By Todd Work Santa Monica
Editor:
An opinion letter you published earlier this month by Santa Monica Pier Restoration Corporation board chair, Michael Klien, has been unsettling with me to the point I felt compelled to write in and dispute some of Mr. Klien’s self serving inaccuracies.
The subject of his letter was an attempt to respond to some of the know doubt overwhelming public disapproval towards the PRC’s mismanagement of the city’s pier leased properties, in particular the Boathouse vacancy.
His excuses read like a David Letterman top ten list and I take a point of contention with each of them. As someone who was born in St. Johns hospital right here 33 years ago and has lived two blocks from the pier (Sea View Terrace) for the past decade, I feel I know the history of the PRC fairly well. Mr. Klien
It is this very PRC that negotiated the leases with those aforesaid mentioned failures. It is insulting that this insidious man could site his own belly-up bankrupt failures as a rationale for why we should now have to choke on this corporate brass ring (Bubba Gump shrimp).
The PRC had zero “synergy” when in their own agenda they envisioned a black tie martini bar setting at one end of the pier, (Ashgrove) letting them float rent free for nine months in hopes they would make it, only to have them fold up and leave the city holding the bag. While at the same time the PRC leased to Pacific Park an amusement ride, children venue on the other end of the pier. Who by the way also resides rent free, as they claim to have yet made a profit. They leased Arcadia property without even a full-use liquor license. It attempted to survive on a catering per event liquor license meaning, they were only open twice a week at most and were destined to fail. The amount of money the PRC lost on that site alone is staggering.
Further the PRC, following a snow job by Rusty’s owner Russ Pernard were lulled into the idea of a Route 66 theme restaurant of colossal portions that would be located next to the police substation. The only problem was that Jacks, a long time burger joint and an another small leased property were located there. The PRC opted against lease renewal for both sites and evicted them. Here we are three years later and ground still has not yet been broken for Route 66 and doubtfully ever will. Once again the PRC accrued a huge loss to the city in past potential revenue.
Mr. Klien went as far as stating the PRC wants a restaurant “with the financial ability to survive the seasonality and other vagaries of tenancy on the pier.” Well, it seems to me that every business that was on the pier prior to the PRC’s conception in 1983, including the recently evicted Boathouse had survived all vagaries and weathered each season change. It is only the ones the PRC has had a hand in negotiating the leases for that have been “failures.”
The El Nino of ’83 has come and gone. Perhaps its time for the PRC to do so as well.
Todd Work
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Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 20, 2002. Read the original PDF.