Hermosa Beach

Burger battle

Burger joint might stall development

by Robb Fulcher

A local firm’s push to replace two decades-old downtown buildings with a contemporary office complex and upscale restaurant might have hit a snag in the form of a nine-year lease.

The firm, Cardinal Investments, bought the property upon which stand the 50-year-old Hermosa Beach Donuts building and its 30-year-old neighbor, the Classic Burger building, on Hermosa Avenue near 15th Street, and announced plans to tear down those structures and build a 19,000 square-foot office building and 2,800 square-foot restaurant. In October, the City Council approved the new construction.

The donut diner received a 30-day notice to vacate the premises, and a worker said it will close its doors about the end of the month. But next door, Hank Chung, owner of Classic Burger, announced that he has nine years left on his lease, and he’s not planning to close unless he hears a better offer from Cardinal than he’s heard so far.

“I’m staying,” Chung said on Friday from his place behind the counter where he was taking customers’ orders during the noon rush. On Tuesday he described a softer line, saying he’ll stay unless a Cardinal offer persuades him otherwise.

“But they’re not talking,” he added.

Chung said he has owned Classic Burger for three years.

‘Typical’ situation

Cardinal partner Mike Flaherty, a Hermosa Avenue resident, said negotiations were continuing between attorneys for Classic Burger and Cardinal to set the price for a buy-out of Chung’s lease. Flaherty said he could not discuss the situation in detail, but described it as a normal aspect of such projects.

“This is typical in this type of project, you usually have someone who has a lease,” Flaherty said. “And it usually works out for the best.”

The donut diner operated on a month-to-month lease, Flaherty said.

He said Cardinal was in no great hurry to resolve the lease issue with Classic Burger, a rent-paying Cardinal tenant.

“It’s income for us, and he’s content to operate his business in the meantime,” Flaherty said.

Flaherty said the Cardinal project still must clear a standard regulatory hurdle before the California Coastal Commission, and must secure further city permits. He said demolition of the burger and donut diners could not begin for at least six to eight months, lease negotiations or no.

(He is not the same Mike Flaherty who serves as public works superintendent for the city of Hermosa Beach.)

The dotted line

A real estate attorney, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed surprise that Cardinal had not secured a signed agreement with the Classic Burger owner before buying the property upon which the diner stands.

“Unless the purchase of the property was on spectacular terms, very few of my clients would have gone into the purchase without having a deal with the tenant [in advance],” he said.

A “spectacular” purchase price might cause a buyer to jump on the purchase, and risk an expensive lease buy out afterward, the attorney said.

Cardinal’s plans call for a contemporary, 33-unit condo-style office complex three stories tall, with the upscale restaurant and a snack shop. The approval by the City Council would allow construction of the building, but a separate approval would be required before the restaurant would be allowed to open.

The building is being designed by the highly regarded Shop Architects of New York with help from Hermosa architect Larry Peha to keep the look Hermosa-friendly and help guide the project through the city planning process.

The building would feature storage space for surfboards and bicycles, men’s and women’s lockers and showers, and a 34-space subterranean parking garage with an entrance on 15th Street. ER

Letters to the Editor

HB to decide eatery's closure time

Next week, the Hermosa Beach City Council will decide whether Mediterraneo restaurant is to close at 2 a.m., the hour the owner would like, or midnight, the hour the Planning Commission gave him.

It will be a tough decision for council members. Most of the other restaurants on Pier Plaza enjoy the 2 p.m. closure time. If the public upholds the Planning Commission's midnight time, it would be a turning point in Hermosa. An old precedent will have been broken, and a new one set.

The hearing will be held 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall. The public can attend and speak to the item.

-- JIM LISSNER  Hermosa Beach

Sunday Letters to the Editor

HB bar plan a threat to public safety

This letter represents a plea that the Hermosa Beach Planning Commission and City Council exercise whatever influence they have to deny a permit for a 15,000-square-foot restaurant/bar at the Hermosa Pavilion. I currently own a business in Hermosa -- after 33 years in law enforcement for Los Angeles County. There was a time when I didn't think any city could have too many bars. What has happened to our little community shows me I was wrong.

