photo credit

by Jake Samuel

I was driving up PCH this morning…..the tide being too low to surf Bay St. I was driving up to Will Rogers to trail run.

As I passed the Jonathan Club, I looked to my left and saw the turquoise wrought iron security gate in front of a generic condo building with the word “Sorrento” arched across the top. And then I thought, “Who even knows how beautiful and simple the Sorrento Beach Grill that stood for years on this site was and what would you rather have standing there today.”

Then I thought about the lighthouse at the jetty between Santa Monica Canyon and Temescal Canyon and how a pre-fab lifeguard headquarters took its place years ago.

Now I am not a total Luddite. I think penicillin is a good thing but watching Santa Monica succumb, in spite of the repeated expressed desires of its residents, to the vision of the chamber of commerce and a planning department that does its bidding, is depressing indeed.

I am a local. I have lived here for 51 out of 55 years, am a Samohi graduate (class of ‘69) and an Ocean Park resident for 33 years.

My parents belonged to the Club Del Mar and I have been in the ocean at Bay Street for 50 years. To me, Main Street is significant as a main artery of our section of the city but, more than that, as its heart and soul. Between Ocean Park Blvd. and Pier Ave., Main Street has, for the most part, been able to maintain its single story, low rise profile that city-wide residents have stated is the reason they want to live here. Unfortunately, Main Street north of Ocean Park Blvd. has not been as fortunate. Numerous two, three and even four-story buildings have
gone up over the past 15 years.

With the building of the massive development on the site of the former Boulangerie, Main Street is quickly slipping away from being the soul of Ocean Park to resembling Irvine or Reseda or the Inland Empire, in other words Anytown USA.

The owner/developer of 2001 Main St. on the corner of Bay, wants to put up a 3 story LEEDS certified low density apartment building. A commendable idea in a residential neighborhood but not on a significant corner in the heart of Main St. This is a huge piece of property that not only includes the storefronts on Main St. but the parking lot and artist studios and large house on Bay Street.

Building out this corner will effectively destroy a large portion of Ocean Park’s visual history, cultural identity and historical legacy.

Once it’s gone, it stays gone.

Much has been made of the Z-Boys and the skateboard revolution that took place in Ocean Park and the developer wants to build a monument to their past glories. The truth is that this is an ongoing story. Horizons West is a vital part of the lives of ocean enthusiasts and is the last remaining “old school” surf shop in Santa Monica, used by residents from 6 to 60.

In the wake of many resident meetings regarding the LUCE revisions, Santa Monica’s planning department suggested that we need to build and develop neighborhood centers. This is a redundant idea as neighborhood centers exist naturally all over the city in the form of libraries, parks, coffee shops and on Main Street, surfshops like Horizons West. Neighborhood centers can not be developed….that is a suburbian vision. They grow naturally among people with either similar interests or similar daily schedules.

The courtyard in Edgemar is a neighborhood center. It is a destination where people meet to work, chat, read the paper.

Horizons West is a genuine neighborhood center with a living history that can not be replaced. The building represents what residents have repeatedly said that they want to see in Santa Monica…..a funky beach town.

Well, there’s not much funky beach town left, and if Bay and Main becomes the entrance to a concrete canyon we have run headlong into becoming Anytown USA.