Redevelopment Agency members from left, Vice Chair Gary Silbiger, Carol Gross, Chair Scott Malsin, Mayor Alan Corlin, Steve Rose.
Before then, roadwork will start Monday morning in the eventual realignment of Washington Boulevard down the north side rather than the south side of the Trader Joes parking lot.
Closing Washington
Drivers, effectively, will not be seriously affected until shortly before Thanksgiving when the permanent rerouting will begin.
Closing off the portion of Washington that curves in front of The Culver Hotel before turning eastward, will make way for doubling the current Towne Plaza pedestrian area, expanding the gathering place across the present Washington into the new 9300 property.
As for last evening, off in a remote corner of the Downtown Trader Joes parking lot, in the shadow of the obligatory shovel, not to mention the obligatory loose dirt, the chairman of the Redevelopment Agency addressed a pocket-sized gathering of mainly colleagues and photographers.
Few Residents
This was an event by and for City Hall types. For all of the regular citizens who showed up, they could have arrived in a single car, with room left over for at least two members of Curves.
Enthusiasm for even more of these obligatorily symbolic 7-minute ceremonies in the near term may have plunged to a new low.
When Scott Malsin, the Redevelopment Chair, idly inquired whether any of his four never-bashful fellow City Council members wanted a whirl at the microphone, all demurred.
Getting to Know You
In some, perhaps many, communities, the chair of the Redevelopment Agency is an obscure figure.
But because Culver City is cozy-small, because the Redevelopment Agency gets nearly as much attention as the City Council, because the five Council members comprise the Agency leadership, and because virtually every person in the crowd knew him well enough to recite his Social Security number by rote, it may not have been necessary for Mr. Malsin to introduce himself at the outset.
But he did.
He may have been speaking only for himself when he said, above the yawns, that it really is exciting to be here, because even the slightest overt evidence was inevident. Euphoria did not make an appearance.
Puzzle Nearly Completed
Standing at the northwest corner of Ince and Washington Boulevard, directly across the street from the historic white-columned home of The Culver Studios, Mr. Malsin described the moment as the last piece of the puzzle in the revitalization of Downtown.
He succinctly reviewed the recent history of the magnificently refurbished immediate area. Mr. Malsin explained that space was cleared for the present Towne Plaza the last time a piece of Washington Boulevard was closed off and rerouted, 13 years ago.
It may have been an evening for hyperbole, too.
A Laudatory Interlude
Surveying the Trader Joes parking lot none of which has been touched, all of the lot still is to be transformed into an architectural diamond Mr. Malsin said:
I would not call this a work in progress. I would say we are most of the way there. This is a terrific area, an area that has gotten a lot of attention nationwide. We should all be proud of it. And we should be very appreciative of the past (City) Councils and all the city staffs (work) that have gone into making Downtown Culver City what it is.