The proposed monster bar at the Pavilion is not planned to meet the needs of the Hermosa drinkers. If every resident drank, we'd still have plenty of bars. It's an effort to draw drinkers and their wallets from out of the area. Make no mistake, that effort will be successful. As a former gang investigator, I found that every unsavory element imaginable between here and Riverside would find his way to the 91 freeway and drive toward the sun. That would drop them right here, about six blocks north of the proposed mega-bar.

This proposal represents a huge public safety issue ripe for a citizen's backlash. Weekend policing/patrols and 911 response times are already seriously compromised by the Pier Plaza bar scene, even when things are going smoothly. Between 1 a.m. and 2:30 a.m., I have to assume the majority of drivers here in Hermosa are drunk and trying to find their way out of town.

This bar is being planned and bankrolled by a truly interesting character, and local officials know it. He has relied on brinkmanship and foot dragging on other issues with the Pavilion, and the notion of a real, viable, restaurant is laughable. If the restaurant doesn't make him money -- which it won't -- he'll have a bigger bar. If he has entertainment, he can charge a cover, which is cash and under the radar as to reportable revenue.

In terms of planning, let's make some plans for our kids and their kids. This is not Moreno Valley. The folks who can afford to live here are bright, successful and obviously did something right with their lives, or have a trust fund. Please don't allow our elected officials to turn their backs on these people and pander to the developer and an army of horny twenty-somethings who will descend on our community. They will not be driving down here for dinner.

-- RICHARD HALLIBURTON

Hermosa Beach 

Hermosa Beach – Letters to the Editor

Audit ‘em

Dear ER:

I read with great interest last week’s letter “Drink to me thine eyes.”  I am in complete agreement with the writer’s scathing disapproval of what is happening in Hermosa Beach’s downtown bar district.  As a Hermosa Beach home owner, I am disgusted and appalled at what our fair city has become. 

All of our cops are down in the bar area.  You never see police around the rest of the city Thursday thru Sunday nights.  I hope my house isn’t being robbed because there would not be any police watching out for me.  They are all downtown stopping the fights, urinating, underage drinking, and doing their own share of checking out the chicks and admiring groupies.  It is pathetic.  Recent figures show that residential burglaries in Hermosa rose in 2004 from 137 in 2004 to 187 in 2005.  That is a whopping 36 percent.  It is no wonder, as our cops are all downtown where the fights and scenery are.

I heard recently that one homeowner who lives up the street from the pier awakened at midnight to strange noises outside his house and after looking out his window, discovered a young couple exploring their carnal knowledge on his front yard.  He turned the sprinklers on and that ended it.  He didn’t even report it to the cops.  How much of this sort of thing isn’t even added to the list of published statistics?

If I want to go downtown in my own city for a dinner on Friday night after working hard all week, I would have to wait in line behind a screaming bunch of tiny-bobs and gang bangers who live everywhere but here to get into a restaurant where the decibel level approaches the level of a jack hammer.  And then when I did get out of there with my lady without being thrown up on, leered at, and commented about, I could go home to my peaceful neighborhood…maybe.

Do I have to go to a neighboring city to eat on weekends?  Have we ever asked the ABC Board to audit those Pier bars to see if they are even paying their fair shared of city taxes?

Anonymous

Hermosa Beach

Hermosa Beach – Letters to the Editor

Drink to me with thine ayes

Dear ER:

The downtown drinking district continues to generate numerous quality of life issues and a negative image for our community.  Destruction is not limited to vandalism spilling into our neighborhoods. 

On May 25, 2006 during a candidates’ forum a resident spoke of violence (drunken brawl) that occurred in front of their home.  The victim’s scream awakened residents in the early morning hours, as the assault was in process.  I was especially distressing to witness because the victim was a woman.

