Community

Joe Walsh, Ringo Starr, Barbara Starr and Courier Publisher Lisa Bloch Photo by Scott Ritchie

(Ringo Starr’s Birthday continued from page 1) I decided to invite fans to join me on the streets of Chicago in front of the Hard Rock, and we have been doing it ever since.”

In 2019 there were over 30 Peace & Love events all around the world. Last year the pandemic prevented an in-person event. Instead, Ringo moved the celebration to the virtual “Ringo’s Big Birthday Show,” which featured unseen and unique performances by Ringo, Sir Paul McCartney, Joe Walsh, Sheryl Crow and many more. The show was broadcast globally and raised funds for the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the David Lynch Foundation, Musicares and WaterAid. This year there were Peace & Love regional gatherings, both in person and on Zoom, in Argentina, Costa Rica, Colombia, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Japan, Italy, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, elsewhere in the U.S., and here in Beverly Hills.

Afterward, Ringo shared with the Courier, “During this time of the pandemic… Barbara and I had a beautiful time with some of our friends as we celebrated my birthday with our traditional Peace & Love moment in front of my hand sculpture in Beverly Hills. I had a wonderful birthday… thanks to everyone who celebrated with me.”

Happy Birthday Ringo and all the best and brightest wishes! Thanks to you, our world is a better place!

Ringo and Barbara Starr surrounded by friends and family at birthday event.

Photo by Scott Ritchie

Keith Sterling, Chief Communications Offi cer for the City of Beverly Hills, Jill Collins, Cultural Heritage Commission Chair and Lisa Bloch Photo by Scott Ritchie

Community Invited To Try Out Roxbury Drive Protected Bike Lane

BY MICHAEL WITTNER “Protected” and “bike lane” are two words that go nicely together. But still bring a helmet.

On Sunday, July 25, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., the city of Beverly Hills is inviting cyclists to ride over to Roxbury Drive to test out a protected bike lane proposed to run southbound on Roxbury Drive, next to Roxbury Park.

As part of its Complete Streets Plan, a recently adopted initiative to make city streets more friendly to cyclists and pedestrians, the city is considering adding a protected bike lane to the segment of Roxbury Drive south of Olympic Boulevard alongside the park. On July 25, the city is presenting the community with a simulated version of the lane, which will be protected from traffi c by temporary signs, markers, and planters. Cyclists are encouraged to ride through the lane and share their thoughts on its safety, aesthetics, and functionality.

The Complete Streets Action Plan, adopted by the City Council on April 20, identifi ed the segment of Roxbury Drive as a high priority due to its width and ability to connect with existing bike lanes without reducing parking spacing or compromising vehicular lanes.

The City Council will review the feedback and fi ndings from the demonstration as they consider a plan for a one-year-pilot project. For more information, contact the Public Works Department at 310-285-2467 or email AskPW@beverlyhills.org.

(Connect Beverly Hills continued from page 1)

The Commission’s vote was unanimous, but it was not completely enthusiastic. In fact, one could argue that the commission voted 4 ½ - ½ , rather than 5-0, to approve the draft, since Vice Chair Sharon Ignarro voted “Yes, with hesitation.”

Following a presentation from consultant Toole Design, Ron Shalowitz succinctly summed up Ignarro’s hesitation when he said, “I don’t have any more questions, other than I don’t know what I’m voting on.”

Indeed, the Commission’s July 1 vote will not result in any immediate or concrete changes, and the full cost of the project, and who exactly will foot the bill (Metro will cover at least some of it), is far from determined.

Instead, their vote is more of a symbolic seal of approval to the numerous recommendations and design options narrowed down from the Commission’s fi ve previous meetings, and over a year’s worth of extensive feedback from the community and dozens of other commissions, committees, and stakeholders. If the Council approves the draft, that will mark the offi cial go-ahead to move into the next phase of fi nancial and urban planning.

Major proposals of the Wilshire/La Cienega revamp include new high visibility, raised crosswalks; ADA-compliant curb ramps; new, aesthetically consistent planters and benches; exclusive pedestrian phasing (when all corners of an intersection have walk signals at the same time, so pedestrians can cross diagonally) and a people-centered “Mobility Hub,” located at the vacant, city-owned lot at the Gale Staging Yard about 600 feet east of the station. The Hub would feature transportation pick-up and drop-off , comfortable seating, a landscaped plaza, food and informational kiosks, public restrooms, a bike rack, and public art.

