Council Cleans House: Street Performers, Beach Club, Appointments and Preferential Parking All Part of a Long Night's Work

By Jorge Casuso

Wednesday, July 21 -- In a drill-like effort to clean house, the City Council Tuesday night wrapped up a street performer's ordinance, gave the go ahead for a refurbished beach club, filled a dozen vacancies on boards and commissions and still had time to approve a new permit parking zone before adjourning - well after midnight.

Amidst some shouts and threats from the audience, the council unanimously approved an emergency ordinance requiring that street performers and vendors - who were quickly cut short at the podium if they had nothing to add to last week's public hearing - rotate every two-hours on the Third Street Promenade and the Santa Monica Pier.

The ordinance also requires that street performers:

· Maintain a distance between each other of 35 feet on the pier and 40 feet on the promenade.
· Display no more than five performance-related items for sale.
· Limit table sizes to 8 feet by 4 feet and chairs to no more than two.
· Set up no more than they can carry in one trip.

The ordinance -- which was sugar-coated by extending the curfew from 10:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. - also provides funding for a monitor who can cite offenders for infractions.

Council members said the ordinance is far more lenient than the one it replaces, which required hourly rotations at peak hours (a requirement performers said was rarely enforced) and banned the sale of goods (only donations could be accepted). The ordinance, council members noted, also is more liberal than a proposal to assign spots by lottery.

"We're saying, 'You can now stay, you can now sell, you can be there all day, just share the good spaces," said Councilman Michael Feinstein, who led the effort to craft the new measure. "We can all grow up and share all that wonderful area if we give a little bit."

But the dozen street performers who spoke - or tried to speak - said the ordinance was an affront to free speech and warned that rotating spots every two hours would create chaos during peak hours, when as many as 12,000 visitors can gather on a one-block stretch of the promenade.

"It is unsafe, unfair, unenforceable, uncreative and uncool," said free speech advocate Jerry Rubin, who said he would embark on a hunger strike in protest.

"I don't believe this is an emergency ordinance," said Naomi Snyder. "The real emergency, the crisis, is that there is no more quaintness in the city, no more heart. It's like Disneyland. Pretty soon it's going to be like another fancy schmantzy mall."

But singer songwriter Ned Landin, who helped broker the ordinance, said the measure -- which is one of the most liberal in the nation - fairly balances the needs of the city and performers.

Councilman Ken Genser agreed. He said the ordinance was fair and chided protesters for being selfish.

"I am dismayed people feel they have a constitutional right to take part of the public street and not let anybody else use it," Genser said. "I personally am dismayed that people don't see that they don't own the whole sandbox."

In a separate action, the council approved a preferential parking zone for the area bounded by Santa Monica Boulevard, Centinela Avenue, Colorado Avenue and Yale Street after more than a dozen residents complained that the Nessah Hebrew Academy was using up much of the neighborhood parking. Before the 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekday restriction takes effect, two-thirds of the households on the affected blocks must sign petitions.

A more restrictive 24-hour parking ban, however, was approved for the 1500 block of Franklin, whose residents had already submitted the necessary signatures. Than ban exempts the spaces in front of the temple, which stretches across half of the block.

Residents of the 1400 block, as well as the blocks on Broadway and Colorado adjoining 14th and 15th streets, also can petition for similar 24-hour restrictions, but they must first gather petitions from two-thirds of the households.

"They have an acute problem of a very apparently insensitive neighbor," said Genser.

Neighbors complained that the temple often holds parties and receptions that last late into the night causing constant disturbances. Valet attendants park cars in alleys and take spots in front of houses, neighbors said.

"They have taken over the entire streets," said Mary Rose Mascarenas.

"There's such an overflow, and it's making us go crazy," said another nearby resident. "It's killing us, we need some relief."

Representatives of the temple were not present at the meeting.

"This is not a particularly cooperative institution," said planning director Suzanne Frick. Frick added that there was little the city could do about events at the building because the religious institution had "an existing, non-conforming use that has existed since 1958," when it was a Seventh Day Adventist Church.

The preferential parking vote split the Santa Monicans for Renters Rights majority on the council, some of whom admitted a similar measure on 23rd and 24th Streets near Wilshire Boulevard was too restrictive. The two streets are often nearly empty on weekdays, when nearby businesses say parking is at a premium.

"In retrospect we made a mistake and went too far," said Feinstein, who voted against the parking zone Tuesday, saying a 24-hour ban on both sides of 15th Street was too restrictive.

"I do have a concern that in reaction, we not over-reserve," said Councilman Kevin McKeown, who voted for the measure.

In separate action, the council green lighted a proposal to renovate the old Sand and Sea Club at 415 PCH. The proposal will turn the breathtaking site beneath the bluffs of the palisades at the northern edge of the city site into a combination park, community center and banquet hall.

The $10 million project would be bankrolled with a $2.5 million capital contribution from the city and $7.5 in public debt financing. The lion's share of the annual operating costs are expected to be covered with revenues from the banquet hall - which will be rented out for private functions -, from some of the 300 parking spaces and from the lease of beach concessions. The city is expected to contribute a $250,000 a year subsidy.

At the start of the meeting, the council made appointments to a dozen boards and commissions. As was widely anticipated, the SMRR super majority appointed three new members to the powerful planning commission, which oversees development in the city. They are former councilman Kelly Olsen, former city planner Susan White and Darrell Clarke, a member of the North of Montana Neighborhood Association.

The appointees will replace Frank Gruber and Kathy Weremiuk, who had sought re-appointments, and Bert Bradley, who did not.

Among the other major appointees was Joan Charles, a designer who will sit on the Architectural Review Board, which is embarking on the task of deciding which of the city's more than 1,000 non-conforming signs will be exempt from the sign ordinance that goes into effect in April.

At the end of the meeting, supporters of eight longtime members of the Virginia Avenue Park Advisory Board ousted by the City's Recreation and Parks Commission asked the council to investigate the purge.

The main target was Clyde Smith, who started the group as an informal gathering of neighbors on a Virginia Park bench 17 years ago.

"We generally believe that the actions of removing us from the board were retaliatory because of our long, active and vocal desire to have a park that represents varied interests of the entire community," Smith said. "We ask now that you intercede and let us finish the work that has been evidently important to both us and the community."

The council voted to ask staff to investigate the members' removal. The advisory board currently is completing a public process to plot the expansion of the park near the corner of Virginia Avenue and Cloverfield Boulevard.