The atmosphere of public intoxication, which is encouraged pay no dividends.

How unfortunate, families and children who desire to visit the beautiful beachfront and pier have to pass a throng of bars.

Hermosa’s permissive drinking policies in the downtown bar district is having a debilitating effect on our community.  The erosion of public safety touches the lives of every resident and property owner. 

Remedial action in the bar district is essential and will require significant policy changes.  The answer is not to saddle residents with more costs to support a highly undesirable section of town.

Name withheld by request

Hermosa Beach

     Hermosa Beach News

Man is killed in late night traffic crash

by Robb Fulcher

A 36-year-old Hermosa man was killed when the 'pickup truck he was driving went out of control on Sepulveda Boulevard and smashed into a metal wall outside Hotel Hermosa shortly before 1 a.m. last Wednesday, police said.

Only minutes before, the man had plowed into parked cars on two Hermosa streets, police said. He then drove the 2001 Toyota Tundra into Manhattan and was making his way south on Sepulveda where he struck some concrete trashcans on the northwest corner of the intersection with Artesia Boulevard, police said.

The pickup also struck the concrete median and knocked over a traffic light pole. The vehicle skidded sideways across part of the intersection, flipped over and went the rest of the way upside down, a passing motorist told police.

The pickup struck the wall and came to a stop upside down. The driver, who was alone in the vehicle, was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center where he died from his injuries about 6:15 a.m., Manhattan Beach Police Sgt. Bryan Klatt said.

The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office identified the man as Lance Juracka.

Hermosa police first began getting calls when the pickup hit a parked vehicle near 16th Street and Hermosa Avenue, Sgt. Tom Thompson said. As police rushed to find the motorist they got further calls saying the pickup had bashed into a parked car at about 22nd Street and Manhattan Avenue. A witness to the second crash said the parked car was pushed 50 feet down the roadway.

"All three crashes happened within six minutes of each other," Thompson said.

"We were getting calls left and right."  Some of the initial callers reported that the pickup was heading south, unintentionally throwing off police a little. Just the same, officers arrived at Artesia and Sepulveda/Pacific Coast Highway about the time the pickup got there, Thompson said. Long streaks of paint were seen at two of the crash sites, and police said the pickup appeared to be equipped for painting jobs. ER

On Local Government

The saddest rule of government

by Bob Pinzler

One of the maxims told to me about government when I was first elected to office was a simple, sad, and frustrating one: “You don’t get a crosswalk until a kid gets killed.”

The accident that occurred on PCH two weeks ago, killing a teenage boy trying to cross the street, was tragic not just because it was likely preventable. It is tragic because the need for a signaled crosswalk at that intersection has been known for years.

But, before you start blaming the city for the lack of movement on this issue, it is important to note that very often the driving force in keeping structures like a traffic signal from being installed are the people who live in the neighborhood. In this specific case, neighbors have long been concerned that a light at that intersection would make it easier for people to go around the crowded intersection at PCH and Pier, thus bringing more traffic to their streets.

No question about it, traffic in the South Bay has become a nightmare. During rush hours, a driver can be backed up long enough to miss green light after green light. Little is more frustrating than being in one of those jams. However, so long as we try to live within our present infrastructure while adding more people in to use it, traffic will get nothing but worse.

No easy answer or, for that matter, not even a difficult solution is on the horizon. Public transportation in this area will never reach the point that people will leave their cars in large enough numbers to make a significant difference. In addition, secondary highways, the official title of streets such as PCH, can only be widened so much, especially in areas where merchants are reliant on street parking for the success of their businesses. But still the people come.

Many of the highways and local roads in our area carry more than twice the traffic they were designed for, especially during peak-use hours. It is expected to get worse, causing more driver frustration. That brings us back to our stoplight on PCH. The primary rationale for installing one must be safety, particularly since adding one more light to PCH will do little to help, or hinder, traffic flow.