The draft plan extends well beyond that intersection, however. Connect Beverly Hills is also one of the pilot projects of a much larger plan, known as the Complete Streets plan (which the City Council approved during an April study session), that aims to make the city’s streets more aesthetically consistent, and friendly to pedestrians, bikes, and public transit. If the renovation of the Wilshire and La Cienega intersection proves successful, similar initiatives will be implemented around the future Wilshire/Rodeo station, and eventually in dense downtown areas all over the city. The current draft plan reimagines in detail fi ve diff erent “character zones”—or a collection of streets with similar characteristics and needs—up and down the Wilshire stretch of Beverly Hills.

“Our intent is that this project can serve as a template for developing future plans and future standards for other streets in the city,” Transportation Planner Jessie Holzer told the Architectural Commission during a March 17 presentation.

Since July 2020, Holzer has made the rounds among dozens of Beverly Hills’ offi cial commissions, committees, and clubs at least twice, and often thrice, to provide updates on the streetscape plan and gather new feedback. That was only a fraction of the city’s robust outreach to gather as much input as possible for how exactly Beverly Hills wants itself to look, feel, and move in the decades to come. From April 14 to May 10 of 2021, the Transportation Department asked for public comment through the project website on the most recent draft of the plan and received approximately 250 comments. They also hosted a two-day virtual charrette—a design workshop in which planners, designers and residents work together in real time—and even a full-on virtual walking tour through diff erent streetscape options.

So, how do a diverse cross-section of Beverly Hills residents recommend turning the future Purple Line escalators into veritable stairways to heaven? After synthesizing the reams of feedback, staff summarized some unmistakable trends.

Overall, residents want Beverly Hills to more fully live up to its “Garden City” moniker: they want more trees along the streets, fewer cars, larger sidewalks, more bike lanes, smarter crosswalks, and more attractive street furnishings following a unifi ed, approved-upon aesthetic consistent with Beverly Hills' identity.

On the relatively brief July 1 meeting, commissioners reviewed the most recent updates to the Wilshire/La Cienega area based on commissioners’ recommendations, which include either extended sidewalks with full-time parking along the road; the addition of a bus, shuttle, or bike lane; or the addition of a sidewalk-level bike lane.

Other updates included “expanded recommendations” of Beverly Hills streets, which include either expanded sidewalks, full-time parking, or shuttle, bus, and bike lanes along Wilshire, La Cienega and Santa Monica boulevards.

The commissioners’ reactions were varied.

“It would be nice to have a slide that put it all together that says, this is what we’re recommending,” said Vice Chair Sharon Ignarro. "Because essentially we’re voting on streetscape, I thought, and I don’t see a cohesive streetscape here...we’re voting on the recommendations, and we don’t have them. It’s frustrating.” “I fully support the project now and hope Council can wade through it,” said Commissioner Jay Solnit.

Chair Nooshin Meshkaty voiced high praise. “Today’s presentation was by far the best I have seen,” she said. “I hope to see City Council move forward, and I hope to see the fi rst funding coming so that we can see the actual results of all the work put into this.”

To read the full draft plan, visit https:// connect.beverlyhills.org.

(Trousdale Construction continued from page 1)

Since late October, the city’s Public Works Department has been replacing 14,300 feet (as much as 20,000 feet, according to some measurements) of aging water mains along large portions of Loma Vista and San Ysidro drives and repaving those streets from curb to curb. Crews are currently inching their way up Loma Vista, from Doheny Drive to Evelyn Place, bringing with them noise, traffi c, trenches, and outages. Work on San Ysidro Drive will start the week of July 19.

However, the herculean undertaking is just over 75% fi nished as of press time, with 10,000 feet of mains already replaced, according to Derek Nguyen, project manager for the Beverly Hills Public Works Department. City staff and crews from the Oxnard-based contracting fi rm Toro Enterprises are “working very hard” to fi nish the remaining 25%—or roughly 2700 feet—by the end of this month, Nguyen told the Courier.

But before residents go joyriding along free fl owing, freshly paved, two-way streets, they should note that that is only an optimistic estimate. “The contractor has until Aug. 11 to fi nish their work,” Nguyen said. “Internally, we like to fi nish earlier, but there’s a lot of challenges along the way on a major project like this.”

