Retail developer Caruso targeting airports, including LAX

Reported by the Daily Breeze

Developer Rick Caruso is looking to expand his retail empire to airports across the country, including Los Angeles International.

John Cugasi, a former director of concessions at Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, was hired Monday to serve as vice president for airports, a new position that was created at Los Angeles-based Caruso Affiliated.

Caruso oversaw construction of the Grove outdoor shopping mall in Los Angeles and the Americana at Brand in Glendale. Airport insiders speculated that Caruso's penchant for new developments may lead to a bid for lucrative concession contracts at LAX's Tom Bradley International Terminal, which is undergoing a massive $1.5 billion makeover scheduled for completion by mid-2013.

Airport officials are expected later this year to put out a call for bids from companies interested in operating shops and restaurants inside Terminals 1, 2, 3, 6 and the Bradley Terminal.

"With travelers spending more time in terminals, airport authorities realize the financial value of offering something special because people are more willing to spend if you provide style, quality and service," Caruso said in a written statement.

        

A micro-quake struck the Baldwin Hills and Culver City areas at 8:33 p.m. Saturday, March 6, 2010, seismologists said Sunday.

A micro-quake with an estimated magnitude of 2.2 struck the Baldwin Hills and Culver City areas at 8:33 p.m. Saturday, seismologists said Sunday.

More than 100 people signed onto the USGS Web site to report feeling the temblor at 8:33 p.m. Most of them were in the area along La Cienega Boulevard between the Santa Monica 10 Freeway and Century Boulevard.

Automated sensors placed the epicenter one mile east of downtown Culver City. That area includes the northern-most trace of the Newport-Inglewood fault, which killed 120 people in the 6.2 magnitude Long Beach earthquake of 1933.

        

** Playa Vista VILLAGE ACTION ALERT **

Wednesday night, March 3, more than 350 Playa Vista residents came together in a tremendous show of support and unity in urging Councilman Bill Rosendahl to pledge his support for the Village plan that was already approved unanimously by the City Planning Commission. SADLY, ROSENDAHL REFUSED. HE CHOSE NOT TO STAND WITH US.

On Tuesday, March 9, at 2 p.m. at City Hall, the City Council will cast its first vote on the Village.

Video and details at www.playavistatoday.com

        

Saturday, March 13, the Four-Legged Friends Foundation hosts its first St. Patrick's Day block party for dogs and their people in Culver City on the 11800 block of Teale Street. The block party is a fundraiser for the group and includes a "Pinups for Pups" fashion show, a dog costume contest, pet-themed vendors and animal-loving celebrity guests including host Debra Skelton (MADtv). Cost is $25 and includes the price of admission for your leashed, well-behaved dog. For $50, you and your dog can have access not just to the block party, but also to a private VIP party in the adjacent Zoom Room agility training center. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit FLFF.org.

        

Campus at Playa Vista

12045 Waterfront Drive, Playa Vista, CA 90094

        

Steven Matilla, ERA Matilla Realty

We have dedicated outselves, since 1989, to provide our customers with superior service backed by performance guarantees. Our intimate knowledge of local property values is merged with extensive experience and expertise so that our customers procure the best deal possible.

310-305-8000 x101

225 Culver Blvd.
Playa del Rey
90293
www.lawestconnect.com

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Interior Decorating of Electronic Arts, Inc. Playa Vista, CA ...

 
All the image of Electronic Arts, Inc. Playa Vista, CA could be seen at HLW. Interior Decorating of Electronic Arts, Inc. Playa Vista, CA.

        

L.A. City Council planning committee to review recirculated EIR for the Village at Playa Vista

by The Argonaut

One of the most anticipated environmental analyses in recent years will soon be heard by a Los Angeles City Council committee that will help decide whether the second stage of a Westside development will gain steam or lose traction.

The recirculated environmental impact report for the Village, Playa Vista’s commercial component of its planned community structure, will come before the city’s Land Use and Planning Committee Tuesday, March 9th.

