There will be a re-hearing of the exclusion motion which was quickly passed last month allowing the property at 520 Venice Way at the corner of Venice Blvd. to be sold without a public hearing in our community. The re-hearing will be at the Venice Neighborhood Council general meeting on October 21, 2008, 7:00 PM at Westminster Elementary School in the Auditorium. The re-hearing will give the public an opportunity to speak to the issue of excluding the sale of the property from the public hearing process. The school is located at 1010 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice, 90291. Parking is available, enter on Westminster.

Whether you plan to show up at the public hearing on 10/21 or not, you can send an email to the board giving them time to consider your view point on this issue. The following link is a special group email address (board@venicenc.org) that will send your message to all the board members at once.

Some background about 520 Venice Way

As seen on the LA Curbed.com website, the community became aware of the City's plans to auction this site off.

A story that was first released on the Curbed website prompted community member Dennis Hathaway (president of the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight) to introduce at the Land Use and Planning Committee (LUPC 08/27/2008 Item 7.A) the City's intent to sell what they termed "Surplus Property", parcels of land located within the Venice area.

No one on the LUPC panel was aware of any public meeting where these sales had been heard. As a result, the panel made the following motion to the Venice Neighborhood Council Board of Officers: (or click here for minutes on the VNC website)

"I move that the VNC Board of Officers move to recommend to Council Office 11 that all proposed sales of city-owned real property in Venice be submitted to the Land Use and Planning Committee so that the committee can hear public testimony and make recommendations on what it deems the best use of the property, and that all presently pending sales of such property be suspended until LUPC and the VNC Board have submitted a recommendation to the Council District 11 office." The LUPC motion was made by Dennis Hathaway and seconded by Arnold Springer; LUPC vote was 7-1-0.

Since the LUPC motion on September 27th, the original motion was revised (minutes don't refelct by whom) to read:

"Amended to exclude 520 Venice Way/N. Venice Bl., set to be auctioned in 11/08 but for all proceeds of that sale to only go to the Venice Surplus Property Fund, and specifically a sub escrow solely for parking mitigation in Venice"

There was no public comment on this issue and, although it was included in the public notification on the September 16, 2008 meeting of the Board of Officers agenda, almost no one in the community was aware of the underlying consequences that were being proposed.

The lot in question at 520 Venice Way was fenced off by James Murez and cleaned up as a requirement of his being able to plant 650 native trees along Venice Blvd. in the early 1990's. The lot was used as a staging property to house the tools and plants that were then installed on the boulevard. During this period of Murez's tree planting phase, he managed to sponsor 42 other street tree planting efforts around the Venice area. The plantings also included greening five schools and three parks, not including the tree in the Windward Circle. In total, this lot at 520 Venice Way made it possible for him to stage over 1400 trees that were installed in our community in the early and mid '90's.

In the years that followed the plantings, Murez used the lot to raise clippings from native plants that were later planted as ground cover along Venice Blvd. He also created a water tanker that was pulled behind his truck to water many of the 1400 trees on a biweekly cycle. The tanker trailer and truck were parked on the lot during the five year watering commitment he made to the City, a mandatory condition imposed by the City before he was allowed to plant the trees.

The lot also had several other very important uses for the community. It provided neighborhood plantings and tree maintenance events a home base, a place for volunteers to meet before taking the pull-a-long wagons with materials and hand tools out into the community. Also, for many years, the City used this lot along with Murez as a gathering spot for the Summer Youth At Risk programs, as a permanent address with a bathroom where the kids reported to before being sent out into the community to help beautify Venice. Their work included trash removal, sweeping the walk streets, pulling weeds, trimming trees and collecting litter from the Venice Canals, in addition to installing replacement trees for those few locations that had not survived their initial planting.

Since these efforts, Murez and other community groups have attempted to have this lot designated as a community garden or used as a nursery to raise and maintain plants for the community open spaces.

A few years ago, the City took over the lot. When Councilwoman Miscikowski took office, she realized the benefits of the work Murez and others had done and how the lot facilitated all sorts of wonderful community volunteer efforts. So, she asked the City General Services Department to enter into a contract with the community to preserve the lot for community use to provide landscape maintenance in Venice. However, a month later, the present councilman took office and placed a hold on the contract. The lot has sat vacant ever since.

What should happen with the lot now? Besides Murez and most of the community wanting it for a landscape maintenance / nursery yard, some folks, including Suzann Thomas and a group she is working with, would like to use it for a neighborhood garden, while others think it could serve as an ideal location to restore an historic Red Car railroad line passenger car that would later serve as a visitor serving center. The site could also house a public restroom if the hours were restricted to not impose on the neighbors who live around this site.

Who is the opposition is not clear but Councilman Bill Rosendahl in particular, feels that selling the lot to raise money to build a parking structure is a better use of the property. Rumor has it, the lot may fetch as much as $1,300,000.00 in this depressed market.

Mike Newhouse, President of the Venice Neighborhood Council, has said that the funds from the sale will be held in the same Surplus Property Account that was created in the days of Councilwoman Galanter. The account, which was established by an LA City Council motion and approved by the Mayor in the late 1980's, had $18,000,000.00 in it just a few years ago. These funds, which were generated by the sale of lots in the Venice Canals and Ocean Front Walk, were being held in the special account to improve our community. The ordinance that created the account limited the City from spending the funds outside the Venice area. Fast forward, budget crunch and the funds have disappeared. No improvement, no parking structures along Electric Ave as promised, nothing but waving of hands and lip service as to where the funds have gone.

And even if the depressed property market does not matter to the City as a time NOT to sell, let's consider that no plans have been created at present to use the funds. Furthermore, 1.5 million dollars is not nearly enough to build the promised parking structures, so where are the rest of the funds going to come from?

Again, we ask the question, should this property at 520 Venice Way be sold at the auction block by the City in November or should the community be given the opportunity to have a public hearing to voice their opinion as to the dispossession of this potential resource?

Below is a photo of a community garden operated by the Central Hollywood Neighborhood Council - What a unique concept!

Thank you for taking the time and for caring to visit this story. By James Murez 10/12/2008