Buried under Loma Vista Drive, where all Toro's construction has taken place so far, is a maze of electric, cable, and phone lines around which crews need to tiptoe.

In some areas, there are not one but two separate systems of water pipes tangled into this Gordian knot, and crews need to replace both.

“There are all kinds of surprises all the time,” Dann White, the project superintendent with Toro, told the Courier. “If you drive around in any of the higher rent neighborhoods, it’s typical you don’t see stuff overhead, so you don’t see power lines up in the air, telephone poles, it’s all underground, and that neighborhood in particular is very busy underground.”

Before any excavation can take place, California law requires crews to work with the nonprofi t Underground Service Alert of Southern California (also known as DigAlert) to identify anything that might get in the way of their path of travel. They must also coordinate with SoCal Edison, AT&T, Spectrum, and other companies to make sure there’s no interference.

Crews have also run into issues when sometimes antiquated city records don’t match the reality on, or rather under, the ground. This has resulted in some haggling between the contractor and the city to revise plans.

“There’s been a lot of changes,” White said.

All told, White estimates that various discrepancies and unforeseen events set the project back roughly a month. Still, he is fairly confi dent that the construction will be fi nished by the original Aug. 11 deadline, because he is adding another crew of roughly 20 workers starting July 12. By that point, three total crews will be on the Trousdale project.

If the work is not complete by Aug. 11, the city could charge Toro $500 a day in what are known as “liquidated damages,” especially if it feels that the delay is due to laziness or negligence.

“Any loss is damaging,” White said when asked if he felt his fi rm could withstand those fi nes. “We go in with a certain percentage on these jobs, and if we don’t meet that percentage, it’s a loss.”

White also said that the project has more or less stuck to its budget of $10,223,829, though he declined to get any more specifi c than, “We’re doing okay.”

On July 14, 2020, the Beverly Hills City Council selected Toro, the second lowest bidder out of seven competing fi rms, to complete a water main replacement and street repavement project on Loma Vista and San Ysidro drives. According to a city staff report, most sections of the water mains were between 60 and 90 years old, resulting in frequent breaks over the years. In July 2018, for example, a water main break cost $605,500 in damages and overtime pay. The mains were made out of cast-iron, a material no longer used for mains, that had corroded over time and reduced the overall carrying capacity.

Loma Vista Drive was cited as a particularly important area to carry new and effi cient mains because its mains connect to critical reservoirs and pump stations.

“This is a critical pipeline because it runs through one of the major water systems in our city,” Nguyen said. “It provides water to half of our reservoir which then provides water to half of our city, so in essence this is the backbone to half of our city’s water infrastructure.”

The city designated the area from Loma Vista Drive from Evelyn Place to Doheny Drive, and San Ysidro Drive from Tower Road past the intersection with Pickfair Drive for its renovations. Work takes place on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. The city conducted an extensive public outreach campaign before the construction started, including public meetings, ads, mailers, website information, physical signage, and changeable message boards, according to Chief Communications Offi cer Keith Sterling.

But perhaps no amount of warning could fully prepare residents for the disruptions the construction would cause. First, there is the noise and the traffi c. Large portions of entire lanes were routinely blocked off during construction, causing signifi cant backups.

“Even trying to come out of my house some days, it’s like Russian roulette, because I don’t know if one side of the street is a one-way and I’m going into traffi c,” a Loma Vista Drive resident who asked to remain anonymous told the Courier.

The seeming randomness of lane closures stems from pipelines that meander from one side of the street to another in order to avoid existing utilities, Nguyen said.

But the routes and methods of traffi c control, which is provided by the contractor, are approved ahead of time by a Public Works inspector, and lane closures and other delays

inspector, and lane closures and other delays are posted online and in the Public Works Commission monthly meeting agenda.

Even when the lanes are open, deep trenches along the side of the road are covered up by metal plates, resulting in a patchy street and a bumpy ride.

Last but certainly not least: the outages, both expected and unexpected. Once a portion of the water main is complete, the nearby residents (this includes the side streets off Loma Vista and San Ysidro) have their water shut off from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. while crews shut off the old main and connect the new one. Residents receive three days advance notice, according to Sterling.

