SEPTEMBER
A group of aviation historians, enthusiasts and pilots applied to landmark the Compass Rose at the Santa Monica Airport. The Rose is a blue and white compass star painted on the airfield. The marking retains a valuable use for pilots and has a direct connection to the city’s aviation history. While the landmark was approved, it has been appealed.
Santa Monica entrepreneur Bill Tocantins saw a business opportunity in the Moscow Mule trend. Tocantins developed Elixir G, a ginger concentrate. Each bottle contains ginger grown on a farm in Hawaii.
Santa Monica resident Sabrina Xiao He is a piano playing prodigy, having held over 300 solo piano recitals and international chamber concerts at venues including Carnegie Hall Symphony Space, McCallum Theatre, Alfred Newman Hall, Guangdong Performing Arts Theater and the Gijon Municipal Concert Hall, her first at 7-years-old.
A 64-year-old man died when a group of hikers in Malibu ran out of water. Emergency crews found a group of about six people in the Zuma Canyon area who were hiking in 85 degree heat without water. Six needed medical attention and one was airlifted to a nearby hospital. One man died from heat stroke, despite efforts by Malibu Search and Rescue and other hikers.
No one escaped the flames that tore through a boat packed with scuba divers, with all 34 people sleeping below deck presumed dead during a Labor Day weekend expedition off the Southern California coast. Two of the victims were Santa Monica residents.
An international art fair that highlights emerging artists is returned to Santa Monica’s Barker Hangar for the second time. More than 140 artists showcased and sold their works at The Other Art Fair, which since 2011 has exhibited more than 3,000 artists from around the world at fairs in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia.
California community colleges will offer first-time, full-time students two free years of tuition starting next year, mirroring a program that Santa Monica College launched last fall. Governor Gavin Newsom made good on a promise he made days after being sworn in to cover the cost of two years of community college for new students.
City Hall changed Pico Boulevard’s zoning to create a commercial district that better serves the surrounding community, which is more diverse and less affluent than the rest of Santa Monica. The changes were to attract businesses the community has told City Hall they want, such as small restaurants, cultural facilities, commercial kitchens, gyms and dance studios.
Stars came to the Casa del Mar Hotel to kick-off the “Light It Blue” month-long campaign sponsored by the Prostate Cancer Foundation to commemorate Prostate Cancer Awareness Month.
The Planning Commission approved a mixed-use building with 46 units and 13,735 square feet of commercial space at 2906-2918 Santa Monica Blvd. The 36-foot tall building will feature a brick, wood and glass facade, interspersed with balconies and living walls.
The Trump administration launched an all-out assault on California’s authority to set its own automotive emissions standards in a battle over mileage rules, as government agencies opened an antitrust investigation and told state officials that they appear to be violating the law in a deal with four automakers for tougher emissions limits.
The City Council will voted to allocate $1.2 million to the Homeless Multidisciplinary Street Team over the next two years and almost $900,000 to support and expand the C3 Team. The new funding would bring HMST’s five-year contract to no more than $2.85 million.
Santa Monica’s open streets celebration returned turning two miles of streets into a car-free haven. COAST featured live music, food, art and activities, including the creation of a communal mural highlighting car-free mobility, a roller rink and skate workshops. The festival closed Ocean Avenue from Wilshire Boulevard to Colorado Avenue, Colorado Avenue from 5th Street to Ocean Avenue and Main Street from Colorado Avenue to Pier Avenue.
Frozen Fruit Co. expanded its local presence with a food truck — LA’s first vegan ice cream truck — and selling pints of its most popular flavors at Erewhon, which include chocolate and passion fruit.
The Pacific Coast Highway closed due to a car crash. Two individuals were hospitalized.
A masked man stole up to five thousand dollars from a Montana Avenue bank and escaped. A man wearing a skull mask entered Wells Fargo on Montana and 9th Street armed with a “long barreled weapon” and demanded money. He received between three and five thousand dollars before escaping over a wall at the rear of the bank on the 800 block of 9th Street.
Airbnb hosts in Santa Monica were prohibited from renting to more than two groups of guests at a time and allowing more than two people to stay in each room. The City Council voted unanimously to tighten Santa Monica’s homesharing ordinance after a five bedroom, landmarked home at 710 Adelaide Place was converted to an Airbnb housing up to 36 people earlier this year.
City Council established rules that provide tenants in rent-controlled duplexes and triplexes between $15,000 and $30,000 in relocation assistance when their landlords decontrol the building and dramatically increase the rent.
City Hall created new regulations to prevent landlords from converting rent controlled units to vacation rentals. The rules require landlords lease their rent-controlled units to individuals, not companies, for a minimum of one year.
The Santa Monica Police Department shot a suspected burglar. A resident returned home and found a man inside the home. The suspect pointed a gun at the resident who fled and called the police. The suspect remained in the home and when SMPD officers arrived, they found the suspect in the driveway holding a gun.
