's policies. It is a process of empowering, responding to expressed needs, but not one of exercising power. What this means is that while the community organizations fight for what is wanted by a particular group of neighbors, they are reticent to take the policy lead. Instead, they wanted to be in a position to react to the city. However, as we have already discussed, the city, and SMRR, for its part, is also often not coherent from a policy point of view.
"Within the community organizations, the reactive mode also resulted in them not building a mechanism for using the abilities of these people who have come to realize that they are, in fact, empowered. In OPCO, for example, a group of people who were both OPCO and SMRR activists wanted OPCO to take the lead in planning Ocean Park. These people were consistently discouraged by the organization for being at variance with the organization's mission.
"The second fear of the opposition, that the community organizations would be instruments of politicization and electioneering, was also unfounded. If anything, the reality was also the reverse. The community organizations' desire for independence and their Alinsky focus made them unwilling to openly align themselves with any political group. They were, however, under the influence of the city. This usually meant depoliticizing issues rather than politicizing them. As we noted earlier, the city wanted an orderly process, not conflict.
"While this sometimes worked to the detriment of the opposition by removing potential issues from the political arena, it was not what they feared. An example of this occurred when the major hotel in the Ocean Park neighborhood planned to double its size by the building of a new tower. Not unexpectedly, the initial neighborhood reaction was extremely hostile to the idea. In good Alinsky fashion, an OPCO organizer leapt upon the issue. There were a number of stormy meetings with the city over the issue, and then the pressure to ease off was put on OPCO and the organizer by the city, which liked the revenue potential of the project. Interestingly, the same pressure also came from within OPCO from some SMRR activists who were OPCO members. The organizer resisted until a compromise was worked out. In this case, a consultant was hired to analyze the impact of the expansion from the neighborhood point of view. The hotel developer accepted the consultant's recommendations and the neighbors were satisfied. Although in the end, the outcome could be characterized as the product of effective citizen participation and neighborhood planning, once again, the political result was a failure to exploit an opportunity to increase SMRR's support.
"This use of the community organizations sometimes transferrred the political focus from substantive issues to the existence of the organizations themselves. In this process, the city deflected at least a portion of the flack on any issue from itself to the communtiy organizations. The best example of this was the city's attempt at settling the long-standing conflict over the Redevelopment Project in Ocean Park. The immediate neighbors of the project, with the assistance of the SMRR's political adversaries, opposed the city's efforts. When the city made a deal with the developer to avoid what it said would be costly litigation, the conflict escalated.
"OPCO had very little to do with the deal the city made with the project's developer, but it was expected to back the city. OPCO, for its part, found itself between a rock and a hard place. Internally, OPCO was ambivalent on the project. It didn't know what to do and under pressure, behaved erratically. It had always opposed the project, bu, convinced by the city that the project could not be stopped, OPCO eventually capitulated and publically favored the proposed settlement, earning the undying hostility of a portion of its constituency. This was a problem for which Alinsky provided no solution.
"The community organizations never were intended to play a major role in SMRR's electioneering and they did not. Their part in the process was, through their encouragement of citizen participation in city affairs, to act as a training ground for future leadership and, perhaps, candidate development as well. OPCO has been just such a point of entry for many people in Santa Monica. The other organizations have not. PNA, in particular, has been very unsuccessful in placing its activists in positions of power. As one PNA activist told me after being rejected for a position on a city commission, "I thought it would be old fashioned politics, that I was the PNA person and would be picked, but it wasn't that way at all." In large part, this is because PNA has refused to accept the SMRR discipline at the expense of their own.
"In the last election, an OPCO activist ran on the SMRR slate. The results of the 1983 election indicate how small an electoral impact the community organization has in the city. The OPCO activist came in third in the city voting, 1.2% behind a relatively unknown senior Minister running on the SMMR slate. In Ocean Park, the results were only marginally different. The OPCO activist received .9% more than the unknown, a 2.1% turnaround. It is important to note here that not only did OPCO appear to have little impact on the election, but OPEN's existence also seemed to have little impact. This is further indication of the invisibility of SMRR and its member organizations.
"The election loss in 1983 has caused a rethinking of the SMRR structure. Many of the observations I have made are shared, in whole or part, by members of the constituent organizations. There are activists working toward opening up the membership to individuals and rejecting the need for consensus in all cases. There is also similiar activity within the community organizations. After the last election, the SMRR opposition attempted to defund OPCO. It has had an unsettling impact on the organizations and has cause them to begin to rethink their role in the city.
"At this point, I do not believe the discussions have gone far enough. Unless SMRR becomes a more dynamic organization and takes the lead in creating a vision for the future of the city, unless it decides who its constituency is and what the organization stands for, unless the community organizations modify their Alinsky position and assert themselves in the city's power structure, I do not believe an answer will be found that will maintain SMRR in power.
"SMRR must find a way to engage in political organizing toward recapturing at least some of the passion that brought it to power. This means partially separating itself from the city, rethinking its reliance on professionalism, and becoming a direct and open political force in the city. I believe SMRR shoud look toward the neighborhoods as a foundation for its organizing structure and become more directly connnected with its base.
"When SMRR first gained power, I compared it favorably to what I knew of Berkeley's reform efforts. I always believed that Berkeley was more an idea than a place. The Santa Monica movement initially was very much place based. It has since drifted away from what it had when it started. It is now neither idea nor place based. As a movement that was born into adulthood, SMRR has a lot of catching up to do. There are many wonderful people in the city who could remedy this problem if the proper structure and direction is found.
Bibliography
Harry Boyte The Backyard Revolution, Temple U. Press: Philadelphia, 1980.
Allan David Heskin Tenants and the American Dream, Praeger: NY, 1983.
Mark Kann Radicals in Power: Lessons from Santa Monica, Socialist Review, No. 69, 1983. pp. 81 - 101.
Marc Raboy The Future of Montreal and the MCM, The City and Radical Social Change, Dimirios Roussopoulos (ed.), Black Rose Books: Montreal, 1982. pp.235 - 239.
Mike Rotkin and Bruce Van Allen Community and Electoral Politics, Socialist Review, No. 47, 1980. pp. 101 - 118.
Stephen Schecter Urban Politics in Capitalist Society, The City and Radical Social Change, Dimirios Roussopoulos (ed.), Black Rose Books: Montreal, 1982. pp. 110 - 128."
*Excerpted Los Angeles Herald Examiner 1983 editorial : Victory in Defeat: Santa Monica gives L.A. a lesson in lively politics: 1983
Politics in a democracy can be unforgiving. Today's reformers can become tomorrow's upopular pols. That was one message of this week's election in Santa Monica. In an extremely close contest, the city's voters turned out Mayor Ruth Yanatta Goldway*, the figurehead of the liberal Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR) coalition that dominated Santa Monica politics these past four years. Personally distressed as she may have been by the returns, however, Goldway* was philosophical: "Whether or not our individuals won," she said, "the issues we stand for clearly won."
That seems about right. Although voters rejected Goldway* and retained two of her arch foes on the City Council, the renters' coalition still holds a four-to-three council majority. More significantly, in a city with a heavy preponderance of renters, the coalition's controversial rent-control policies received a strong vote of confidence: all threee coalition candidates for the Santa Monica Rent Control Board were elected and a landlord-financed initiative that would have allowed tenants to purchase their apartment units went down to defeat. In other words, Santa Monica voters - whose turnout, as a percentage, was twice as high as in Los Angeles - wanted to keep the reforms, if not all the reformers - a message that was not lost on the anti-coalition victors.
Still the SMRR can take considerable credit for transforming a sleepy, apathetic suburb into a cauldron of citizen activism. The coalition's leadership, political skills and agenda energized people on all sides of a viariety of issues: zoning, crime, senior citizens, parks and recreation, the arts, women. And there were positive results. New development guidelines required businesses to provide such amenities as daycare centers, affordable housing and street and sewer repairs in return for the privilege of doing business in Santa Monica. An extensive network of neighborhood watch groups, plus a big increase in the police budget, helped boost police morale and reduce the residential burglary rate by 27 percent.
Waking the sleeping giant of Santa Monica carried risks, of course, as Goldway* and her allies discovered Tuesday night. But, however much we may have disagreed with some of the coalition's policies, Santa Monicans now have a city government that isn't afraid of risk, that is seeking new answers to old problems and that actively involves citizens of all stripes in public debate and decision-making.
For this alone, Santa Monica is indebted to Goldway* and the SMRR. We only wish Los Angeles had half as much political life these days."
