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CityWatch Los Angeles
Politics. Perspective. Participation.
GELFAND’S WORLD--Saturday was full of irony. The Los Angeles Times published an editorial that raised red flags about the way the city's elected officials are trying to sneak through a large pay raise for employees of the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP). The Times had previously published a story by David Zahniser and Dakota Smith revealing the sordid details.
NEW GEOGRAPHY--Amazon’s stunning acquisition last week of Whole Foods signaled an inflection point in the development of retail, notably the $800 billion supermarket sector. The massive shift of retail to the web is beginning to claw into the last remaining bastions of physical space. In the last year alone, 50,000 positions were lost in the retail sector, and as many as 6 million jobs could be vulnerable nationwide in the long term. Store closings are running at a rate higher than during the Great Recession.
CALBUZZ SPECIAL REPORT--Imagine losing days, weeks, or months of your life rotting in a jail cell even though, in the United States, you’re supposed to be presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
DEEGAN ON LA-The parallels are uncannily similar: two different parts of LA, each beginning with an important, historical movie footprint and evolving into a land use bonanza. Century City, once the very busy 20th Century Fox backlot (and before that a ranch belonging to western silent movie icon Tom Mix), became a real estate behemoth studded with skyscrapers, traffic congestion, and high prices. Central Hollywood, once a folksy, low slung neighborhood, is about to be transformed into its own real estate behemoth with the massive proposed Crossroads of the World project. It, too, will be studded with skyscrapers, traffic congestion, and high prices.
@THE GUSS REPORT-If you live in the Valley, Mayor Eric Garcetti, City Attorney Mike Feuer and the LA City Council have taken this approach to fighting property crime: Do It Yourself.
THE CITY--On June 19, the Neighborhood Council Alliance of River Communities (ARC) welcomed Nicholas Maricich, City Director of Planning Policy and Development, and Michelle Garakian, from the Mayor’s Office of Legislative and External Affairs, to discuss details of the proposed Affordable Housing Linkage Fee Ordinance.
WHAT WAS HE THINKING?--Advocates of the single-payer healthcare proposal which has been steadily advancing through the California legislature were voicing outrage and disappointment on Saturday after Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Democrat, announced he was pulling the bill from further consideration this year.
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