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VOLUME XXXXVIIII NUMBER 43 $135 PER YEAR - $1.25 PER COPY •
THIS ISSUE
Special Olympics Gold medalist Lucy is ready for Halloween! 4
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October 31, 2014
Mayor’s NYC Mission Promotes Beverly Hills Business, Travel By Victoria Talbot Mayor Lili Bosse and Vice Mayor Julian Gold spent the week in the Big Apple, joining the Beverly Hills Conference and Visitors Bureau and the Chamber of Commerce on a New York Sales Mission to promote commerce and travel in Beverly Hills to the business leaders in New
York City. The delegation conducted a series of meetings designed to enhance relationships with existing businesses and develop new relationships with businesses that will fit in well with the special charisma of the Beverly Hills community. (see ‘NYC MISSION’ page 18)
Jimmy Delshad hosted a reception for Elan Carr at The Beverly Hilton. 4
CHLA’s Leavey Interfaith Center gets $5.5 million lead gift. 5
SINCE 1965
HOWL-OWEEN—Animal welfare was behind these costumes. Beverly Hills woofed it up Sunday at 2 Rodeo’s Bow Wow event to benefit the Amanda Foundation. Pussy and Pooch dressed it up for Wags and Walks, saving animals from highkill shelters. NEW YORK, NEW YORK —Pictured, from left: Sandy Murphy, general man- For more information and to read all about it, ager of The Beverly Hilton; Offer Nissenbaum, managing director of The please see page 7. Peninsula Beverly Hills, Mayor Lili Bosse; Ben Trodd, regional VP and general manager of The Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel; and Julie Courier photos by Victoria Talbot Wagner, CEO of Beverly Hills Conference and Visitors Bureau.
Beverly Hills Elder: Pascal, 100, Trial Date Set For 50-Foot Renaissance Woman, Sculptor Height Variance In Bel-Air
• Health & Wellness •Sports •Birthdays
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George Christy, Page 6 The Women’s Guild Cedar-Sinai Annual Fall Gala Rocked The Crowd At The Beverly Wilshire With The Smokin’ Hot Music Of Cuban Jazz Artist Arturo Sandoval. Not To Be Missed Editorial from Rabbi Pressman AND MORE
CLASSIFIEDS • • • • •
Announcements Real Estate Rentals Sales and More
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By Laura Coleman For the past century, Pascal has sculpted a life and career that is unique in all the world. Her Beverly Hills home of 60years has become a light-filled museum of sorts that displays dozens of her colorful oil paintings and powerful sculptures made of glass and stainless steel. The charismatic 100-year-old Pascal, her waist-long blonde hair, a topknot upon her head adorned with sparkles in the style she adopted while in Japan in the 1960s, still remains the only sculptor in the world to successful-
Pascal’s sculpting technique releases the magic in glass.
ly wield a hammer and chisel to transform glass into fourth-dimensional translucent sculptures. “It just seems like I was born (see ‘PASCAL’ page 10)
BHUSD Prepares To Address Program Improvement Status By Laura Coleman It continues to be business as usual at the Beverly Hills K-8’s, even after it became public knowledge that Beverly Hills High School has been labeled a Program Improvement school. In fact, according to school district leaders, this designation is essentially meaningless. Roughly 80 percent of schools who receive Title 1 funds have this year, many likewise for the first time, been labeled Program Improvement.
To further muddle BHHS’s new negative classification, L.A. County has yet to be able to recommend an alternative school that outperforms Beverly Hills and is not in Program Improvement. “We must question the federal and state practices in these regards,” Board President Noah Margo wrote The Courier on Oct. 22 in response to the paper’s Oct. 17 story, ”State Labels Beverly Hills High For ‘Program Improvement’.” (see ‘PROGRAM IMPROVEMENT’ page 18)
By Victoria Talbot Janice Lazarof will have her day in court to protest a decision by 5th District Councilmember Paul Koretz when he asserted jurisdiction, pursuant to Los Angeles Charter Section 245, for a 50foot height variance at 360 N. Stone Canyon Road. Koretz granted the variance over the objections of the West Los Angeles Planning Commission, which denied the request in a unanimous decision. The upcoming trial is on the petition for a writ of mandate to overturn the City Council decision. Koretz’s actions were on behalf of real estate speculators Mark and Arman Gabay who intend to build a 42,409
square foot residence on the two-acre site in Bel Air. That variance galvanized residents, prompting a meeting that took place last April at the Bel Air Association. The confrontation was epic. A large group of frustrated residents demanded answers about unmanaged development and thousands of truckloads of soil removed from unstable hillsides without any oversight from Los Angeles city officials, whose job it is to monitor safety and conditions of construction activity. That unsuccessful meeting led to increasing confrontations with the City of Los Angeles until finally, the Bel Air Homeowners Alliance was created in a backlash against (see ‘BEL-AIR VARIANCE’ page 10)
LADY BARBARA — Barbara Sinatra was delighted that the Women’s Guild Cedars-Sinai annual Fall Gala raised $2 million.
Alex Berliner/ABImages
Part 9 in a series on Beverly Hills residents who have grown with the Centennial City.
Not long ago, she told the London Daily Mail that her late husband Frank took 12 showers a day and smelled of lavender...he had a sexual energy all his own. “Even Elvis Presley, whom I met in Las Vegas, never had it quite like that.” For more photos, see George Christy’s column on page 6.