James W. Lunsford The Ocean and the Sunset, The Hills and the Clouds: Looking at Santa Monica, illustrated by Alice N. Lunsford, 1983.
"At one o'clock we will sell at public outcry to the highest bidder, the Pacific Ocean, draped with a western sky of scarlet and gold; we will sell a bay filled with white-winged ships; we will sell a southern horizon, rimmed with a choice collection of purple mountains, carved in castles and turrets and domes; we will sell a frostless, bracing, warm, yet languid air, braided in and out with sunshine and odored with the breath of flowers. The purchaser of this job lot of climate and scenery will be presented with a deed of land 50 by 50 feet. The title to the ocean and the sunset, the hills and the clouds, the breath of life-giving ozone and the song of birds is guaranteed by the beneficient God who bestowed them in all their beauty."
-Tom Fitch, announcing the auction of the first Santa Monica lots in 1875
pp. 25-31
Civic Center-High School
"Santa Monica's Civic Center, including the City Hall, County Building, School District Offices, Civic Auditorium, and Rand Corporation, is located directly south of the downtown district in an area long inaccessible because of the deep arroyo now occupied by the Santa Monica Freeway. Finally opened to development in the mid-'20s by completion of the Main Street Bridge, the area was considered a prime location for some type of public use and was eventually selected as the site for a new Civic Center.
"As an interesting sidelight to the development of the Center, in 1936, the Evening Outlook and the Santa Monica Realty Board sponsored a Civic Center Design Competition that drew many participants from Southern California. One of the winners, Vernon C. Brunson, a young local resident more than forty years later became a member of the city's Architectural Review Board and designed the disability ramp on the south side of the City Hall steps.
"The Civic Center today includes a number of historical and noteworthy features, among them the following:
"1. Main Street Bridge. An open spandrel arch bridge completed in the mid-'20s. Remarkably similar plans for such a bridge were originally proposed in 1917 by Erminci Gamberi, a merchant on Second Street, to provide a better connection between Ocean Park and Santa Monica.
"2. Rand Corporation. 1700 Main Street., 1952. The corporate headquarters of the Rand Corporation, a private nonprofit organization engaged in research and analysis of matters affecting national security, the public interest, and the operation of educational programs.
"3. Biscailuz Memorial. Located in front of City Hall at the western end of the Rose Garden is a memorial to Eugene Biscailuz, a well-known Santa Monica resident and Los Angeles County Sheriff from 1936 to 1962. The memorial was erected by the Sons of the Revolution of the State of California.
"4. Memorial Rose Garden. Dedicated by the Gold Star Mothers of Santa Monica on November 11, 1951, to Santa Monica men and women who gave their lives in the service of their country. Oddly, although the bougainvillea is the official flower of Santa Monica, no bougainvilleas are planted at City Hall or, apparently, at any other municipal sites.
"5. Dedication Plaque. Set in the walkway directly in front of the City Hall steps is a stone plaque, installed by the Native Sons of the Golden West, on November 25, 1939, dedicating the City Hall to Truth, Liberty, and Tolerance.
"6. Santa Monica City Hall, 1685 Main Street, 1938. Designed by architects Donald B. Parkinson and Joseph M. Estep, it was built as a Federal Emergency Public Works project. The colored tiles around the front door are Hermosa tiles made in Santa Monica by The Gladding - McBean Company, once one of the city's largest industries. Since its construction there have been two major additions - the Police Department in 1958, and a third-story attorney's office.
"7. City Hall Lobby. The two-story entrance lobby features brushed-bronze doors, railings, and chandelier, custom-designed by Parkinson and Estep. Other distinctive highlights are the decorative tile floors and walls, a terrazzo City Seal set into the lobby floor, and two large murals depicting significant events in Santa Monica's history and life.
"8. McDonald Wright* Murals. 1939. These murals, situated on each side of the lobby, were designed and created by the internationally known artist and writer Stanton McDonald Wright*. They are done in petrachrome, a then-new art medium developed by McDonald Wright on this very project, attracting nationwide interest. Described as "painting in concrete," petrachrome is an adaptation of the process of making terrazzo floors which uses a mixture of cement and crushed bits of tile, marble, and granite poured into place, hardened, and then polished smooth.
"The two panels represent the history and the then-present of Santa Monica. The north wall depicts the coming of the Spanish Explorers Gaspar de Portola and Junipero Serra, the Indian and Mexican occupations, and the legendary spring said to have reminded early soldiers of the tears of Saint Monica. The second panel, on the south wall, portrays more modern aspects of Santa Monica life, including sailboats and airplanes, beachgoers with striped umbrellas, road races, polo and tennis (both of which were especially popular in the '30s), a red chow-chow dog (a favorite breed of 1939), and a boy wearing "Keds" tennis shoes who is playing with a model airplane.
"The artist, Stanton McDonald Wright*, was a Santa Monica resident, and a graduate of Santa Monica High School. He earlier painted the murals in the old Santa Monica Library which are now all stored in the Smithsonian Institution except for one panel on loan to the Santa Monica College Library. Wright's father was once manager of the famous Arcadia Hotel, and his brother was the well-known mystery writer S.S. Van Dyne.
"9. Historical Rancho Marker. Just to the right of the lobby doors is a bronze plaque noting that the original townsite of Santa Monica was part of the 30,000-acre Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica granted to Don Francisco Sepulveda in 1928{1828?}. This marker was erected in June 1970 by the Beverly Hills Parlor of the Native Daughters of the Golden West.
"10. City Council Chambers. The City Council Chambers, located in the south wing of the second floor, contain two noteworthy items: a large unsigned portrait of Senator John P. Jones which hangs in the rear of the chamber, and a polished-brass replica of the City Seal, created by artist Franz Wambaugh* in 1973.
"11. Police Department Memorial Wall. At the entrance to the Police Department on the east side of City Hall is a wall with plaques in memory of those officers who gave their lives in the line of duty protecting the citizens of Santa Monica, men such as William Blackett, Ronald Wise, Roland Morton, David Kohler, and William Davidson.
"12. County Building. 1725 Main Street, 1956. Situated midway between the City Hall and the Civic Auditorium, the County Building contains courtrooms and county offices. The original 1956 building, since added to, was designed by architects Robert Kliegman and Fred Barrienbrock*.
"13. Civic Auditorium. 1855 Main Street, 1956. Designed by architect Welton Beckett*, this modern auditorium is suitable for almost any type of event and was for many years the site of the annual Academy Awards shows.
"14. Santa Monica - Malibu Unified School District Offices, 1723 Fourth Street, 1956. Located on the western edge of the Santa Monica High School campus, the administration building was dedicated on April 27, 1956.
"15. Santa Monica High School, 601 Pico Boulevard. The cornerstone for the high school was laid on April 11, 1912, on what was once known as Prospect Hill; the campus has expanded over the years to its present size by incorporating the former Santa Monica College site.
"The high school contains a great many points of interest, especially the Memorial Open-Air Theater dedicated in 1921; Barnum Hall, dedicated to William F. Barnum*, who served as principal from 1913 to 1943; a senior bench donated by the Classes of 1940 to 1943; an imposing Athletic Hall of Fame in the Men's Gymnasium; a trophy collection; the Freedom Shrine in the Administration Building; and the Hall of Fame in the History Building. Two special items of interest in Barnum Hall's lobby are a mosaic-tile mural depicting the landing of the vikings and a four-foot-tall concrete owl that stood atop the original high school from 1913 until 1933, when an earthquake caused its removal.
Santa Monica Pier-Arcadia Terrace
"The Santa Monica Pier is probably the city's best-known and most widely recognized landmark. Although now entirely owned by the city, it was originally two different and separately owned structures until the city purchased the adjoining privately owned and operated Newcomb Pier. The original Santa Monica Pier portion is the oldest and longest wood piling pier in California. Initially constructed around 1912, though some argue for 1880, it is 1,640 feet long, including the concrete bridge extension, the roadway, and the upper- and lower-deck fishing areas.* The former Newcomb Pier, built in 1916, is that portion south of the roadway that contains most of the major amusement structures, including the Carousel Building.
"*Unfortunately, some portions of the Pier were severely damaged in the disastrous winter storms of 1983.
"The pier has special historical value, having been protected by an initiative in 1973 making its removal or alteration subject to a vote of Santa Monica citizens, and also having been designated an official landmark by both Los Angeles County and the City of Santa Monica. Frequently used for motion picture and television backgrounds, it was the site of the first live television broadcast of a musical variety program in 1948.
