“Councilwoman Nury Martinez” – Page 3

A Twelve-Acre Parking Lot

April 22, 2019April 22, 2019Posted in Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged "Councilwoman Nury Martinez", Christopher Hawthorne, Councilwoman Sheila Kuehl, Erwin, Housing, Keyes, LADBS, Mayor Eric Garcetti, Metro, Metro Los Angeles, Oxnard, Planning, San Fernando Valley, sepulveda, Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys and the Valley3 Comments

Erwin at Sepulveda, Metro Orange Line Parking Lot.

When the Metro Orange Line opened in October 2005, it was a stunningly different type of transport system which combined a bus only road with a landscaped bike path that ran alongside. It cost about $325 million.

It connected North Hollywood with Woodland Hills, and eventually carried over 30,000 riders a day. Since 2015, due to Uber and Lyft, ridership has fallen to about 22,000 a day.

Hundreds of homeless encampments have sprung up on the bike trail.

But Metro forges ahead!

There are plans to create gated crossings at intersections to speed up bus travel. There are long-term ideas to convert the entire system to light rail and also build elevated bridges over Van Nuys Boulevard and Sepulveda.

In Van Nuys, at Sepulveda and Erwin (north of Oxnard), there is a car parking lot for the Orange Line Metro riders. It is over 526,000 square feet, paved in asphalt, planted with trees and shrubs, and comprises over 12 acres.

Today, over 2/3 of it is used as an outdoor storage lot for Keyes Auto.

Red area is the parking lot of the Orange Line. It is now used predominately to store autos from Keyes Audi. (Source: ZIMAS)

The Sepuvleda/Erwin site is “Exhibit A” in the DNA of Los Angeles, because the right thing to do would be constructing 10-20 story apartments along the public transit route and creating incentives for residents to ride buses, take trains and use bikes for daily commuting.

Singapore Housing Estate with parks and nearby public transportation.

If LA were Singapore, Tokyo or Toronto we would do that.

Instead our city languishes and fights and wishes to preserve a 1950s idea of everyone going somewhere by car.

And thousands of new cars are lovingly housed on land paid for by public taxes which should be used as housing and parks for the greater good of this city.

Nothing beneficial for Los Angeles ever happens overnight. It takes years of planning and legal battles, for example, to build assisted or low cost housing, or parks.

One can imagine the fury and fear that might arise if a 12- acre park and housing development were planned on this parking lot ranch.

Imaginery view from Sepulveda and Erwin looking west. In reality, Singapore.

What, by miracle of God, might be possible here in terms of a park or high-rise group of apartments, placed near the bus line, with a buffer of trees, water features, and gardens between the new residential city and the single-family houses to the north of the site?

Yet here, alongside a public transit route, taxpayer funded Metro Los Angeles chooses to rent its land for an auto dealership. How does that benefit the surrounding residents?

For people who are obsessed with traffic, imagine that thousands of vehicles are parked here ready to be turned on and put onto the roads. How does that feel Van Nuys?

If the new planned housing estate were policed, regulated, secure, and it also provided a new park wouldn’t that be an improvement?

Orange Line Metro Parking Lot at Sepulveda/Erwin

Not Van Nuys Blvd at Oxnard

April 3, 2019April 3, 2019Posted in Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged "Councilwoman Nury Martinez", AL, Architecture, Architizer, Christopher Hawthorne, design, Frances Anderton, Frank Gehry, Mayor Eric Garcetti, Mountain Brook, San Fernando Valley, Van Nuys Bl5 Comments

On Architizer, an architectural website, I found a photo and description of a residential/commercial development built in Mountain Brook, AL in 2014.

Pleasant, as all ideal architectural plans and photos are.

But it also fired up an idea…

Why couldn’t buildings like this go on the NW corner of Van Nuys Bl. and Oxnard St.?

Where currently there is a large, unoccupied glass building that once housed a car dealer (what else?) it is now a yawningly empty welcome to the alleged business and government district of old Van Nuys.

The Mountain Brook, AL buildings (architects: Wakefield Beasley & Associates) anchor the street with ground floor shops, landscaping, sidewalks, trees and diagonal parking. They invite people to walk and to park in front.

276 apartments are built above the stores, with one, two and three-bedroom plans, and are spread between the structures. Various modern amenities, including fitness centers, parks, yoga and meditation areas, wifi, are added to entice renters.

What is it that makes this type of building a dream and not a reality on the main street of Van Nuys? Why, in a city starved for housing, is there not a furious effort by Councilwoman Nury Martinez and the City of Los Angeles to rev up the pace and quality of apartment construction?

Stylistically, the traditional look of this building would probably elicit snickers from the Christopher Hawthorne/Frances Anderson crowd. It is much too literal and polite and pseudo-historic for a cult which takes its abstract, contorted meals at Frank Gehry’s feet.

