Far too downscale for the proud, 10,000-strong neighborhood of Fox Hills. Yet another lower-middle class Target department store — that would be three within easy range — is not only disappointing, it is insulting, the exact reverse of what was promised, according to neighbors employing unapologetic language. Three angry residents of Fox Hills ignited a firestorm on Monday night at the Redevelopment Agency meeting. With matching eloquence and fury, they lashed out at the rumored intentions of the owners of the Fox Hills Mall to make Target, one of the blue-collar survivors of the department store wars, the anchor tenant of the vastly renovated mall. Worst of all, the neighbors concurred, a downscale Target would lower their property values, just at a time when blossoming Playa Vista, for example, is bringing a golden sheen to their section of the Westside. One wit in the audience compared the prospect of Target to bringing an ugly date to the Senior Prom. The fact that Target is not (yet?) fact is not deterring aroused critics. The fact that discouraging reports are wafting through the curving, sun-splashed streets of Fox Hills was enough to motivate Laura Shorlowsky of the Fox Hills Neighborhood Assn., and the residents Henrietta Algaba and Richard Beaver to carry their protests into Council Chambers to the source of political power.
Fox Hills Neighborhood Association Newsletter
Fox Hills Neighborhood Association
PO Box 4064
Culver City, CA 90231
Cell 310.991.4263
Fax 310.861.0207
E-Mail: aboutfoxhills@comcast.net
Website: http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/culver/fxna/main.html
NEWSLETTER August 3, 2006
REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY MEETING
Are you opposed to Target being an anchor store at the soon to be expanded Fox Hills Mall? Instead, would you like to have a greater variety of upscale retailers like the ones we see in Century City and Santa Monica? If yes, then please join us as we voice our opinions before the Culver City Redevelopment Agency at 7pm on Monday, August 7 at City Hall located at 9770 Culver Blvd. There is strength in numbers and we hope to see you there!
Running Toward a Dead End
Because the 230-year-old U.S. Constitution grants the express permission, the Redevelopment Agency tonight will move within one step of officially seizing four properties owned by businessman Les Surfas even though Mr. Surfas has resisted all three of the City Hall’s offers. The Agency will vote 5 to 0 or 4 to 1 at tonight’s 7 o’clock meeting in Council Chambers to effectively lift the land from the hands of Mr. Surfas until a court, probably sometime before Nov. 1, will tell City Hall it is the new owner. “You cannot beat eminent domain,” Mr. Surfas told thefrontpageonline this afternoon. But he is not going to leave without putting up his dukes first. “I guarantee you this will be an informative and entertaining evening,” he said. City Hall has spent the past five months trying to coax Mr. Surfas into surrendering his properties for that old standby, “fair market value.” Once Mr. Surfas rejected the city’s third bid — presented as the “final offer,” $4.89 million, on July 20 — his voice was effectively stilled for the duration.
Surfas Said No to $4.8 Million
One of those dramatic eminent domain-style moments — when City Hall declares in a booming voice, “We want your property” — comes up on Monday evening at 7 in Council Chambers. At a meeting of the Redevelopment Agency, a months-long negotiation stalemate between major property owner Les Surface and the city will be broken. There may be drama but there isn’t any doubt. Just like television wrestling, the final score is known in advance — in all likelihood. Unlike other Agency meetings where the outcome frequently is in doubt, the vote probably will be a fairly sterile exercise although there were will be resistance leading up to the vote. Needing four votes out of five, the Redevelopment Agency is expected cast its five ballots overwhelmingly. Effectively, the Agency will be endorsing City Hall’s muscular takeover of property that Mr. Surfas owns in the name of improving — or unblighting, to coin a term — the neighborhood.
Converts to Judaism?
In the spirit of Kindness to Anti-Semites Week, perhaps the five copycat punks Long Beach police swiftly arrested for hanging out at a synagogue at 3 a.m. last Sunday were merely pondering whether to convert to Judaism. Attempted vandalism is one of the charges against the punks. Sure the boys, ranging from 18 to 23, had five buckets of paint and tagging materials. But you know how tough it has been lately working in the extreme daytime heat. At least the punks were people of class. The cops found one of them hiding out, half-dressed, shivering and cowering, at the bottom of a stinking garbage barrel. Conversion may have been on the minds of the Long Beach punks since being Jewish is the hot religion of the season. The only glitch is that people get to assault you but you can’t fight back. The “international community,” code for Muslims and traditional European anti-Semites, will accuse you of engineering a “disproportionate” response, as it has for the last four weeks with Israel. Funny, though. Liberal journalists working for liberal newspapers, being foppish types,never have asked the Jew-haters what they mean by “disproportionate.” They know there is no rational answer to the question. This refusal to press the haters is like a reporter returning from a crime scene without the name of the victim. I am reminded of attorney Stephen Rohde’s appearance before the Culver City Democratic Club last month. In his presentation, he dutifully took the words of terrorists in condemning Americans. That is pretty unbelievable.