Playa Capital, the developers of the Village and Phase I, the residential component of the affluent bedroom community, are confident that their document has covered all the necessary bases, and hailed the support of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.

“There is tremendous support citywide for the passage of the Village,” said Steven Sugerman, a Playa Vista spokesman. “The big boost of support, especially from an organization like the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, is indicative of the support for job creation and economic development.”

Sugerman said the project would create approximately 7,000 new jobs and “hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and property tax revenues over the years.”

The Village, which will feature 2,600 residential units, 175,000 square feet of office space, and 150,000 square feet of retail space, was approved by the City Council in 2005. But local environmental groups quickly filed legal action against the EIR and an appellate court sided with the plaintiffs, striking down an earlier lower court ruling upholding the environmental analysis.

The court found that the analysis was deficient in three areas: land use impacts, mitigation of impacts on historical archaeological resources and wastewater impacts.

The recirculated EIR was made public in September, four years after the appellate court stripped the project of its approvals.

María Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the labor federation, has indicated that her union will lobby for the committee to approve the EIR, which will then move to the City Council.

“We request that the City Council and the Department of City Planning move quickly to revise the three sections of the EIR as required by the court to bring the matter to the City Council for approval,” Durazo wrote in a letter last month to City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who represents Playa Vista. “Playa Vista represents great public policy and is an important center for quality union jobs and union investment.”

The Neighborhood Council of Westchester-Playa has overwhelmingly given its support to the Village, voting 18-2 last year in favor of the project.

“The Village will have a positive effect on property values, and the impact of well-paying jobs coming to the area cannot be understated,” said David Voss, a member of the council’s land use and planning committee. “Attracting these well-paying jobs is also very good for the local economy.”

Opponents of the project are still hoping that city planners will listen to their objections to the Village.

“I don’t think (the committee) should approve the EIR until Phase I is complete and fully occupied,” said Marcia Hanscom, co-director of the Ballona Institute, a Playa del Rey-based organization that works to preserve the Ballona Wetlands. “(Playa Vista) says that they will have open space, but if it’s not contiguous, it doesn’t help the wildlife (in Phase II).”

Sabrina Venskus, the attorney who won the 2007 appeal, says the council should wait until after the budget hearings have subsided before they consider re-examining the EIR.

“I have a hard time understanding how the council can focus on one of the most important land use issues of our times in the middle of a budget crisis,” Venskus said. “I cannot fathom why they’re trying to address this important project now.”

Venskus, who lives in Venice, said the approach that the City Council has taken regarding many pending projects is to table them, and the reason given is that it is working on arguably its most pressing matter — reducing its $212 million budget deficit.

“Every time we try to bring other projects before the council, we’re told that there’s no time to hear them until after the budget (has been adopted),” she said.

Durazo also touched on the economic impact that the second stage of the project would bring.

“The Village phase alone represents more than $2 million of direct investments in Los Angeles and is expected to create more than 5,000 union construction jobs and hundreds of apprenticeships,” she said.

Hanscom feels that there are questions surrounding Native American remains in Phase II that she says have not been fully addressed.

“That’s a very big problem,” Hanscom said. “In my view, they should be reburied in Phase II, where they were discovered.”

Playa Vista agreed in 2008 to inter thousands of Native American ancestral remains after a protracted standoff with the Gabrieleno/Tongva tribe, which once inhabited the region below the bluffs of Loyola Marymount University and as far west as the Ballona Wetlands in what is now Playa del Rey.

The tribe’s most likely descendant Robert Dorame and Playa Vista reached an accord brokered by Rosendahl to rebury the remains below LMU during a ceremony attended by hundreds of tribal members, environmentalists and city and state officials.

H.L. Boihem, who moved to Playa Vista in 2006, thinks the time has come to build the second stage of the planned community.

“There’s been so many challenges to the Village,” Boihem said. “There comes a time when you have to stop the divergence and start the convergence.”

Voss agrees.