"Arcadia Terrace, the general area south of the pier between the Promenade and Ocean Avenue, derives its name from the famous Arcadia Hotel that once occupied much of the area. The hotel was named for Arcadia de Baker.
"While the pier is usually regarded as a single entity, it includes the following activities and features:
"1. Colorado Avenue Viaduct. The concrete entry bridge to the pier, constructed in 1939 by the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, replaced the former grade-level extension that crossed the Appian Way-Pacific Coast Highway intersection.
"2. The Carousel or Merry-Go-Round. This uniquely recognizable building, built in 1916 as the Hippodrome, houses not only the recently renovated Merry-Go-Round but also a large collection of color photographs documenting the restoration process. The Merry-Go-Round, created in 1922 by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, includes forty-four hand-carved horses. Initally installed in Cumberland Park, it was brought to Santa Monica in 1947 to replace the horses of the original 1916 Merry-Go-Round.
"3. Sinbad's. Regarded as possibly the oldest public building in Santa Monica, the Sinbad's building was originally a land-based power plant that was moved onto the pier to provide electricity for the La Monica Ballroom and other pier enterprises. The demise of the La Monica and the availability of other power sources eventually caused the power plant to be converted to other uses.
"4. Playland. One of the oldest continuously operating penny arcade-type amusement businesses in Southern California.
"5. Los Angeles County Landmark Plaque. A large bronze plaque installed on a simulated concrete piling designating the pier and "offical" (sic) Los Angeles County Landmark, May 1975.
"6. Fishing Areas. Seaward of the amusement portion of the pier are the upper- and lower-deck fishing sections, equipped with benches and bait-cutting boards and served by a bait-and-supply store.
"7. Breakwater Monument. Located at the end of the pier is a plaque erected by the Native Sons of the Golden West commemorating the dedication of the Santa Monica breakwater in 1934.
"8. Pier and Marine Historical Exhibit. Displayed in a roofed pavilion at the end of the pier are collections of historical photographs and marine life exhibits.
"9. The Overlook Hotel, 1605 The Promenade. A small hotel with beachfront stores and restaurants on the first floor. Built in 1924, located directly opposite the Merry-Go-Round and below the Colorado Avenue Viaduct, the hotel is one of the most familiar buildings on the beachfront.
"10. Arcadia Hotel Bricks, 1653 - 1661 Appian Way. During the excavation for the foundation of this building in 1948, a number of bricks from the original foundation of the Arcadia Hotel, circa 1800s, were turned up, and one of the bricks was imbedded in the foundation of the new building.
"11. 1712 Appian Way. Once the home of Benedict and Nancy Freedman*, authors of Mrs. Mike, the story of the wife of a Northwest Mounted Policeman which was made into a successful motion picture. They also wrote "Lootville," "The Spark and the Exodus," and "Tresca."
"12. Sea Castle Apartments, 1725 The Promenade. Originally constructed as the Breakers Beach Club in 1926, it soon became the Grand Hotel. It was subsequently known as the Chase and Monica Hotels before being converted to apartments in the early '60s, and renamed the Sea Castle. The name "Breakers" can still be made out on the marquee over the entrance, even though the concrete letters have been partially chiseled away. One of the brightest moments in the life of the Grand Hotel occurred in 1934 during a reopening attended by film stars Jean Harlow, Anita Page, Joan Crawford, Ida Lupino, Alan Mowbray, and Maureen O'Sullivan."
"Ocean Park
"One of the oldest sections of Santa Monica, Ocean Park had its beginning in 1893 when the Santa Fe Railroad contructed a passenger station and baggage room at what is now the intersection of Hill Street and Neilson Way and planted a few trees and grass on nearby plot of ground that was then called Ocean Park. The name clung and eventually was extended to the entire area. The original station was razed in 1920. There is some evidence that the trees had been planted before 1893 by either W.S. Vawter or E.J. Vawter, who wished to improve their real estate tract. Ocean Park, comprising the area south of Pico and west of Lincoln, is rich in notable sties. Starting from Pico and The Promenade, one can find the following points of interest:
1. Pritikin Longevity Center, 1910 The Promenade. The former Casa Del Mar Beach Club, at the foot of Pico and The Promenade, the five-story club, built in 1924, was the largest of the several beach clubs along the ocean front. It remained in use until the '60s, when it became the headquarters of the Synanon Foundation and, more recently, the Pritikin Longevity Center.
2. Crescent Bay Park, Bay Street and The Promenade. One of the three oldest parks in Santa Monica, it was originally known as Southside Park, and included the area on the other side of bay street as well.
3. Neilson Way. The former Trolleyway, it was originally a railroad right-of-way with tracks which was converted to street use in the '30s. It is named for George A. Neilson, a city commissioner of the '30's and '40's and an Ocean Park resident.
4. Main Street. The principal commercial street serving Ocean Park. It has become a popular entertainment area, with restaurants, bars, boutiques and businesses of a highly individualized style.
5. Pioneer Boulangerie, 2012 Main at Bay. A Basque bakery, restaurant, delicatessen and wine shop with both indoor and outdoor eating areas.
6. Pacific Park, Main and Pacific. A small, half-acre public park also known as "The Green."
7. Christie Court, 125 Pacific. Built in 1924, this is a good example of the "California Court" style of dwellings. It was also the first Santa Monica residential development to be equipped with a radio in every unit.
8. Ocean Park Community Gardens, Main and Hollister. City owned garden plots loaned to individual residents for growing vegetables, fruits, and flowers.
9. Horatio West Court, 140 Hollister Avenue. Four two-story all-concrete houses built in 1919 by internationally famous architect Irving Gill and restored in the early 1970s. The development was designated a Santa Monica City Landmark in 1979 and is also listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
10. Crystal Beach, foot of Hollister. Site of the former Crystal Pier, a popular amusement pier known also as the Hollister Pier, the Bristol Pier, the Nat Goodwin Pier (after the well-known Nat Goodwin Cafe located at the entrance). Built of oak, the pier was finally razed in 1949.
11. Central Beach-Wadsworth Hollister Tract. A neighborhood of turn-of-the-century homes, including many Victorian-style structures and narrow streets, which is often described as a neighborly "front porch" community. A great deal of restoration and renovation has taken place.
12. Jane Fonda House, 154 Wadsworth Ave. One-time home of Academy Award winning actress Jane Fonda and Assemblyman Tom Hayden. Fonda received the Best Actress Award in 1971 for Klute and again in 1978 for Coming Home.
13. Beach Park No. 1, foot of Ocean Park Boulevard. A 1.2 acre public beach park combining parking, picnic tables, and barbeques adjoining The Promenade and the beach.
14. Barnard Way. Ocean front drive along the route of the former Speedway, named for Ben A. Barnard, former mayor and Santa Monica College Instructor.
15. Santa Monica Shores Golf Course. Barnard and Ocean Park. A nine-hole, par-three golf course situated on the not-yet-developed portion of the Ocean Park Redevelopment Project.
16. Santa Monica Shores, 2700 Neilson Way. Twin seventeen-story apartments built in 1964 by the Del Webb Corporation as the initial phase of a proposed redevelopment project. The architects were Welton Beckett and Associates.
17. Sea Colony, 2910 Neilson Way. A seaside residential development consisting of 144 townhouses and condominiums built in 1978 by Lincoln Properties as part of the redevelopment program.
18. Neilson Villas. A 100-unit senior residential development built as part of the Ocean Park Redevelopment Project.
19. Marine Street Telephone Exchange, Neilson and Barnard Way. Built in 1926 for the Associated Telephone Company, which later became part of the General Telephone company, it was the only building in the redevelopment area not moved or demolished. It has been redecorated but the individualistic facade was preserved.
20. Barnard Park Villas, Barnard and Neilson, 1982. A sixty-one unit senior residential project built by the U.S. Condominium Corporation.
21. Mishkon Tephilo Temple, 206 Main Street. This temple, dedicated in 1948, is the Mishkon Tephilo Talmud Torah Synagogue.
22. Power House Theater, 3116 Second Street. A small theater operating in a former electric power station located on Second Street just south of Marine. The building, constructed about 1911, once supplied electrical power to the "Big Red Cars" that operated in the beach communities.
23. St. Clements Church and School, 3102 Third Street. St. Clement's Church was established in 1904 by Father Patrick Hawe of St. Monica's Church.
24. Carlton Apartments, 3001 Main Street. A five-story apartment and commercial building originally constructed by the Santa Monica Elks Lodge in 1926 as a meeting hall and clubhouse with fifty-one sleeping rooms. The concrete letters "B.P.O.E." which stands for "Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks," are still visible on the front and side of the building, near the roof.
