By S. Forest King Santa Monica
How surprising. The local preservationists, who prevented us from removing the “shotgun” house that was at 2718 Second St., can’t find a way to “preserve” it (SMDP, March 4, page 1). I am so glad they put my family and my partner through three years of sleepless nights and cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars while damaging my goodwill at my bank so they could relocate the dilapidated shack at the airport parking lot for another three years while it continues to rot away. For people who have never seen it, from a distance the outside is cute like an outhouse, it is about 300 square feet, less than a large living room, and almost all of its structural members are so rotten you can crush them in your bare hands. The walls are constructed of thin planks with absolutely no structural integrity. Thus, even if you could drum up the $400,000 to “preserve” it, the original materials will have to be replaced and the result will be only a replica of the original structure. I testified to this many times at city meetings in retort to the efforts to “preserve” it.
The now defunct OPCO, coupled with The Church in Ocean Park, joined together to appeal our development process on the property, even when we initially offered to give them the building soon after applying for a demolition permit. We also offered to move it for them, but as is typical with Santa Monica activists, they are so completely devoid of morality when it comes to somebody else's time and hard-earned money, they chose to take the most harmful route and continuously appeal our efforts, ending up with far less than if they had not harmed us in the process. That’s what you get when a city politic enables people who enjoy telling other people what they should do with their property. The city of Santa Monica is plagued with these geniuses, whether it be minimum wage issues or rent control or historic preservation. Most of the activists don’t care about the people they harm in their quest to take down what they perceive as the “fat cats.”
Mario Fonda-Bonardi, the new leader of the effort to waste everyone’s time and money, should know better since he is also an architect. But I suppose some of us do what we can to survive as a real estate professional within this community and what you pretend to stand for is much more important than reality. By the way, we bought the property with the shack for $155,000.
Think about it.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 8, 2005. Read the original PDF.