WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2012
Volume 12 Issue 27
Santa Monica Daily Press
LOHAN HEADS BACK TO COURT SEE PAGE 3
We have you covered
THE ON THE MEND ISSUE
Competing hotels differ over landmark status BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD Daily Press Staff Writer
CITY HALL Local property owners rarely get involved in landmark proceedings except in an attempt to evade them, but a move to
designate a portion of the Fairmont Miramar Hotel has proven the exception to the rule. In an unusual move, the ownership of the 85-year-old hotel requested a landmark designation for select elements of its site,
Daniel Archuleta daniela@smdp.com
PARK IT: A parking meter on Main Street.
Parking meters strike again BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD Daily Press Staff Writer
BAY STREET New technologies come with a learning curve and Santa Monica’s “smart” parking meters are no different, but that’s a hard pill to swallow when you’re on the wrong end of a $53 parking ticket. That’s where San Francisco resident Lisa Steinborn found herself on Nov. 20 when she returned to her car on Bay Street after a walk and found the telltale envelope on her windshield. The time was 12:30 p.m., and she’d paid $10 to keep the spot for another two and a half hours. “You have a digital meter. That’s supposed to be an upgrade from analog,” Steinborn said. Steinborn is not the first to have a run-in with the updated parking meters, which have been in place in Santa Monica since last year. A friend who lives in Santa Monica has also had time mysteriously disappear off the clock, Steinborn said. Another woman contacted the Daily Press several months ago to report problems with the Parkmobile smartphone app that landed her with a pricey ticket as well. City officials have been hearing about it, too. “We have occasional complaints about meters resetting before the paid time expires,” said Don Patterson, assistant director of the Finance Department. “We continuously track complaints and work with our staff and meter company to resolve any known issues to keep the error rate as low as possible.” Staff calculated the error rate over two
SEE LANDMARK PAGE 9
Suicide forces boulevard closure BY DAILY PRESS STAFF
BREAK FAST
Daniel Archuleta daniela@smdp.com Peace activist Jerry Rubin (right) is fed a piece of birthday cake by his wife Marissa on Tuesday to celebrate his 69th birthday. The bite of cake was the first food Rubin has had in 24 weeks. He had been fasting in support of 'Chain Reaction,' a Civic Center sculpture that city officials say is in need of repairs. Rubin and a group of activists have been trying to raise the funding needed to repair the landmarked towering sculpture.
SEE METERS PAGE 8
Your Santa Monica Plumber Call
and the competing Huntley Hotel has jumped into the fray to push the Landmarks Commission to go even further. Representatives of the Fairmont Miramar Hotel hope to extend an existing designation for the historic Moreton Bay fig tree to include the Palisades Wing of the complex and a 50-foot buffer around the building. Furthermore, the ownership requested that the contiguous nature of the parcel underneath the hotel — the only block in Santa Monica that remains whole — also be preserved. Landmark status does not benefit the owners, but they felt it was necessary to do right by the historic nature of the property and the community’s wishes, said Alan Epstein, an executive with MSD Capital, which owns the hotel. The owners have stuck to the script laid out by the 2010 Land Use and Circulation Element, an historic assessment created by noted historian and architect Robert Chattel and extensive community outreach, he said. “Those three pillars have guided all of our planning over the last three years,” Epstein said.
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SANTA MONICA BLVD A man committed suicide in a car Tuesday morning, forcing police to shut down a stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard for three hours. People near the 1500 block of Santa Monica Boulevard called 9-1-1 at 9:26 a.m. to report a gunshot. Police responded to the scene and found an adult male in his 50s dead in the car, said Sgt. Richard Lewis, spokesperson for the Santa Monica Police Department. Officials would not identify the man. Police reopened the road at 12:30 p.m., Lewis said. news@smdp.com
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