25. Parkhurst Building, 185 Pier Avenue. A two-story ornate brick commercial building built in 1927 by C. Gordon Parkhurst, a prominent realtor and next-to-last mayor of Venice. The architect, Norman F. Marsh, also designed Windward Avenue in Venice. His firm, Marsh, Smith and Powell, designed Washington and Roosevelt Schools in Santa Monica. The structure was designated a Santa Monica City Landmark in 1977 and has also been placed on the National Register of Historical Places by the United States Department of the Interior.
26. Pier Avenue Street Lights, Pier Avenue between Neilson Way and Main Street. Located in the block are four concrete candelabra "La Lux" street lights, the only remaining examples of these once-prevalent lights in Santa Monica, other than those on Broadway.
27. The Famous Enterprise Fish Company, 174 Kinney Street. A seafood restaurant housed in a former Pacific Electric Railway car barn and repair shop.
28. Virginia Apartments, 2804 1/2 Main Street. The long-time home of Bertha May King, undefeated World Women's Billiards Champion, who held the championship from 1910 until her retirement in 1928.
29. Mendotta Block, 2667 Main Street, northeast corner of Hill and Main. An early commercial building restored to its original condition that is now owned by Comedian Bill Cosby.
30. New Orleans Building and Clock, 2665 Main Street. Architect James Mount designed this 1979 commercial building that prominently displays a large antique-style street clock outside.
31. Josephina's, 2654 Main Street. An Italian restaurant located in a former Safeway and Piggly-Wiggly market building. The interior decor includdes a replica of a Pacific Electric "Big Red Car".
32. Chronicle Restaurant, 2624 Main Street. A gourmet restaurant in a restored Victorian house that was formerly located at the corner of Ocean Avenue and Washington. Built about 1900 and once known as the Kyte House, in 1976 it was moved to its present location along with the adjoining Roy Jones House to form Heritage Square.
33. Roy Jones House, 2620 Main Street. An 1894 Victorian house originally the home of Roy Jones, nephew of Senator John P. Jones, it was moved in 1976 from its initial location at 1007 Ocean Avenue and is now a public museum operated by the Heritage Square Museum Society.
34. Mural, Early Ocean Park Scene, southeast corner of Main and Ocean Park. Probably one of the most recognizable murals in the city, it was painted in 1976 by Jane Golden and sponsored by Citywide Mural Projects.
35. Ocean Park Branch Library, 2601 Main Street, 1917. One of the few remaining Carnegie Foundation Libraries in Southern California. Built with a $12,500 Carnegie Grant and designed by architect Frank Kegly, the building was designated a Santa Monica City Landmark in 1977.
36. Merle Norman Building, 2627 Main Street, 1936. One of the outstanding Main Street structures, the unique exterior design was created by H. G. Thursby. The building initially was the Merle Norman Cosmetics Plant. Norman Place, the short street between the Merle Norman building and the library, was originally Sand Street.
37. Mural, Tropical Scene, 2339 Main Street, corner of Main and Hollister. This mural, depicting a tropical lagoon with exotic birds, was designed and rendered by Mike Caple.
38. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 2303 Second Street. Situated on the southeast corner of Second and Strand Streets, this church, with its distinctive copper steeple, was built in 1922 and enlarged in 1961.
39. Haig House, 237 Beach Street, circa 1885. This small house, currently being restored and renovated, is undoubtedly one of the oldest residential structures in the city, although its exact age has not yet been established.
40. Hostetter House, 2601 Second Street, corner of Beach and Second. This distinctive corner house, formerly owned by Moses Hostetter, is also a candidate for being one of the oldest residential buildings in the city. It is believed to have been built about 1890 although, again, its exact age has yet to be established.
41. Former First Methodist Episcopal Church Building, 2621 Second Street. Now a private residence, the north portion of this building was originally built in 1875 at the southwest corner of Sixth and Arizona and may be the oldest standing wood-frame building in the city. In 1882 it was moved to the southwest corner of Fourth and Arizona, then in 1900 to Ocean Park, where it became the Ocean Park Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1923 the church built a new brick structure and the old church became a meeting hall known as Patriotic Hall. It was purchased by the Stephen Jackson Women's Relief Corps No. 124 of the Grand Army of the Republic Auxiliary and used as a meeting hall until 1971, when it was sold and became a residence. It was designated a Santa Monica City Landmark in 1977.
42. Church in Ocean Park, 235 Hill Street. A United Methodist Church established in 1913, the present brick church building was built in 1923.
43. Iglesia El Sermon de Monte, 2701 Second Street. This Assembly of God Church, originally the First Baptist Church, was constructed in 1914.
44. Ocean Park Communtiy Organization, 237 Hill Street. The organization is located in a building orginally moved here in 1923 from the present vacant lot at the northwest corner of Third and Ocean Park; the building was used for many years as the parsonage for the church next door.
45. Ocean Park Community Center, 245 Hill Street. Community services are contained in the former Archer House, home of Alvin N. Archer, one of the city's original Charter Freeholders who were elected in 1903.
46. Santa Monica Alternative School House, 2802 Fourth Street. The former Washington School, at the northwest corner of Fourth and Ashland. The oldest existing school site in Santa Monica was established as Washington School in 1890 and has been in continuous school use since. The present building was constructed in 1934 after the 1933 earthquake and is patterned after the "Santa Monica Plan" developed by the architectural firm of Marsh, Smith and Powell, who also designed the Roosevelt School at Lincoln and Montana. The "Santa Monica Plan," incorporating outdoor activity areas immediately acccessible to classrooms, was a result of experiences incurred by having to hold classes in tents for a year after the earthquake.
47. Herman Michel House, 3014 Third Street. The former house of Herman Michel, who established the first dairy in Los Angeles County in the 1880s near the intersection of Seventeenth and Santa Monica Boulevard. The dairy was later moved to the present site at Fourth and Rose in Venice.
48. Vawter House, 504 Pier Avenue. A blue shingled house built in 1908 by E. J. Vawter, Sr., one of the early developers of Ocean Park.
49. Whale Mural, south wall of the Fourth Street underpass. Painted by Dan Alonzo in 1982, the mural depicts several varieties of whales. Alonzo also did the mural on the south wall of the Howard Hamilton Memorial Building ast Marine Park.
50. Mural, Growth of Santa Monica, north wall of the Fourth Street underpass. Painted by Jane Golden in 1982, the mural depicts the growth of Santa Monica. Golden has also done a number of murals throughout the city.
51. Merle Norman House, 2533 Third Street, 1935. A large, two-story house designed and built by Merle Norman on the same site as her former house, which was moved to 740 Raymond Avenue. The Merle Norman Cosmetics Company is one of the largest cosmetic firms in the world.
52. Mary Hotchkiss Park, Fourth and Strand. A two-acre public park left to the City of Santa Monica by Mary A. Jaunch in 1934. The site was the former location of the Mooney Mansion, for many years regarded as a "haunted house" because Mrs. Jaunch's first husband was shot to death there in 1884 and the murderer was never found. She later married Colonel Hotchkiss, an attorney for the Southern Pacific Railroad. In 1905 they left Santa Monica and the mansion stood vacant for several years, eventually being torn down and replaced by a number of other structures. At the time the city acquired the property, the site was occupied by an abandoned gas station and several dilapidated buildings. Mrs. Jaunch, marrying for the third time, never returned to Santa Monica.
53. Sculpture, "Oneness", Eino Romppanen, 1966. This large sculpture, located at the Third Street frontage of Mary Hotchkiss Park, was the gift to Mr. Romppanen to the City. Most of the work on the statue was done in the Del Mar Club.
54. The Baron's Castle, 2103 Third Street. A Moorish villa designed and erected in 1907 by Nicolas Baida, a Syrian-born art dealer. With its three stories topped off by a large dome and its elaborately landscaped grounds, it was known as "The Palace" in its early years. In 1920 and 1921 it served as a convalescent home for veterans of World War I. It was eventually acquired by Baron Michel Leone, a professional wrestler who built the new portions of the building and gave it the name "Baron's Castle."
The Baron's Castle. (Contemporary photos by Frank Gruber*)
". . . three and four story apartments like the one on Third Street, first built in 1907, that the wrestler Baron Leone later bought and expanded and called the "Baron's Castle." The Baron's Castle. (Contemporary photos by Frank Gruber*)
55. Metal Sculpture, Trident Apartments, 2045 Fourth Street. This metal structure, erected in the entry court and visible from Fourth Street, is in the form of a large twisted trident that actually swings on a base anchored by a heavy stone. It is titled, "Capella Motion - an Icon to the Great Cosmic Perversity."
