[img]2122|right|Mehaul O'Leary||no_popup[/img]Mehaul O’Leary is on a winning streak.
After the City Councilman tore up a capacity crowd at Sunday’s community swearing-in of state Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas (D-Culver City), he returned to the stage 29 hours later and once again instantly won over a new full house.
Before every Council meeting, members huddle out of view for an hour or more to discuss sensitive issues. Hardly anyone budges when the suited gentlemenmake magic and dressily-attired lady emerge – except last evening they did.
Mr. O’Leary, an entrepreneur by day who knows how to make magic with a crowd, was garbed in a large, gray Culver City Ice Arena hockey jersey, a tribute to the doomed rink due to permanently go dark on Sunday after none final round of skating.
Leaping to their feet to salute their defender’s feat, the Council Chambers crowd thundered their approval, and when the meeting got under way, Mr. O’Leary did not disappoint.
The O’Leary Script
Without a hidden agenda or hint of subtlety, Council members (well, most) assured the capacity crowd at the last Council meeting that the city was powerless to act on their pleading behalf. The property owner has executed a new lease with a corporate entity niftily known as Planet Granite, offering rock climbing, yoga and fitness center space – but only after the fumes, chemicals and still-to-be-specified contents beneath the 52-year-old rink are excised. Planet Granite pledged to pay the newly hiked $68,000 monthly rent, and the hockey patrons could not.
That would have been the end of the story two weeks ago – if not for Mr. O’Leary – and it should have been the definite last line of the tale last night.
But it wasn’t, and for that Mr. O’Leary can, and the crowd hopes will, take a deep bow.
Somehow, he kept enough balls in the air at the latest Council meeting to keep the (hopes of the) Ice Rink on life support.
The fate or state of the rink, almost mystically, is back on the Council’s agenda for the next meeting, Feb.10.
With the enthusiastic Ice Rink partisans and Mr. O’Leary alternately egging each other on, the last rites for the one-breath-left rink were postponed.
Decision Is on Ice
Meanwhile, again about 30 Keep the Rink Alive speakers trudged to the podium. They petitioned (begged would be more precise) the City Council to rescue the 52-year-old rink from certain death.
Every legal source who has gone in the record in Culver City has agreed that the Ice Arena is over, a bell that cannot be unrung.
Mr. O’Leary is on the scent of a narrow shaft of hope, according to him but perhaps no one else.
He asked city staff to collect all of the potential costs involved with declaring eminent domain – that is the city seizing the prime Sepulveda Boulevard chunk of property while simultaneously, it is assumed, fending off legal action from the owner and the new lessee, Planet Granite.
Even if that could be pulled off, and City Hall, in a gigantic upset, would prevail, the city still would have to track and hire persons to operate the reborn rink.
“This could legally happen,” an attorney told the newspaper this morning, “but it won’t.”
Separately, Councilman Andy Weissman asked staffers to total up the legal and financial implications.
Have a Seat, Pal
Not yet.
In a condensed discussion about vacancies on three city boards – the Fiesta La Ballona Committee, the Parks and Recreation Commission and the Landlord Tenant Mediation Board – the City Council pushed the pause button.
It is anticipated that appointments to the current vacancies will be made shortly after the application deadline. In May, appointments will be made to those seats whose terms are expiring.
