On a brilliant Downtown mid-autumn morning garbed in gleaming gold, ladies wore fashionable dark glasses and sport-coated men arrived in open-throat dress shirts yesterday for what was billed as the final Parcel B groundbreaking.
During the next two years, the wide-stairway project known as The Culver Steps, a sprawling office and retail complex, is scheduled to rise in the gaping space between The Culver Hotel and The Culver Studios.
City Councilman Jim Clarke, accompanied everywhere these days by his burgeoning moustache, was sufficiently entertaining as the emcee – on a sparse morning.
The stripped-down conditions were entirely traceable to the paucity of meaningful oratory. Twenty-two minutes of thank-yous nearly drowned out 9 slender minutes of information.
Mayor Jeff Cooper and former Mayor Andy Weissman were the oratorical heavyweights, and they delivered.
Introducing Mayor Cooper, Mr. Clarke smiled and said “he has had a tough act to follow as mayor,” Mr. Clarke having been his predecessor.
In his opening, Mr. Cooper joked about the rocky history of Parcel B and City Hall, a marriage that has not been consummated until now. Presumably.
“I was talking to my colleague, Mr. Weissman,” the mayor began. “I recalled that several years ago I was here for another groundbreaking.
“Thank God, there wasn’t any actual ground broken.
“That project, compared to The Culver Steps, the difference is night and day.”
Then Mr. Cooper began talking like a mayor.
“We are a city on the rise,” he said two months after Culver City’s 100th birthday. “We are a place where people want to live.
“We are a city in which companies want to do business:
- “Sony.
- “Apple.
- “HBO.
- “Networks.
- “Amazon coming.
“I mean it is amazing,” Mr. Cooper said. “We are really in an enviable position.
“In Downtown, where people come to hang out, eat great food, see a movie at the Arclight, take in a show at the Kirk Douglas or at The Actor’s Gang.
“The Culver Steps is the actual place where all of these roads will lead. It is Culver City’s heart.”