At this hour, attorneys for City Hall on one side, and the threatened Culver City Ice Arena and its new tenants on the other side of the table, are huddling to determine whether tomorrow’s blatantly posted, loudly colored closure notice on the door of the arena is made of steel or damp, second-hand kleenex.
No one is guessing or betting on the victor as the deadline marches forward.
City Manager John Nachbar was asked this morning what will happen at the witching hour of 5 o’clock tomorrow afternoon when death, in some foggy form, is due to strike the arena.
He exhaled and said, “That’s entirely dependent on the discussions under way.”
• Is the so-far loud-stepping city going to swing at the supposedly hazardous arena with all its might?
• Will a city person leap from behind a wilting rose bush and holler “Boo?”
• Will Fire Chief Chris Sellers, noticeably invisible throughout this raging dispute, dispatch screaming fire trucks in a tableau of muscle?
• Or will a prominent dude in Fire lean back in his squeaky chair, light up a borrowed cigar, and exhale perfectly square ringlets of smoke?
While City Hall, applying stentorian tones, is dictating to landlord Michael Karagozian and the Takahashi family, the putative incoming tenants, to blow hundreds of thousands on replacing equipment that may not need to be changed, it, ever thriftily, is conserving its nickels.
After semi-spectacularly positioning a cop in a patrol car in the driveway of the Ice Arena last weekend – to advertise to all passersby that the property at 4545 Sepulveda Blvd., stinks from a public health point of view because of an unproven presence of allegedly perilous ammonia – City Hall pulled what one jokester called “a Bill Clements” and changed its mind. To save the cost of a reported $75-an-hour police eye on the ground, they turned to a rent-a-cop agency to save taxpayer dollars.
Mr. Nachbar said the Police Dept. originally placed one of its officers on the premises for the sake of expedience.
Okay, but why is he there? What are his instructions?
Those questions are hanging limply in the wind, swaying asunder.
A core question at this lunch hour on Day Six of the We Are Watching You stakeout is going hungry.
No one from City Hall has been able to explain the cop’s main purpose.
Is it:
To keep people out of the building?
To keep people in?
To count pedestrians?
To spot hookers?
Traffic Patrol
Yesterday was a busy one at the Culver City Ice Arena. Almost needed a traffic signal.
Sources reported both Mr. Nachbar and Fire Marshal Mike Bowden were on the premises.
When Mr. Nachbar was asked the purpose of his visit, he smiled. “I was not there yesterday,” he said firmly and quickly. He replied so fast, it seemed as if he had been asked and had answered the question before.
Another visitor not quite as recognizable was Brad Braden, from the nearby El Segundo ice rink that is owned and operated by AEG, which has made numerous lurches and pullbacks the last 7½ months, officially and unofficially, with Mr. Karagozian.
He swore again this morning that no matter how interested or influential the conglomerate AEG is, “there is no (blank) way they will be the next tenant. Not for all of the tea in China – or El Segundo.”