56. Phillips Chapel, CME Church, 401 Bay Street. This may be the oldest continuously occupied public building in the city. Originally built in either 1890 or 1895 as the Washington School at Fourth and Ashland, it was later moved to this site and dedicated on October 4, 1908. It was remodeled in 1910 and again in 1949, but the original architecture of the building has been retained.
Phillips Chapel (Contemporary photos by Frank Gruber*), 2005b
Phillips Chapel," the Christian (formerly "Colored") Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church at the corner of Fourth and Bay Streets. Phillips Chapel, Fourth and Bay Streets (Contemporary photos by Frank Gruber*), 2005, 2005b, 1983
57. Bowling Pin House, 2032 Sixth Street. Picturesque two-story house featuring a second story balcony formed by bowling pins.
58. Los Amigos Park, Fifth and Ocean Park. This three-acre city recreation park is the former site of John Adams Junior High School, which was built in 1913 and abandoned after the 1933 earthquake when the new junior high school was built at 16th and Pearl. The land was leased to the city for park purposes in 1949 after having been used by the Army as a recreation center and by the Navy as a training site. It was for many years the location of the Morgan Theatre, which occupied the former Army recreation hall as a community theater until it was destroyed by fire in 1966.
59. Ocean Park Boulevard Children's Center, 2626 Sixth Street. A public preschool and child-care center operated by the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District in one corner of Los Amigos Park.
60. Joslyn Park, 633 Kensington Road. A two-and-a-half acre Santa Monica City Park built on the former Walter G. McGinley Estate that was purchased by the city in 1958 with funds donated by Marcellus Joslyn. The walls, wrought-iron fence, and major trees are all part of the original McGinley Estate.
Joslyn, a Westwood manufacturer and philanthropist, was a Santa Monica High School graduate whose family is said to have been in Santa Monica for five generations. Joslyn's grandfather built the first wooden stairs down the Palisades bluff, as well as the landmark Violet Cottage that stood on Third Street near Wilshire for many years. Marcellus Joslyn also contributed the bowling green at Douglas Park and the Senior Recreation Center at Palisades Park, as well as recreational facilities in other cities.
61. Murals, Early Ocean Park and Venice Scenes, Arthur Mortimer, 1982. A three-panel mural at the Kensington Road entry to Joslyn Park depicts a bath house and ocean front in 1906, the boardwalk between Venice and Ocean Park in 1912, and Pier Avenue in 1904.
62. John Muir Elementary School, 721 Ocean Park Boulevard. Established in 1922 and rebuilt in 1934 following the 1933 earthquake, the school was originally a two-story building.
63. Mural, John Muir Woods, northwest corner of Lincoln and Ocean Park. A two-panel mural, fronting two sides of the John Muir Auditorium, depicts forests, mountains and streams; it was painted by Jane Golden in 1976.
64. Copeland Court. A two-block subdivision with a center pedestrian walkway and no street running between Sixth and Seventh Streeets, Copeland Courts was laid out by E. J. Vawter and F.M. Leavitt in 1912.
65. Apartment House, 2807 Highland Avenue. A hilltop apartment designed in 1961 by prominent architect Frank Gehry who designed the Santa Monica Place shopping center.
66. Original Merle Norman House, 740 Raymond Avenue. A one-story frame cottage previously located at 2533 Third Street and moved here in 1935. It was in this house that Merle Norman developed the cosmetics that became the foundation of the Merle Norman Cosmetic Company.
67. Elephant Mural, 702 Pier Avenue. On the southside of an apartment house is this dramatic mural of two elephants. Painted by A. S. Bloomfield in 1981, it is best viewed from Seventh Street.
68. Ozone Park, Seventh and Ozone. A small narrow park with children's play equipment, including a much climbed giant shoe.
69. Olsen House, 804 Navy Street. This bright yellow cottage just west of Lincoln Boulevard wass once the home of Robert E. Olsen, inventor of the stoplight for automobiles in 1912, as well as of the "picture mill," a coin-operated camera in a booth similar to those used today in amusement centers.
pp. 32 - 40.
John Muir Elementary School: Mrs. Herman*'s Grade 4 Class, 1982-1983
- Row 1 (Rear):
Row 4 (Front):
Jenny Pirie*, Peter Kastner* and Jeff Mudrick* A Short History of Ocean Park, Ocean Park Community Organization, 1982, (With a 1983 update.) 15pp. 1983, 1982, 1981, 1980, 1979, 1978, 1976, 1973, 1970, 1970s, 1967, 1960, 1960s, 1957, 1950s, 1940s, 1930s, 1926, 1920s 1907, 1904, 1900s
"More than eighty years ago, a real estate developer named Abbott Kinney and his partners founded a beach-front resort and vacation-home community next door to the already flourishing little city of Santa Monica. They called it "Ocean Park". Today, the former summer resort is a year-round community, and an unusual one at that: it's one of the few economically integrated communities along the Southern California coast, with a great diversity of age, race, and income, and a long history of affordable housing.
"In the last few years, however, Ocean Park residents have discovered that the quality of life in their community has become more and more threatened as coastal real estate has skyrocketed in value. They've also discovered that by working together, they can resist this threat, and preserve what's best about Ocean Park for all who live there.
"In its earliest days, Ocean Park was almost as much a carnival as a town. Crowded alongside the two hundred or so wood-frame "cottages" were a pleasure pier, an auditorium, a race-track, and a casino, in addition to the huge and ornate bulk of the Turkish Bathhouse, looking more like a movie set than an actual building. A turn-of-the-century photograph of what later became Pier Avenue shows a stylishly dressed crowd moving along a street made up chiefly of cafes, casinos, and gambling parlors, stretching toward the hill on the east side of town.
"The people of Ocean Park experimented with incorporation in 1904, and then decided to "dis-incorporate" in 1907. The town was partly absorbed by Santa Monica, and partly by Venice; but its character remained the same all through the nineteen-twenties and thirties: a thriving summer resort area, attracting out-of-state visitors and the local elite to the wealth of available entertainment opportunities. Only the Great Depression, grinding on past 1929 into the thirties and early forties, finally brought the carnival days of Ocean Park to an end.
"The Depression, and the World War that followed it, made great changes in the community of Ocean Park and the change was not necessarily for the worse. The area began its transformation from a vacation home for visitors to a year-round residence for owners and renters. Beachfront cottages which had been second homes for many people were sold and became permanent homes for the new tenants. At the same time, a large number of elderly people from the surrounding communities moved to Ocean Park to take advantage of the ocean climate and the relatively low rents. And the Second World War accelerated this change.
"The war resulted in an unprecedented demand for airplanes from the Douglas Aircraft plant in Santa Monica, as well as increased production at all the support businesses in the area that served Douglas. Wartime workers flocked to the west side, and Ocean Park took in its share. Since there was little or no building during the war, existing housing had to take the strain. From being the "Unsurpassed All-Year Playground of the West" (as a 1926 advertisement described the town), Ocean Park was becoming an "all-year" home for working people and their families.
"Real estate developers and speculators had taken notice of the increased demand for west-side housing during the war; and since new home-seekers continued to replace Douglas workers who left as war production declined, the end of the war saw a construction boom in the beach cities unmatched since the days when Abbott Kinney began building frame cottages in the sandy wastes of Ocean Park. Single family home, apartment buildings, and commercial structures appeared in rapid succession. Real estate developers made money hand over fist. The boom has been called, "The beginning of the most incredible period of progress in the Bay's history."
"Of course, the Santa Monica establishment - the City government, the Santa Monica Bank, the Evening Outlook, and the real estate interests --sought to make the area an even more attractive place for investment and development at every opportunity. With the City's blessings. Pacific Ocean Park was inaugurated in 1957, an amusement pier that harkened back to Ocean Park's pre-war "carnival" days. And the City took a major step toward assisting real estate development with the establishment of the Santa Monica Redevelopment Agency (RDA).
"During the forties and fifties, most new construction in Ocean Park occurred on land that had stood vacant. By the end of the fifties, almost all that vacant land had been used up. Developers then turned to existing structures and neighborhoods that might be levelled to permit new and profitable building. The task of the RDA was to help this process along. If a neighborhood could be considered a source of "urban blight" within federal guidelines, the RDA could purchase the property from its owners at a relatively low price, raze the existing buildings, and re-sell the property to developers at minimum cost. It was "urban renewal"; and it occurred in Ocean Park, as it did in many other old communities across the nation, at the expense of local residents.