Gun Permits for Mosque Members
One of the most closely guarded secrets in Culver City in this summer of pervasive suspicion of Muslims is the number of persons purportedly associated with the King Fahad Mosque on Washington Boulevard who have sought gun permits or renewals of gun permits. Throughout the mosque’s first decade in this community, Muslim officials have striven rigorously to remain a safe distance plus one mile from the limelight. By design, they never make news in Culver City. The last time they attracted more than a sliver of attention was five years ago this autumn. Days after 9/11, the King Fahad hosted an assembly of a rainbow of religious leaders and law enforcement types. They participated in a well-publicized display of brotherhood while crooning Kumbaya. Apparently, the gun permit applicants claiming to be “associated” with the King Fahad have received their permits, as requested. Since an updated state regulation says that law enforcement agencies only may issue gun permits to persons living within their jurisdiction, police sources said applicants have been forced to become creative on their application sheets. Multiple applicants from the mosque reportedly have resorted to chicanery by listing as their home a single address on a street adjacent to the mosque. One explanation may be that since the mosque serves residents of numerous nearby communities, a common address was their only solution. Another explanation simply may be that members of the mosque, fearing for their safety, are arming themselves.
Answering an Errant Colleague
Even if you never had heard of Israel or the Jewish people, it would have been child’s play yesterday to identify exactly where my colleague Frederik Sisa jumped off the rails in his rant against war and against Israel in particular. Thirteen of Mr. Sisa’s first 14 sentences demonstrated his disappointing, but unsurprising, unwillingness to engage the world. Often a model of crystallized thinking, Mr. Sisa gives in to his reflexive feckless liberal tendencies. He surrenders, instead, to base emotions, the spinal column of liberal doctrine. Blindly, he swings a coarse club against war, against religion, and especially against Israel. These are the first three commandments to which all modern liberals must pledge unswerving fealty or face unattractive expulsion, the price that Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) is paying this summer. Theoretically, Democrats are as smart as Republicans. But, being liberals, they are required to soak all of their feelings in a pool of cynicism before presenting them publicly. Perennial cynicism makes it easier for liberals to be anti, to be against what the other side stands for instead of offering a counter proposal. Chronic cynicism discourages the development of ideas.
The Words of a Slave in Church
 Ms. Tourse |
This was the final chance to visit with the engaging activist/actress Anike Tourse before she steps into the sanctuary of the Culver-Palms United Methodist Church on Sunday evening to deliver her one-woman performance of a slave who became a heroine. Ms. Tourse, born not many years ago in Boston of a Jewish mother and a black father, probably is a natural for the portrayal she has been giving for the last 15 years on three continents. She is basking in her homegrown multiculturalism. And she strongly insists she is glad she was not born into a single dominant ethnicity. Don’t you wish you were one or the other? her interrogator awkwardly asked, and she erased any skepticism with a punchy “No.” She grew up in church and in synagogue, adding one more dimension to her steadily expanding personality. She started out to be an actress.
Why Didnt He Take His Own Advice?
I am sorry that Bud Furillo, my old sports editor at the defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, did not embrace his own oblique advice and quit sportswriting in favor of a wider career in journalism. Given his powerful gifts for brashness, flamboyance and flashpoint writing, he could have become a major smokestack in latter-day journalism. Instead, his final column before his death was about a prizefighter named Windmill.
Dem Club Tries a Vanquishing Act
Determined to unequivocally state its unimpeachable views about impeachment of President Bush and the Iraqi War, the Culver City Democratic Club passed two resolutions last week. The objective of both is to force both to vanish, the sooner the better. Each resolution also was toned down from its initial crafting. Contending that more than 80 percent of Iraqis oppose the presence of coalition troops, the Democratic Club declared in one resolution that the U.S. should reclaim the momentum by stopping the fighting. Preferring a more generic path, the resolution said it was up to the U.S. “to take the initiative” by ending “this tragic war that our government started.” It was unclear whether the intention of the following sentence, which called for this country to “say no to war,” meant no to all war or just the Iraqi conflict.