But Van Nuys is starved for anything that can bring us up from the homeless, trashy, neglected place we are today. An above-average, but suitable design such as the one from Mountain Brook, AL is better than shopping carts full of garbage and people sleeping in cars.

It would work because it cares about the urban context around it.

Garbage Shaming.

March 6, 2019September 9, 2019Posted in Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged "Councilwoman Nury Martinez", Dumping, Encampments, Garbage, Homelessness, LADBS, Links, Mayor Eric Garcetti, Sanitation, Van Nuys and the Valley3 Comments

A few weeks ago I wrote about how my home in Van Nuys was cited by the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) for “Loose, peeling or flaking paint along the fascia boards at gables and eaves.” Proactive Code Enforcement inspectors were sent out to walk around the neighborhood and cite properties in need of maintenance. Mine was cited, a notice hung on my front door, and an official demerit is now a government record.

It was sort of bitterly funny, a kind of karmic boomerang, for this writer.

I have this blog, you see, and all I do is walk around, write and photograph such egregious violations of sanitation, cleanliness and order that it boggles the mind.

Since 2006, Here in Van Nuys has been shouting in the ears of Former Councilman, now Congressman Tony Cardenas; and now Ms. Nury Martinez, his successor, whose record of housekeeping leaves something to be desired as well.

How does an elected figure work in the center of downtown Van Nuys and see all the garbage, all the dumping, all the homeless encampments around and not make it her number one priority? Is there not an element of shame in allowing Van Nuys to look as it does when you are in charge of it?

2009: Eastside of Kester near Victory. Nothing has changed in ten years.

Since 2006, Woodley Park has become a grotesque outdoor garbage filled encampment of such utter despondency that one can forget that it is actually a beautiful park, a bird and wildlife sanctuary, a recreational asset, a place for biking, running, hiking, field sports. It is not, and never was supposed to be, skid row.

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On the walk to and from MacLeod Ale on Calvert last evening, again I saw how utterly sad the upkeep and the maintenance of some areas of Van Nuys are. These are streets within a five-minute walk of Councilwoman Nury Martinez’s office.

If I were her, I would take a weekly walk around the neighborhood with my staff and photograph and document this. Send it up the food chain to Mayor Eric Garcetti, and to Governor Gavin Newsom and demand that the city and the state step in and end this!

3/5/18 Bessemer at Cedros.
3/5/18 Bessemer at Cedros.
Cedros St. near Bessemer.
Calvert St. Van Nuys, CA.
Calvert St. e. of Kester.
Calvert St. e. of Kester

Van Nuys: Vigorous Valley Hub 12/13/1959

January 15, 2019January 16, 2019Posted in History, Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged "Councilwoman Nury Martinez", 1959, Mayor Garbageciti, Van Nuys and the Valley, Van Nuys Boulevard2 Comments

It was “230 square miles encircled by mountains and roofed by a blue sky.”

Its 800,000 residents were more populous than Boston or San Francisco and its land size equaled the city of Chicago.

It was famous for “its distinctive way of life” a “perpetual exhibit of Modern Suburbia at its brightest and biggest. Valley people live outdoors with patios, swimming pools and gardens all year through. They wear sports clothes and drive sports cars.”

So exclaimed the Los Angeles Times on December 13, 1959 in breathless prose accompanied by an aerial illustration of the Valley Municipal Building surrounded by open parking lots and flat topped office buildings floating in a sea of spaciousness.

And Valley industries were tops, in the forefront of electronic, missile and space age developments. PhDs were hired by the thousands, and the Van Nuys Chamber of Commerce sponsored more than 239 courses for upgrading personnel including 60 UCLA classes taught right here in the San Fernando Valley.

The Air Force and the US Government loved the spaciousness of the valley and its highly educated workforce and spent over 1/3 of ballistic missile budget dollars here.

90% of all filmed television was produced at such studios as Warner Brothers, and Disney in Burbank; Universal in Universal City and Republic Studios in Studio City.

And to make sure the success, the glittering, shining, prosperous times continued, efficient government services were necessary.

In 1959, a $7 million dollar streamlining of the Valley Administrative Center in Van Nuys, described as “second only to the Civic Center in downtown Los Angeles” began a sweeping, and comprehensive remodeling of the area by bulldozing hundreds of old bungalows and opening up a vast pedestrian mall which would one day be a glorious assemblage of courthouses, government offices, a new library, a new police station, and parking for tens of thousands of cars.

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If the luminaries, the citizens, the people of Van Nuys in 1959, could have only looked 60 years into the future, they would have been stunned by the enormous progress our town has made, truly a model of technological, architectural, social, cultural, and aesthetic achievement.

Today, a walk down Van Nuys Boulevard between Oxnard and Vanowen is fun, safe, entertaining, clean, delightful, a veritable model of city planning with great restaurants, wonderfully restored old buildings, friendly shops, and spotless sidewalks.