"The 36 acre area bordered by Neilson Way, Barnard Way, Marine Street and Ocean Park Boulevard - a "mixed-use" neighborhood made up of single family dwellings as well as businesses - was judged to be a source of "urban blight" by the Santa Monica RDA in 1957, in spite of the fact that it was a stable low-income residential and commercial district. In 1960, 100 commercial establishments were "relocated" from the area, although the land remained vacant for the next seven years, until two high-rise apartment buildings were completed on the site (Santa Monica Shores). The undertaking was called, "The Ocean Park Redevelopment Project"; but instead of removing "urban blight" from the area, it simply removed people.
"Real estate development leveled off somewhat in the nineteen sixties, but grew into a speculative boom by the eary nineteen seventies, usually with little consideration for the people who lived in Ocean Park (88% of whom were renters by 1970). The number of new apartment buildings multiplied; rents increased; and the population of the community itself began to change from a blue-collar "tenant community" of people who lived and worked in Ocean Park to a rental suburb, increasingly populated by young professionals who commuted to work outside the area. The completion in 1967 of the Santa Monica Freeway, giving easy access into and out of Ocean Park, was probably the single most important factor influencing this transition. But the net result of real estate development during those years was to create a serious threat to Ocean Park as a source of low-cost housing.
"In the early seventies, Ocean Park residents began organizing to resist the pressures of real estate development and to preserve Ocean Park as a seaside community affordable to low and moderate income people. Beginning in 1973, The Church in Ocean Park, on Hill Street, became a center of this activism and community spirit.
"There were some successes in these early organizing days: in 1973 the battle to save the Santa Monica Pier from demolition was won; but there were also setbacks: in 1976, residents failed to stop the Santa Monica Redevelopment Agency from subsidizing the development of what has become Santa Monica Place without adequate consideration for the impact on the surrounding community. And the "revitalization" of Main Street surged ahead in the late seventies with little or no input from local residents affected by the change. Main Street had fallen into considerable decay, but its transformation into a boulevard of luxury businesses and expensive restaurants had nothing to do with the needs of the people living in the area, and only increased the already serious problems of crime and traffic.
"By 1978, Ocean Park residents were better able to deal with all these problems. In April of that year, the struggle to preserve the community took on a specific organizational form: "Ocean Park Projects" (OPP) was incorporated, with the same Board of Directors as the Church in Ocean Park. The new organization's stated purpose was a commitment to "creating a sense of community and improving the quality of life for all residents of Ocean Park, regardless of age, sex, race, or economic status." OPP's first organizing effort was the community anti-crime project called "COMMUNITAS", for which the neighborhood received a Justice Department grant in the fall of 1978.
"COMMUNITAS set about creating a safe and secure community in Ocean Park through the establishment of a network of "block clubs". The plan was successful. It included "Neighborhood Watch" programs - neighbors coming to know and watch out for one another as a way of reducing crime; there was a project to place identification numbers on all valuable items of property; and self defense classes were held at regular intervals.
"People began to realize that unlighted streets were not a necessary fact of life, and the Navy Street Block Club succeeded in getting the City to install street lights. Over the course of the program, the community succeeded - through its own efforts - in reducing crime in Ocean Park by as much as 16%.
"A special project in Ocean Park's drive to reduce crime was called "Making It Safe." It was a series of activities created and organized by women artists as a way to alert the community to the problems of violence against women. Merchants, media people and politicians - men and women - participated in the summer-long event, which included lectures on incest, wife abuse, rape and pornography; dialogues with older women, men's groups and third world women; potluck dinners; poetry, photography, painting, performance and much more.
"The newly realized ability of people to be in control of their own neighborhood was not just limited to crime prevention: residents organized successfully to prevent the demolition of the Fourth Street Courtyard, near Hollister north of Ocean Park Boulevard. And, more significantly, over 200 residents jammed the Church in Ocean Park in the autumn of 1979 in what was the beginning of a long campaign to control Main Street development and its effects on the neighborhood.
"But the Block Club network set up by COMMUNITAS was only the precursor to the establishment of a broader "Neighborhood Congress" which was convened in December, 1979. The goal was to create a permanent, independent, and self-sufficient neighborhood organization for all of Ocean Park.
"On December 8, 1979, over 300 residents attended the First Ocean Park Congress. At that Congress, OPCO was created - the Ocean Park Community Organization - a permanent organization with a small staff and a steering committee made up of Ocean Park residents, which would deal not only with crime, but with all areas of community concern.
"Not long after the Congress, the new organization helped achieve a major victory for Ocean Park, by getting a moratorium on commercial development on Main Street that lasted from January through October of 1980. During that time, residents and merchants worked together to develop the Main Street Plan which the City used as a guide to zoning commercial development on Main Street.
"That same year, neighbors won the first round in the battle for preferential parking - a way of assuring Ocean Park residents the right to park near their homes.
"Organizing efforts continued through 1980. a summertime Energy Fair drew people from all over the community. Late in the year, neighbors rallied at the base of the Pico drain to protest the dumping of toxic chemicals. By the time of the second OPCO Congress - November 15, 1980 - neighbors in the Pico Corridor, with help and encouragement from OPCO, had begun organizing themselves into their own neighborhood organization - the Pico Neighborhood Association.
"In 1981, the threat of the Ocean Park Redevelopment Project was revived with a plan to build luxury condos on the public golf course on Neilson Way.
"Hundreds of residents were mobilized in an attempt to stop the plan, but the fate of that property had been decided years earlier by a previous City Council - before a community organiztion had been built that was strong enough to resist the pressure of the real estate developers. The condos could not be stopped.
"Still, Ocean Park residents did demand, and win, several changes in the project: it was to provide some affordable housing (replacing a few of the units demolished in the 1960's); the height of the project was to be substantially lower, and a view corridor to the ocean would be maintained.
"That year, neighbors demanded that the Ornyte Chemical Company stop polluting the air near Santa Monica High School with dangerous chemicals. As a result of community efforts, Ornyte Chemicals is relocating to an industrial area.
"Late in 1981, OPCO added Project "Crime Stop" to its activities, providing free locks to people with low and moderate incomes.
"That fall, it became clear that people wanted to take more initiative in deciding the kind of development that would take place in Ocean Park, rather than just fight defensive battles against real estate developers. With this is mind, at their Third Community Congress, OPCO called for the establishment of a "community development corporation" (CDC) - a corporation created and controlled by residents to meet development needs that would otherwise go unmet, i.e. affordable housing and service- oriented businesses.
"1982 was also a year of achievement for the people of Ocean Park. Early in the year, OPCO members began pushing for stronger eviction protection for all Santa Monica renters. By September, the Santa Monica Rent Control Board passed regulations meeting these demands and Ocean Park residents had won another victory in their struggle for control over their community.
"Another group of OPCO members won a commitment from the City Council to narrow Fourth Street in order to reduce the danger of speeding traffic; and the Council also agreed to preferential parking for Second and Third Streets.
"The summer of 1982 saw OPCO's First Annual Arts Festival which tapped the community's creative resources and brought people together for two days of fun and socializing.
"Communtiy members on Third Street were involved in planning what was to become of the last few vacant lots in Ocean Park.
"OPCO helped tenants in several buildings throughout Ocean Park organize to win badly needed improvements in their building maintenance and security.
"The Free Locks Program was expanded to include all of Santa Monica.
"The community development corporation, called for at OPCO's Third Annual Congress, began its work under the name, "Community Corporation of Santa Monica."
"Finally, the most important organizing issues for the coming year were set down by the Fourth Community Congress: housing, crime, the arts, telephone rates and service, traffic and safety were the issues that most concerned OPCO members in November, 1982.
"It's been over eighty years since a group of ambitious real estate promoters founded the resort town of Ocean Park. During that time, the community has grown and changed and struggled to preserve its very livable diversity in spite of the Depression, the post-war boom, the staggering pressures of real estate development, and the mixed blessing of urban renewal.
"The community has hung on long enough to build an organization that allows people to gain power over their lives at the community level. That's what OPCO does. But no community organization can survive without a constant influx of new people and energy. That's another of OPCO's tasks: to continue building the organization, and, in doing so, realize the vision of Ocean Park as a community where people are able to identify their goals and accomplish them by working with their neighbors.
