[Editor’s Note: This story was filed prior to last night’s closure decision.]
Out in back of the Culver City Ice Arena on a meteorologically and emotionally grim Friday morning, City Hall’s hired attorney, Bill Litvak, in a muscle-flexing mood, spoke as if he were walking barefoot through broken glass in a dark tunnel amidst swirling insects, flashing a confrontational, parental, dare-you tone that was the theme for the hour he interacted, always fierily, with rink personnel.
What transpired was 60 minutes of smokescreening, and x-rated dialogue unfit even for a left-wing radio station.
Most of his responses to routine questions from landlord Michael Karagozian and attorney Nadine Lewis were met with snarls, wrapped in a Don’t Bother Me Again, Kid, attitude.
A blackout on comments by City Hall employees was ordered last month by Mr. Litvak. No department head has even considered crossing him.
Mr. Litzvak’s take-no-prisoners performance was emblematic of City Hall’s month-long stealth campaign against the Ice Arena, supposedly for being a repository of perilous ammonia, an accusation so far unproven.
For four weeks without relief, the city has been needlessly mysterious, attempting apparently to intimidate the Ice Arena into closing its doors or submitting humbly to the city’s unverified claims of presenting a public health hazard.
Questions about city-sponsored investigations and city documents pertaining to the asserted danger at the rink, by the rink’s lawyer and the media, largely have been ignored or turned away.
The entire scenario, dating back to weeks before the Ice Arena went dark, has, at times, resembled the playground game of Keepaway.
Not at any time in this century has City Hall conducted itself, even remotely, in this anti-transparent manner.
On Friday morning when they showed up at the Ice Arena, the Litvak crowd probably should have been red-faced. City Hall’s most recent, heavily trumpeted “inspection” of the arena was found to be replete with errors.
As noted, however, there was not anything humble or defensive about Mr. Litvak’s approach.
The city has hidden from public view the Fire Dept.’s annual inspections and other desultory findings. Why? That is what Ms. Lewis wanted to know.
“The city is not going to be happy until they are standing over the corpse of the rink,” she said yesterday afternoon.
Mr. Litvak seemed to delight in the role of Bad Guy, the heavy whom audiences fear and dislike.
He arrived angry and left angry. In between, he dictated all terms of the tortured dialogue between the two sides that he controlled.
Even though Mr. Karagozian and Ms. Lewis were on their home grounds, and Mr. Litvak was the purported visitor, the latter never loosened his steely grip on the steering wheel.
Brief History
After the Ice Arena closed, temporarily, at the end of business on Feb. 2 when a tenant’s lease expired, City Hall repeatedly asserted its neutrality in the selection of an incoming tenant. Within several days, the neutrality mantra vanished, to be replaced an apocalyptic opinion, widely repeated, that the Ice Arena had become a public health hazard that needed to be remediated immediately. The city has been busy ever since trying to prove its claim.
On a holiday weekend, the city effectively seized control of the property. They posted an armed guard 24 hours a day and forbade access, evidently seeking to embarrass the owner of the private property. That possibly unprecedented heavy-handedness led to last night’s ultimate decision.
