MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2002
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Volume 1, Issue 72
Santa Monica Daily Press Serving Santa Monica for the past 85 days
Bayside business: Boom or blunder? Some officials wonder if Bayside district has seen better days
Corporation — a non-profit organization that brings together city officials and business owners — witnesses the mayhem and quickly picks up her cell phone to get a maintenance crew to clean up the mess. Minutes later at the restaurant, Rawson presses the flesh with the owner, briefly BY ANDREW H. FIXMER continuing their conversation from earlier Special to the Daily Press that afternoon about expanding the busiIt’s a warm afternoon on the Third ness’ operation on the Promenade, hinting Street Promenade and a common scene is the deal could possibly avert yet another unfolding. A group of homeless have Starbuck’s Café. And throughout the week, Rawson will occupied the central benches between Arizona and Broadway. Bodies and litter talk with reporters from publications and television stations in the Los Angeles area, are strewn about like confetti. On her way to lunch, Kathleen Rawson, trying to convey the message that despite executive director the Bayside District recent concerns, the Promenade is still alive and kicking. “It’s really hard to summarize what I do,” she says. “A lot of people don’t understand what Bayside does, or even what I do for that matter.” Rawson wears three hats — maintenance supervisor, business manager and spokeswoman. Many city officials and downtown business owners will concede Carolyn Sackariason/Daily Press that she has come to embody the modernWater spitting dinosaurs on the Promenade were created out of a public day scope and mission of Bayside. “The problem we have right now — I input process so residents could help shape the downtown shopping mall. mean our original goals have been met against the city in an effort to protect their property owners are looming. beyond our wildest dreams — is now we property rights. A task force is currently being formed have a street that has become so successful Late last year, citing high rents as to study the problem and make recomthat it’s a victim of its own success,” said unfairly forcing out small, locally-owned mendations to the city council on possible Santa Monica City Councilman Herb Katz businesses and restaurants along Third solutions. The task force, much to the disand also a longtime Bayside member. Street, the city council enacted an ordi- may of property owners, is comprised of “The main problem now is dealing with nance that temporarily forbids any space all city officials except for one business the overly inflated high rents that have along the Promenade occupied by a representative, who has not yet been resulted from it.” selected. Bayside’s historic mission, which is to restaurant to be leased by any other type of Critics say the city has gone too far by business. bridge public and private concerns about trampling on private ownership and conDozens of restaurants have been forced downtown business in a non-partisan stitutional rights, filling Bayside with atmosphere, may be unraveling. Some say off the Promenade in recent years, with political appointees and alienating busiunrest between city officials, downtown retail chain stores taking their place. City ness owners and landlords in the process. Andrew H. Fixmer/Special to the Daily Press landlords and business owners may soon officials are worried that the Promenade is Essentially, the city is trying to regulate transforming into another suburban shopKathleen Rawson wears many hats boil over into lawsuits. as Bayside’s executive director. Landlords are gearing up for a battle ping mall. As a result, more regulations on See BAYSIDE, page 3
‘Blow’ director Demme had cocaine in his system BY DAISY NGUYEN Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES — Director Ted Demme had cocaine in his system when he collapsed and died from a heart attack on a basketball court last month, and the stimulant may have been a factor in his death, coroner’s officials said Saturday. Demme had thickened heart arteries, and died when a blood clot formed in a heart vessel. The small amount of
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cocaine in his body could have been a factor in the fatal heart attack, said Los Angeles County Coroner’s Lt. Erick Arbuthnot. “We’ve ruled it an accidental death,” Arbuthnot said. Demme, 38, was a nephew of director Jonathan Demme and directed several films himself, including last year’s drug drama “Blow.” He was also a television director and won an Emmy for co-producing the civil-rights TV movie “A Lesson
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Before Dying” in 1999. Demme was playing in a charity basketball game at Crossroads, a private school in Santa Monica, on Jan. 13 when he collapsed and died. A week later he was remembered at the 59th Golden Globe Awards when actor Kevin Spacey asked the audience to toast him. Demme is survived by his wife, Amanda ScheerDemme, and the couple’s two young children.
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