"Ocean Park Update/1983
" On February 28, Superior Court Judge Laurence Rittenband overturned a Santa Monica Rent Control Board decision, which had disallowed a $100/mo. rent increase sought by the landlord of the Namor Apartments. Rittenband's ruling gave the owner an additional $125,000 in rental income from the 97 unit complex and kicked off a prolonged battle between the tenants, organized by OPCO, and the landlords.
"At several meetings, during the Spring of 1983, the landlord claimed he needed the full $125,000 and more because the building was running in the red. Tenants claimed they couldn't pay $100 extra a month and that the owner's financial mess was his own fault - he had traded a low down payment for a high interest rate when he bought the building in 1979.
"After several months of cordial yet firm negotiating, the two sides reached a compromise. Rents would go up at a staggered rate - 8% of the increase each month. The compromise solved the problem of paying the large increase all at once, but the final rent would still end up too high for most tenant.
"The Namor Tenants' Association then invited Community Corporation of Santa Monica, which was started by OPCO, to look into purchasing their building as a non-profit rental owned and operated by CCSM with tenant control of management.
"The building is not out of speculative hands yet; but the Namor tenants, with OPCO's help, have been able to stay in Ocean Park for nine months more than they expected back in February when the Judge's order was issued, and they hope now to stay here for good.
"In June, the City Council's conservative minority was able to use a parlimentary technicality to have OPCO's funding completely cut. OPCO rents its space from the Church in Ocean Park. Councilmember James Conn* is also a pastor at the Church, and the Council minority claimed "conflict of interest' should prevent his voting on the issue of OPCO funding. Without Conn's vote, funding for OPCO was defeated.
"Two weeks later, over 500 Ocean Park residents turned out for a rally and public hearing at City Hall, where they urged the Santa Monica City Council to reconsider its action. Over the course of the summer, a ruling was requested from the State Fair Political Practices Commission. The Commission decided that there was no conflict of interest, and by summer's end, OPCO's funding had been restored, although somewhat reduced.
"In August of 1983, through the efforts of its neighbors, a ten-story senior citizens' facility on Ocean Park's northern beachfront was saved from being turned into a luxury hotel. In the summer of 1981, seniors living in the Ocean House board-and-care facility were evicted by the building's owners, despite a court restraining order, and the attempts of the City's Rent Control Board to prevent the evictions. When the developers stated their intention of putting a luxury hotel in the building, people living in the area took action and called on OPCO for help. In the face of strong neighborhood opposition, the developeers agreed to drop their plans for a hotel, and to restore the senior facility in Ocean House.
"After five years, Main Street continues to present the community with plenty of organizing issues. In 1983 alone, Main Street's residential neighbors appeared in front of City officials at public hearings on more than a dozen occasions. Two Main Street issues stood out in '83. The first was the proposed 24-hour mini-market (MI-T-MART) at Marine and Main, which neighbors successfully resisted for over a year and a half. The market will be allowed to go in, but only under conditions which minimize the negative impact on the residents in the immediate area.
"The other issue was that after three years of working together to solve some of the parking problems related to the businesses on Main Street, neighbors were finally able to have preferential parking implemented with the help and support of Main Street merchants. After much confusion around the implementation of the ordinance, neighbors met with Police Chief Keane to iron out some of the snags. Together, people came up with a plan; and two months later when the City took a poll among the residents, most of them were satisfied with the ordinance.
"After several Neighborhood Watch meetings, residents of Hill Street were so well-prepared that they actually caught a burglar in the act!
"A group of mothers who take their children regularly to Ozone Park, got together and persuaded the City to provide new playground equipment and to construct a fence around the "tot lot."
"The OPCO Renter's Rights Committee fought for and won better eviction protection for tenants and opposed increases (beyond 3.6%) in the allowable yearly rent adjustment under rent control. Although a 4.5% annual increase was passed by the Santa Monica Rent Control Board, other increases that would have raised rents even further were defeated.
"Another example demonstrates how tenants were able to exercise their rights under rent control. Thanks to the action of tenants at 2721 Second Street, the landlord's petition for a $199/month rent increase was denied. In addition to preventing a rent increase, five tenants convinced the Board that the building had not been adequately maintained for years and were granted rent decreases of approximately $50 a month.
SOME OPCO ACCOMPLISHMENTS
"Installing door and window locks for low income residents; boarding up a vacant house on Hill Street; getting new equipment for Ozone Park; getting an improved drainage system for Copeland Court; installing Neighborhood Watch signs throughout Ocean Park; holding a clean-up day and Whistle-Stop program on Bay Street; getting improved maintenance and secruity in a number of apartment buildings; getting Stop Signs installled on 6th and Hollister to reduce speeding traffic; gettin a traffic signal for pedestrians at 6th and Ocean Park; getting new lighting and playground equipment for Joslyn Park; getting new lighting for Ozone Park; getting streetlights for Navy, Marine and Ozone Streets; preventing the demolition of the historic 4th Street Court Apartments; initiating the mural at Joslyn Park; holding an Energy Fair that drew 1500 residents; cleaning and disinfecting local sewers; installing extended time crosing buttons for seniors; getting GTE to appoint an ombudsperson to handle "poor service" complaints; getting radar enforcement of speeding traffic on four neighborhood streets; getting a foot patrol on Main Street; getting a zoning plan for Main Street; removing graffiti; getting affordable housing units included in several new condominium projects that displaced the original low and moderate income residents; doing a housing rehabilitation survey; obtaining funding for the expansion and relocation of the L.A. Childbirth Center; getting a Stop Sign at 7th and Navy Streets; getting increased police patrols on several neighborhood blocks; creating a recycling center at the Civic Auditorium; holding a neighborhood Festival of the Arts; holding Neighborhood Housing Conferences; helping create a preferential parking system; helping expand eviction protections for tenants; obtaining a City commitment to solve Fouth Street traffic problems; holding community planning and design workshops with residents; distributing water conservation devices; hold a Neighborhood Film Series."
Santa Monica Planning Division Santa Monica Landmarks Tour, 2003.
33. Santa Monica Pier
Foot of Colorado Avenue
Architect: Charles Looff {?}
Designation: 17 August 1976
"After the 1983 storms that destroyed the west end of the Santa Monica Pier, the structure of the Pier was strengthened."
Andrea Schulte-Peevers and David Peevers Los Angeles, Lonely Planet: Oakland, 2nd ed., 1996(1999), 351pp., 1999, 1996, 1983
Chinois on Main, 1999, 1996, 1983
2709 Main St., 1999, 1996, 1983
Opened in 1983
Owner Wolfgang Puck; Chef Makoto
Tanaka, 1999, 1996
Derek Shearer a battle, but not the war, 1983, 1982, 1981
In an article headlined In 'People's Republic of Santa Monica,' Voters Turn to the Right, the New York Times (Sunday, April 17) reported that the April 12 election "appeared to be a strong repudiation of the policies of a group described by its supporters as 'progressive' and by its critics as 'socialistic.'"
As with most mainstream reporting of politics in Santa Monica, the New York Times article is wide off the mark. While the local coalition Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights (SMRR) did narrowly lose all of the three open council seats, SMRR won three seats on the elected Rent Control Board and defeated a real estate-backed initiative - Prop. A - that would have weakened the rent control law and opened the door to widespread condominium conversion. Most important, SMRR forced its more conservative opponents - the All-Santa Monica Coalition - to run on its issues and to concede that rent control is in Santa Monica to stay.
The Los Angeles Herald Examiner recognized this with an editorial titled "Victory in Defeat," complimenting SMRR on its innovative city programs and raising of civic consciousness and political participation (see excerpts)*. So, it appears that rent control and the city programs implemented by the council over the past two years will not be greatly affected by the election results.
But why did SMRR lose the council seats, including the seat of Mayor Ruth Goldway* (who lost by fewer than 300 votes?)
The technical answer is turnout. Voters in the homeowner precincts of the city came out to vote in record numbers - more than 80 percent in some precincts - and the opposition slate carried thesse areas by margins of 80 to 90 percent. In the renter precincts, turnout dropped by 5 to 10 percent. Overall, city turnout was 45 percent, compared to 51 percent two years ago when SMRR won all four open seats on the council. With a turnout similiar to two years ago, SMRR would have won a narrow victory, and Ruth Goldway* would have held her seat.
Why did homeowners turn out in record numbers and why did some renters stay home?
The answer is two-fold and goes to the hearrt of the difficulty of enacting progressive social change in the U.S.
