Los Angeles Politics Hotsheet for Thursday

Keep dreaming

In a real body blow to residents of North Hollywood and surrounding areas, Curbed LA is reporting that the iconic Valley Plaza in North Hollywood, a long time shuttered and vacant retail site will not be coming back to life for the foreseeable future. Valley Plaza had been owned for the last 10 years by developer J.H. Snyder, who promised but never delivered on a $333 million redo complete with restaurants, retail space, movie theaters, and even sound stages for the film industry.  Instead, J.H. Snyder has now handed the property back (foreclosure?) to the lender, Istar.  A sad day for our friends in NoHo.

Mayor Villaraigosa gave his annual "State of the City" address yesterday, titling it "A New Contract", whatever that means. Something about 300,000 potholes that he's going to fill, port traffic up, fixing education, blah, blah, etc. City Maven live blogged the speech perfectly!

Food sprayer and LACCD candidate Scott Svonkin continues to catch heat for his deceptive absence from Tuesday night's San Gabriel School Board meeting. Our mention yesterday of his lying about being ill in order to attend and schmooze at a LA Democratic Party event at UTLA was picked up and expanded on by the LA Weekly. We're also receiving reports that Scott fled the event as soon as he realized he was being photographed by our sources.

Apparently, we really are the City of Angels.

Sunday Hotsheet First Edition

Mayor Villaraigosa has to be having buyer's remorse about appointing Jane Ellison Usher to the Planning Commission. Her pro-NIMBY memo screed will be exhibit A in Sandy Hubbard's lawsuit against SB 1818 - which is bad policy for another reason that I've discussed before. (By the way on a slightly unrelated note, here is an interesting article from almost 20 years ago about Usher's husband, Harry, a longtime LA power player. The story goes back to the days before Mayor Villaraigosa, even Mayor Riordan, Mayor Sam and the internet. Thought provoking to see what Usher thought LA's issues were in 1990.)

We posted it Saturday, even LA Observed covered it but crickets from the fishwraps of record, digital or otherwise, on the alleged anti-Semitic comments of Reverend Eric Lee, President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles. Lee reportedly made the remarks during an event marking the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King at which Israeli-American philanthropist Daphna Ziman was honored for her years of activism on behalf of the poor. Blogger Ed Morrisey wondered "where the press was for this event. With the Mayor attending an event honoring King, one has to believe that the LA Times would have had at least a beat reporter there."

When a Westchester based blogger and Neighborhood Council member challenged DWP General Manager H. David Nahai as to why the utility transfered millions of dollars of revenues to the City of Los Angeles general fund instead of investing it in the Department's infrastructure, Nahai referred to the blogger as an "angry person." Glad to see Nahai gets it!

Captain Greg Nelson makes a good point about how developers can work with the community on their projects in order to blunt some NIMBY/BANANA/CAVE hysteria around their projects. I've mentioned this before, using the example of developer J.H. Snyder and his consultant Ira Handelman who did a beautiful job of engaging the North Hollywood community on several large projects that achieved significant and widespread community support.

The San Fernando Valley Democrats have another picnic-softball game next week. Tip to City Council Staffers: Don't drive your City owned vehicle to the picnic. Snoops will be watching.

Following Luke Ford's post that the Westside White Guy claimed credit for Pulitzer Prizes Ford believes he has no right to, David Markland had a brief interview with the blogger that Sherry (Shirley?) Bebitch Jeffee says is the only one she knows from Adam. Though he was discussing Ford's allegation, I guess the WWG decided it was an opportune time to lie about our blog and say "I don’t trust the accuracy or the ethics of anything at Mayor Sam, and I don’t know anyone in L.A. politics who does." Yea - sure Kev. That's why they all read it and that's why lots of send us tips, news and other items. What a waste of time to try to get stuff on a blog that no one reads or trusts.