Councilwoman Nury “No Human Trafficking” Martinez keeps everyone on their toes, and should the police even hear of one intoxicated person nearby, they are immediately apprehended and taken into custody.

Our schools are wonderful, ranked first in the world, with the highest paid teachers in North America, and schoolchildren getting healthy exercise walking and biking to nearby classrooms. All students in Van Nuys are required to live near school so roads are not jammed with parents driving students to other districts.

Recent statistics show that only 1% of all children are obese; and diabetes, obesity, mental illness, marijuana and drug addictions are almost unknown in this healthiest of districts.

Mayor Airwick Garbageciti is adamant in keeping Van Nuys clean, lawfully prohibiting anyone from sleeping, camping, tenting, RVing on public property. Nobody disagrees because after all the public taxpayer pays for public property and expects it to be kept in tip-top condition.

Laws are faithfully obeyed, and drivers always obey speed limits, stop for red lights. And illegal dumping, a scourge of the third world, is never seen here.

A new law proposed by the City Council and supported by Mayor Garbageciti will require RHP (Registered Homeless Person) identity cards which will monitor people to make sure they report to 40 hour a week jobs cleaning parks and mowing lawns and working for $10 an hour to assist elderly residents who need house painting and yard maintenance.

We, in 2019, are rightly grateful for what our ancestors built here, and we vow to keep it as perfect as it is for many years to come.

The Bus Bench

August 6, 2018August 6, 2018Posted in Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged "Councilwoman Nury Martinez", "LAPD Van Nuys Division", bus, CD6, Homeless, Homeless Services, hope of the valley, LA Metro, LAPD, Latino, Maria V. Primushko, Mayor Eric Garcetti, Safety, traffic, Van Nuys and the ValleyLeave a comment

“Despite a growing population and a booming economy, the number of trips taken on Los Angeles County’s bus and rail network last year fell to the lowest level in more than a decade.

Passengers on Metropolitan Transportation Authority buses and trains took 397.5 million trips in 2017, a decline of 15% over five years. Metro’s workhorse bus system, which carries about three-quarters of the system’s passengers, has seen a drop of nearly 21%.”- Los Angeles Times, Jan. 25, 2018.

Let’s imagine a 62-year-old woman, Berta Gonzales, who lives in Van Nuys, near Victory and Sepulveda, who still works, as she has for the last 55 years, doing whatever she can to bring in cash for herself, her husband, her two adult children and six grandchildren.

She works as a housekeeper, and she takes the #164 bus, every morning, at 7am, from Victory/Sepulveda to her job near Warner Center, a commute of 33 minutes.

When she gets off the bus in Woodland Hills, the temperature these days is around 80, but when she leaves her job, after cleaning bathrooms and vacuuming floors, doing laundry and dusting, around 2pm, the thermometer might be 110.

Last year she twisted her ankle when she slipped on a freshly mopped floor. She hobbled around on a special shoe, using a crutch to walk, and she tried to stay off her feet if she could. She has no medical insurance, of course.

In the morning, when she waits for the bus, next to the bench without any sun protection, she is made to stand. Because there is a drunken, sick, filthy man sleeping on the bench, with all of his dirty clothes, his smell of urine, feces, body odor and beer, as well as half eaten and discarded food such as spaghetti, pizza, and empty alcoholic cans.

This is his spot. All the legitimate and necessary uses of the bus bench must be thrown out because his sickness and his selfishness, whether deliberate or accidental, is the most important thing catered to.

He has been here for months, if not years. Last year he fell down on the sidewalk and paramedics came to gurney him away. Then he came back for good.

This homeless person, multiplied by thousands, living on bus benches, is not an inducement for increasing bus ridership. Thousands of potential riders will see this lawless, unsanitary and unsafe barbarism all over LA and make up their minds to do anything to NOT TAKE A BUS.

Berta is like dozens, if not thousands of people who encounter this situation every single day. They are hard-workers, struggling to earn money, riding public transit as their well-meaning, liberal political servants wish them to do.

But put yourself in Berta Gonzales’s shoes and ask yourself: if you had a choice would you want to ride a Metro bus when this is the first sight you see every single morning?

Because Los Angeles does not enforce quality of life laws, there is a cascading affect impacting every other activity: traffic, air pollution, and longer commutes.

It is surprising that the plight of bus riders, many of whom are Latino, has not seized the identity politic podiums of those in city government who are always screaming loudest about injustices suffered by whatever is trending on Twitter that day.

Does grotesque, citywide neglect of sick people and working people and commuting people merit no outrage?

Who is responsible for keeping mentally ill people in dire need of treatment off bus benches and getting them into permanent hospitalization and shelter?

Who?

I know it’s not this blog.