The opposition - a coalition of the downtown buisiness interests, the local newspaper, real estate forces and homeowner groups - motivated and mobilized their homeowner base. They did this by attacking the city government on several fronts over the past two years and by organizing door-to-door in homeowner areas. The motivating force was fear. Organizers of one group called Concerned Homeowners repeatedly charged that the SMRR majority on the city council planned to rezone the R-1 home areas to allow for multi-family dwellings, and that soon they will be forced to rent their spare rooms to minorities. Rumors were spread that the city government planned to enact controls on the resale price of private homes. The Homeowner newsletter also claimed that the city was planning to set up "energy police" who would demand access to people's homes to check their bathrooms for low-flow shower heads.
The conservative local newspaper, the Santa Monica Evening Outlook, played a key role in spreading these spurious charges and evoking feelings of fear among homeowners. In editorials, in letters to the editor columns and in biased news reporting, the paper did everything it could to paint the city council majority as unreasonable, harsh radicals, bent on destroying the private property of the middle class.
Other media coverage of the city government also enflamed such fears. After the SMRR victory two years ago, opponents printed up red bumper stickers with a hammer and sickle and the words "Welcome to the People's Republic of Santa Monica." When the CBS news show 60 Minutes filmed a report on Santa Monica's new government, they highlighted this bumper sticker and discussed the council with words like "Communist." Letters to the Evening Outlook and articles in the Concerned Homeowners newsletter continually charged that Santa Monica had been taken over by a Communist coup. In 1982, during Private Property Week, local realtors rented an armored personnel carrier, parked it in front of city hall and paraded with signs saying "Soviet Monica."
Even though the city council made efforts to treat all areas of the city equally and to improve police and sanitation services to homeowners as well as renter areas, the ideological attack struck a responsive chord with homeowners.
The SMRR council members and the SMRR organization (not really an organization, but a coalition of groups including the local chapter of the Campaign for Economic Democracy and the Santa Monica Democratic Club), underestimated the depth of anger and fear among homeowners that was generated by the conservative attacks. SMRR leadership tended to view its most vocal opponents such as the Evening Outlook as Reaganites and right-wingers who were out of touch with the majority of voters. SMRR ignored the cumulative effect of these day-in and day-out attacks and made no attempt to reach out directly, through neighborhood meetings or coffees in homeowner areas, to explain its programs and policies. SMRR did redesign and expand the city's newsletter that goes to all residents, but this did not counter the daily reporting of the Outlook and the sensationalist national press.
Reformers who win elections, such as Kucinich in Cleveland or SMRR in Santa Monica, and who seriously try to carry out a program of structural reform and democratization of urban life should expect to be attacked by the media and by business interests like banks, developers and the real estate industry. There is no point in bemoaning this fact. It is a given in American politics. These forces are strong and they dominate most urban governments. Recognizing this reality, people on the left must go directly to their constituents with a commonsense message. SMRR built support this way among renters around the issue of rent control and renters' rights, but it did not sufficiently reach out to homeowners with its message on other urban policies (most of which benefit homeowners and renters alike.)
The other weakness of SMRR is organizational. SMRR is a coalition of independent groups, each with its own agenda, not a political party. After SMRR's victory two years ago, some members proposed that SMRR convert itself into a mass membership organization - a kind of city-based party with regular conventions, an elected leadership, an office, paid organizers and staff. The proposal was vetoed by the coalition's groups and SMRR operated at low visibility until this spring's election. SMRR members spent long hours as newly appointed members of city boards and commissions, and SMRR's leadership - its council and rent board members - put in long hours at low pay working in the city government. But SMRR as an organization did not capitalize on the base of support it had developed in the winning 1981 campaign.
While conservatives were producing {criticisms}, there was no SMRR newsletter to explain new city policies or to motivate SMRR supporters by reporting on the consevative attacks on the city government. Most important, SMRR's natural leadership - its elected officials - met regularly with SMRR members, but not systematically with the average voter.
When the time came for the spring election, the lack of an organized base among renters showed up at the polls in the lower renter turnout. SMRR's opponents were smart enough to concede the issue of rent control and renters' rights. In fact, in renter areas the conservatives handed out literature calling themselves "the real renters' rights team," and pledged to defend the rent control law.
As in the past, SMRR's opponents outspent them almost five-to-one. The conservatives hired a professional campaign management firm and receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from real estate-related interests, while SMRR relied on low-paid staff, volunteers and thousands of small contributions from renters. But this is the nature of American politics - reformers are almost always outspent and outgunned by professionals."
Jeffrey Stanton Santa Monica Pier: A History from 1875 to 1990, Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1990, 1983
Chapter 6: City Owned Pier (1974-1990)
"Winter storms along the Santa Monica Bay were nothing new . . . the pier's lower deck had been damaged three times in the previous ten years. But the storm that began building up during the wee hours of the morning on Thursday, January 27, 1983 not only had huge churning breakers but occurred during the year's highest tides. . . " p. 157
"The swells at sea were only eight to ten feet at most, but their sixteen to twenty foot faces that broke on shore rapidly eroded sections of the beach from Malibu to Redondo Beach.
" . . . Shortly before 9:20 a.m., while hundreds of sightseers atop Palisades Park watched in the driving rain, the northwest corner of the pier broke off and fell into the pounding sea. . . .
" . . . Crowd control was a problem throughout the day and evening as the area was as crowded as during the Fourth of July. . . .
" . . . City Manager John Alshuler *. . .
" . . .
"Southern California beaches were designated a federal emergency area . . . Meanwhile a huge thirty ton crane was moved onto the pier's ocean end to remove the damaged lower deck.
" . . . a second storm, more powerful than the first . . . 40 mph winds and fifteen foot waves and coincided with the year's extreme high tides.
"The storm built up quickly in the late afternoon, too late to move the crane off the pier before quitting time. . . . The first hint of trouble came at 8:30 pm when the pier began vibrating and beams began to fall into the raging surf. Members of the City Council were informally meeting in the Moby's Dock Restaurant when Don Arnett, chief of Parks and Recreation, ordered it closed. . . .
"As the huge waves began to pound relentlessly against the weakened pilings, they snapped one by one until the huge thirty ton crane toppled into the surf at 10:45 p.m. The sea then used the crane as a battering ram to smash the pier further and further back towards shore. Within fifteen minutes, just before the tide reached its peak at 11:06 p.m., Peterson's boat launch crane, the Santa Monica Fishing building, a rest room, 160 feet of pier deck, three cars, and a large refrigerator truck were swept into the sea.
" . . .
"Damage to the pier was many times worse than from the first storm. . . . Debris was stacked ten foot high on the beach south of the pier all the way to Pico Blvd. . . .
" . . . President Reagan surveyed the damage from a U.S. Marine helicopter. The coast was declared a federal emergency area for the second time . . .
"Assemblyman Tom Hayden* and County Supervisor Dean Dana . . .
" . . . Mayor Ruth Goldway* . . .
" . . ." p. 159
" . . .The Pier Restoration Corporation, a non-profit [which Christine Reed and David Epstein voted against]" p. 160
"The city, in an effort to show the public that the business end of the Santa Monica Pier still stood, scheduled . . . "Save the Santa Monica Pier Week." . . .
"The opening ceremony on May 23rd featured thirty Arabian horses and numerous celebrities. Mayor Ken Edwards welcomed a crowd of five hundred . . .
"The pier hosted thousands who wandered through the art exhibit and crafts fair, watched street entertainers, or listened to the twenty bands . . . a Baby Contest; Pie Eating Contest; Build a Pier contest; hoola hoops and boogie board contests, and a kite festival staged by Colors of the Wind.
". . . a film festival that featured movies that were filmed on the pier: Elmer Gantry, 1960; Inside Daisy Clover, 1965, The Sting, 1973 and 1941, 1979. In the La Monica tent, dancing. A Salute to the Pier, by Ry Cooder, bluesman, singer Christine McVie from Fleetwood Mac, Billy Burnett's Band with drummer Mick Fleetwood, Blue Indigo, 50's swing, and an all-star comedy show led by Buck Henry. On Sunday, the L.A. Chamber Ballet and Ollie Mitchell's Sunday Band." p. 161
" . . .
"On September 13, 1983, the City Council appointed twelve candidates to an expanded board. David O'Malley, who was later elected Chairman, was an architect and president of Welton Beckett Associates, Herb Katz was an architect, and Mary Houha, was a planner with the L.A. City Community Development Agency. Local businessmen included David Anderson, president of General Telephone, Chris Harding, an attorney, and Wayne Wilson, a management consultant. Other members were Ruth Goldway*, former Mayor of Santa Monica, Judy Abdo*, Ernie Powell*, Henry Custis*, and William Spurgin."
" . . ." p. 162