The problem is not exclusively ours. In another South Bay city, residents on two sides of a major street are fighting over a traffic light that CalTrans has said is necessary to reduce traffic accidents. The two sides of the street are in different cities. One says the light is needed. The other is concerned that, by introducing a traffic light, more “cut-through” traffic will occur in their neighborhood. In the meantime, while this impasse is going on, people are being injured and property is being damaged.

We are stuck in a problem without a good solution. In those cases, we need to do what we can until someone … anyone … comes up with something new.

Hermosa Beach News

Teen was fun-loving, precocious, adventurous

by Robb Fulcher

A 15-year-old Hermosan who was struck and killed in an intersection last week was a sweet-natured, precocious, adventurous young man who loved surfing and rock climbing, family members said.

Ian Wright “was walking at nine months, and rock climbing at nine months and one day,” his mother Ellen Wright said.

The teenager also was a “voracious reader” who loved history and mythology, and fantasy offerings such as “The Lord of the Rings.”

Wright had been attending ninth grade at Village Glen School for autistic students in Culver City and was on track for advanced placement courses that would help him get into college.

He had Asperger Syndrome or AS, which the National Institutes of Health describes as an “autism spectrum disorder” often causing some impairment of communication skills.

Wright’s mother said AS is sometimes called “high-functioning autism.” Her son was good at taking in information but sometimes found it difficult to grasp “subtlety and nuance,” and faced challenges in communicating what he knew.

His AS sometimes appeared in social interactions as well.

“He would walk up to a perfect stranger in a grocery store and ask if he knew about [the Egyptian god] Osiris,” Wright’s mother said.

Wright was an organ donor, and after his death organs were removed for donation, his mother said.

Fatal accident

Wright died Friday night, one day after he was struck about 5 p.m. as he crossed Pacific Coast Highway at 16th Street, one of Hermosa’s most dangerous intersections, on a “Razr” scooter, police said.

Wright was crossing the six-lane highway going from east to west, within the painted crosswalk, and had cleared all but the final lane when he was struck by a southbound 2002 Mitsubishi Lancer driven by a 25-year-old West Covina woman, police said.

City police officers and Fire Department paramedics treated Wright at the scene and rushed him to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

The Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office listed head injuries as the cause of death. Police said Wright was not wearing a helmet and tried to cross PCH when it was unsafe to do so.

New stoplights

Workers had begun installing traffic lights at the intersection this week, paid for by the developer of the refurbished Hermosa Pavilion mall that stands at the intersection. City Manager Steve Burrell said developer Gene Shook offered to pay for the traffic signal in 2003, and worked with Caltrans to get it installed.

As the installation neared, a number of people living east of the intersection told the City Council that the signal might contribute to traffic problems in their neighborhood. The council continued to back the installation, but promised that city officials would take steps to fix any unintended problems if they occur.

Hermosa Beach Police Sgt. Tom Thompson said he expects the traffic light to ease the safety issues at the busy PCH intersection. He pointed to a another troublesome intersection at PCH and Fifth Street where left-turn signals were added to the traffic lights about six months ago, making it safer to cross the street.

“We engineered the problem away and the same thing will happen at 16th Street, we believe,” Thompson said.

He said the 16th Street intersection had become more troublesome after a 24 Hour Fitness facility opened in the Hermosa Pavilion, and people began parking along the east side of PCH and crossing to and from the mall, sometimes at the crosswalk and sometimes not.

Most years pass in Hermosa without a traffic death. The last time a pedestrian was killed was several years ago at PCH and Pier Avenue, in an accident caused by the pedestrian, Thompson said.

In addition to Wright’s mother, who works as director of aviation technology at LAX, he is survived by his father Bill Wright, owner of Wright Productions independent film and video production company and part-time master at Dive N’ Surf, and his sister Katie, a senior at Mira Costa High School.

A funeral service was scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday at American Martyrs Church in Manhattan Beach. Wright’s remains were to be cremated and scattered at sea. ER