The work may have played a role in causing two AT&T outages, and possibly a Spectrum outage, though that is all unconfi rmed and under review. Toro and the city coordinate regularly with other utility companies to make sure no one steps on the other’s toes, but that can sometimes fall through.

On Feb. 8, an AT&T conduit near the intersection of Loma Vista and Doheny was damaged during construction, resulting in an outage that lasted several days and aff ected Loma Vista Drive and many of its surrounding streets. On Feb. 10, the city notifi ed aff ected residents that landlines would be restored between Feb. 13- Feb. 19.

The Courier reached out to AT&T and Spectrum for more precise details on other outages that may have occurred due to the water main construction. An AT&T representative said that service was interrupted for parts of Beverly Hills on May 25 due to a cable cut made by a third party.

White said that Toro is currently in a claims process with AT&T to determine who was at fault and who should be held liable.

“There’s state guidelines that tell us that we have a pothole within so many feet of lines, and if we can’t fi nd that line, then we have to call [DigAlert] and say we can’t fi nd that line, but sometimes our disputes are say the guy marked a line four feet here, and we’re over here, and we come across their system,” he said, describing a hypothetical situation. “Maybe they didn't show a deviation in the street with their paint marks, and we didn’t see it, so there’s a claims process that gives us the opportunity to show our pothole documentation and our photos, and we may agree to disagree, and then it becomes a negotiation over who is going to pay for it and how much we’re paying.”

When asked if any of the outages could be at least partially attributed to Toro crews, White replied, “Yes, the guys make mistakes. I would be absolutely lying to you if I said Toro didn’t make mistakes. We make mistakes, everybody makes mistakes.”

(Chief Barton continued from page 1)

With the release of the new Wildfi re Assessment Report, slated for release on July 9 at 9 a.m., the city is holding two community meetings on July 12 and 13 at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., respectively, to provide residents an opportunity to hear from the consultants who authored the report and the experts who contributed to it. The report looks at key areas of risk and risk mitigation, including public trees, private landscaping, public education, evacuation challenges, smoke impacts, structure resiliency, and many other issues.

As Beverly Hills Fire Department (BHFD) Chief Gregory Barton told the Courier, today’s fi res are not the same as fi res of the past. “This is where this community meeting will be outstanding, because we have some very good consultants with their fi re experts who've been really drilling down and studying this, and they'll show how the fi res of fi ve years ago are completely diff erent than they are now,” he said.

The good thing is that Beverly Hills already takes fi re safety seriously and has for years. Case in point, Barton said, this most recent Fourth of July. The city deployed equipment, engines, and the battalion chief to patrol the city. Up in the hills, the battalion chief scanned the horizon: fi reworks in L.A., fi reworks in Santa Monica, but all quiet on the home front. “We had nothing, and we had people on patrol just in case, but we didn't have anything,” Barton said. A boring night, which Barton prefers.

As far back as 2005, with San Diego’s devastating 2003 Cedar Fire still fresh in the state’s memory, the city took extra precautions against wildfi res. Then, Barton and members of the community living north of Sunset Boulevard established a Firewise USA site, part of the National Firewise Communities Program. Recognition as an offi cial site required development of an action plan and fi re risk mitigation eff orts on the level of individual households within the site. The city contracted Jack Cohen, a well-known retired U.S. Forest Service Research fi re scientist, to do site surveys of the area north of Sunset—a particularly vulnerable area given its proximity to dry, fuel-rich chaparral hills. The fi re department and community members did outreach in the area and encouraged households to invest in fuel removal.

Later, in 2008, the National Firewise Communities Program awarded Barton, then Deputy Fire Marshall, with the Firewise Leadership Award for his “innovative approach to community wildfi re education and preparation.”

“We can't do it as the Fire Department, the community can't do it as the homeowner,” Barton said. “We really have to work together as a team.”

But Barton is also aware of how an overemphasis on the threat and an underemphasis on the power people have to combat it can lead to apathy and nihilism. “I want to empower people. I want to give people the information and the knowledge, and then help them anyway we can and work together to come up with a solution.”

The public can attend the meetings either in person in the Council Chamber or virtually at beverlyhills.org/live. Barton only asks that attendees to the meetings bring two things: “I'd just love for people to come with their ideas and opinions.”