Airport Park will feature synthetic turf
DOWNTOWN — Backers of a small Santa Monica production company are hopeful that they’re going to be a part of the first big movie studio of the 21st Century.
The Vine Entertainment has just completed its first full-length feature, “Taking Charge,” and with it, the company’s creators said they have taken the first steps in a business plan intended to resurrect the class and prestige of the original studios that pioneered the heydays of Hollywood.
“We’re a throw back to the old days,” said Gino Cabanas, Vine’s chief executive officer. “We’ll be producing feature films and television shows from conception to completion, under one roof.”
The Vine Entertainment is a two-year-old production company that has raised $60 million from private investors in order to make movies. Vine’s headquarters is a large white house with a pool. The rooms serve as office space. The firm is one of several entertainment-related businesses located in a quaint artistic village on the 1300 block of Ocean Avenue. “Taking Charge,” directed by Cabanas and produced by Matthew Fisher, is described as a cautionary tale of a spoiled girl named Patricia (played by Amanda Brooks) who takes matters into her own hands after she is cut off by her billionaire father (Malcom McDowell). She talks her boyfriend (Thomas Ian Nicholas) into robbing a check-cashing business. Things don’t go as planned, however, as the couple is forced to take an ambulance hostage and end up being chased by the police across Tucson, Ariz.
Filmed for $10 million, “Taking Charge” is one of six full-ated with the project.
City officials said the Airport Park was envisioned in 1997, but budget concerns in recent years have put the project on the backburner.
Meanwhile SMC — which suggested a last-minute proposal to pay for the park — will now have to figure out how to accommodate its students who have been using the property as a shuttle lot to the Pico Boulevard campus.
SMC’s lease expires in June for the surface parking lot that has 1,700 spaces, which the college has been using since 1998. That’s why SMC officials offered to pay for the park, knowing they would be short on parking once the park was under construction.
Critics of the college say the money SMC was offering was part of a $135 million bond measure passed by local taxpayers last November with the assumption that a significant amount of it would be used for public parks projects — with no strings attached.
College officials in the past have said they will have to consider parking alternatives — such as building underground parking on the new Bundy campus site, or purchasing land near the Santa Monica Freeway to build parking structures — both of which would be last resorts.
SMC board of trustee member Rob Rader said although the joint Airport Park proposal didn’t take off, SMC might continue to engage the city of Santa Monica with similar proposals in the future.
“The college is hopeful for finding other city-owned property which we can jointly develop to create parking,” Rader said. “For all buildings we construct in the future, we’re going to have to make sure parking is incorporated.”
SMC plans to open its Santa Monica Airport campus this summer. SMC has a 10.4-acre satellite campus at 3171 S. Bundy Drive, which it purchased from BAE Systems in December 2001 for $30 million.
A number of site improvements, including the removal of a 100,000-square-foot building, a new sound wall and landscaping were completed in 2004 with neighborhood consensus, according SMC officials.
An existing 64,000-square-foot building is currently being renovated to house nursing, teacher training and professional development programs.
SMC officials say the shuttle lot relieves parking and traffic conditions in residential neighborhoods around the college’s main campus. Greg Brown, SMC’s facilities development director, said SMC’s Airport campus site, close to the proposed Airport Park, might be able to provide 429 parking spaces temporarily for SMC students.
“We’re looking at all options,” Brown said.
One parking option Brown said SMC is shying away from is building a permanent parking structure below the Bundy campus site.
“We have not explored any major (permanent) parking structure at the Bundy site,” Brown said. “We’re trying to be sensitive to community concerns.”
The Airport Park design will include two lighted youth soccer fields, a one-acre off-leash dog area, a park restroom and storage building, open space, picnic areas, a children’s playground, and two parking lots with a total of 116 spaces for park guests.
The City Council awarded a contract to Calvin R. Abe Associates in June of 2000 for the design of the Airport Park and the associated improvements along Airport Avenue. Since approval of the design, state grant funding in the amount of $1.5 million has been awarded for the installation of synthetic turf fields at Airport Park.
Councilman Richard Bloom said the synthetic turf on the soccer fields will allow for year-round use with minimal upkeep.
“The synthetic turf is more expensive on the front end, but because of long life span and dramatic use, the numbers kind of even out,” Councilman Bloom said. “It also helps we were able to get that grant.”
Bloom, who has long supported the site for a park, said he is glad to see the plan moving forward.
“This represents a major expansion for dedicated field space mostly for youth sports, something that we have a serious lack of in Santa Monica and that I have been pushing for since I was elected in 1999,” he said. “I feel like Mr. T. It’s nice to see a plan coming together.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 23, 2005. Read the original PDF.