“There are those who wish that everything would stay underdeveloped, but that’s not very realistic,” he said. “I respect (Playa Vista’s opponents’) fervent desire to do whatever they can to stop this exemplary project, but I think at this point they’re grasping at straws.”

Venskus reiterated her desire to see the city postpone the review of Phase II.

“This is the largest privately owned undeveloped parcel in the city,” she noted. “There’s too much going on with the budget for the council to focus on this important issue.”

But residents like Boihem have encouraged Rosendahl to support the mixed-use project.

“My expectation is given the circumstances that we are in today, I would like to have him help us get what we want,” said the Playa Vista resident.

The City Council is slated to review the EIR for the Village later this month.

        

Conan O'Brien tweets about french fries, jumbo shrimp

I just had the fries at the McDonald's in Culver City near the Lady Foot Locker. SO AWESOME. If you can get there, ORDER THOSE FRIES.

Yesterday, he posted the photo above with the following:  

This is how many people it took to write today's tweet: "Jumbo" shrimp?

        

Win or lose at the Oscars this weekend, "Avatar" is already assured of its place in Hollywood history, a 3-D milestone to rank alongside the arrival of sound in the 1920s or color in the 1930s.

Director James Cameron's science-fiction blockbuster has already redefined the art of special effects on its way to becoming the highest-grossing film of all time, raking in more than two billion dollars worldwide since its release.

James Cameron had to wait more than a decade for technology to catch up with his imagination, but when it did the results were spectacular, a visually stunning masterpiece which has been nominated for nine Academy Awards.

The American Film Institute has lauded "Avatar" as a "pioneering effort to unleash the human imagination... a film that has firmly established itself as a landmark in the way stories are told."

Set in the year 2154, "Avatar" tells the story of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic former Marine who is sent to live among the Na'vi, a humanoid race of blue aliens living on the exotic Earth-like moon, Pandora.

When Sully falls in love with a Na'vi native he rebels against his human controllers, leading them in a rebellion to save their way of life.

The film's pro-environment, anti-imperialist storyline has attracted criticism from conservatives but Cameron remains unapologetic.

"It's not an Oliver Stone-style bludgeon-you-over-the-head political film but it does have a political subtext," said Cameron, who is nominated for best director 12 years after he won the award for "Titanic."

Cameron was able to bring the world of Pandora and the Na'vi to life courtesy of experimental, state-of-the-art, "performance capture" cameras which the film-maker had helped to invent.

Working under blanket secrecy out of a giant converted warehouse in the Los Angeles suburb of Playa Vista, the cast of "Avatar" were rigged in bodysuits covered with small sensors, allowing 140 cameras to capture every movement.

Additionally, a tiny camera fixed to each actor's head allowed Cameron to record every muscle movement or expression in their faces. That information was then passed to animators who helped transform actors into Na'vi.

After this painstaking process was complete, animators then examined video of the actors in each scene to ensure that their Na'vi doubles accurately reflected every nuance of their performance.

Cameron barely took a day off for five years after production on his masterpiece got underway.

"It turned out to be more labor-intensive than expected," Cameron has said. "I took a day off about once every seven weeks, when I started slurring my words. I got the swine flu -- I took half day off for that."

Cameron's reputation for attention to detail is reflected in the research which went into creating the world of Pandora and the Na'vi.

University of Southern California linguistics expert Paul Frommer was hired to invent an entire language, a process which took months just to settle on rules for a basic grammatical structure.

"He didn't just tell me to build a language from scratch. He actually wanted to discuss points of grammar," said Frommer, who drafted an instruction manual -- "Speak Na'vi" -- used to teach actors.

Meanwhile every animal on Pandora were given Na'vi, Latin and common names, while an expert in botany from the University of California was hired to provide detailed scientific descriptions of plants created in the film.

Other experts hired for the film included an astrophysicist, a music professor, and an archaeologist.

Finally a team of writers and editors helped distill all this information -- most of which is never mentioned in the film -- into a 350-page manual dubbed the Pandorapedia, explaining the culture and science of the planet.