Hotel Shangri-La, a 1939 art deco hotel on the corner of Ocean and Arizona avenues, opened a full-service restaurant called Terrace at Onyx that overlooks the ocean and the Santa Monica Mountains.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors instructed staff to conduct additional outreach to service providers, consider shelters or nearby facilities as vote centers, establish pop-up vote centers near services and continue voter registration efforts at homeless shelters.
City Hall encouraged residents and businesses to replace natural gas appliances with electric heating and cooking equipment as it pursues its goal of reducing carbon emissions to 20% of their 1990 levels by 2030. Natural gas is the second-largest source of Santa Monica’s emissions after gasoline since the city switched from Southern California Edison to the Clean Power Alliance in January.
Dave Beran, the chef behind the Michelin-starred tasting-menu restaurant Dialogue, opened Pasjoli on Main Street. Beran calls the a la carte restaurant an elevated neighborhood bistro.
President Donald Trump passed through Santa Monica Airport as part of a multi-city fundraising trip to the West Coast. The presidential motorcade passed through the city causing temporary traffic disruptions and attracted a variety of spectators.
Two people were seriously injured in a pair of unrelated bicycle accidents.
A section of the Third Street Promenade was closed for several hours as police investigated a suspicious package on the 1400 block of the street. SMPD received a call from a witness who said they saw someone place a device resembling a pressure cooker into a trash can near the Urban Outfitters store. Local officers requested help from the Los Angeles Sheriff ’s Department Bomb Squad who arrived and deployed their robot to investigate the package.
State lawmakers passed a landmark measure that will limit annual rent increases to 5% plus inflation for buildings that are at least 15 years old and require landlords to provide a “just cause” for evicting tenants. While Santa Monica already has a comprehensive rent control program and a “just cause” law of its own, Assembly Bill 1482 will impact some tenants in the city.
A jury found a man who stabbed a man sleeping in Tongva Park guilty of murder in the second degree. Joseph “Jesse” Ramirez Perez stabbed the man in the abdomen without provocation while he was sleeping in the park.
Officials reversed an earlier decision and allowed Bird to redeploy the 250 devices, saying the company’s performance has improved.
A multi-hour standoff ended with a suspect arrested by the Santa Monica Police Department’s K9 unit. The incident began when SMPD received a call of a man creating a disturbance in the alleyway on the 1800 block of Santa Monica Boulevard. The suspect claimed to have a weapon and refused officer commands for several hours.
Hundreds of people marched through downtown Santa Monica, joining millions around the world who left work and school to call for government action on climate change at the urging of Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
The city of Santa Monica increased fines for individuals who intentionally lie on written documents. While existing rules had some penalties for falsifying some documents, the city didn’t have a blanket prohibition on fraudulent paperwork.
Santa Monica College named a new head coach, Brian Eskridge, for the swim team. Eskridge accepted a full-time position as head director of SMC’s aquatics department.
Kappo Osen opened downtown. Kappo restaurants are more formal than izakayas and offer seasonal prix-fixe menus of traditional Japanese dishes. At Kappo Osen, those menus are created by chef Damon Min Cho, who honed his skills at Nobu in Hawai’i and Tao in Hollywood before opening Izakaya Osen in Silver Lake two years ago.
Plans for an eight-story building at the corner of 6th Street and Colorado Avenue moved forward. The Planning Commission unanimously approved the project, which is located one block from the Downtown Santa Monica Expo Line station and will replace two low-rise buildings.
Thousands of volunteers attended Coastal Cleanup Day and marked the end of summer by picking up trash for three hours.
The achievement gap narrowed but persisted at local public schools as white and Asian students continued to outperform other racial groups. African American, Latino and socioeconomically disadvantaged students made gains in English and math this past school year, according to the Santa Monica-Malibu School District.
A Santa Monica High School student who suffered lung injuries when chlorine gas leaked into the school’s pool building filed a claim against the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. The student said he became unable to breathe during the gas leak and vomited repeatedly. Contractors working on the Discovery building severed a gas line in the science quad Aug. 22, the first day of school for all SMMUSD students.
A Los Angeles businessman was sentenced to four months in prison for paying $400,000 to get his son into Georgetown University as a fake tennis recruit. Stephen Semprevivo, 53, pleaded guilty in May to fraud and conspiracy. He was the third parent to be sentenced in a sweeping college admissions scandal that ensnared dozens of wealthy mothers and fathers.
The Environmental Protection Agency said California is failing to protect its waters from pollution, partly because of a worsening problem with homelessness in large cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Aero Hobbies closed. Developer and film producer Marius Markevicius plans to build a three-story apartment building at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Yale Street, a site that includes the small building Aero has called home for 25 years.
