PHOTO: Ballona Underwater after Storms of 1941

A Collection of Historical Ballona Stories...

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Our long struggle is finally paying off. The following is a chronology of the grassroots efforts to Save All of Ballona. In bold print we have included totals of Playa Vista and Howard Hughes' campaign contributions, and have tried to document every sweetheart deal they got in exchange for their gifts to politicians.

For the full story, click here: Historical summary of Ballona battles 1975-2003

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April 1988--Demopublican Developmentality
DEVELOPMENT AND THE DEMOPUBLICANS
Howard Hughes came to Southern California in 1940, and bought about 1000 acres of farmland and blufftops south of Venice for his new aircraft plant, paying less than $500,000 for all of it. By the time of his death in 1976, Hughes Aircraft had become the largest employer in the State, with defense plants throughout Southern California. Producing missile guidance systems, helicopters, radar and satellites, Hughes lead the U.S. to great advances in technology, all mostly paid for with Federal tax dollars. While their products led to economic prosperity here, they produced an equal amount of suffering among innocent victims of foreign wars whose combatants Hughes supplied.
Hughes left an estate worth billions.
To read more, click here:
Demopublican Developmentality
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May 1989--L.A. and Culver City at War over each other's developments
Showdown at the Straits of Prudential
Members of the Venice Town Council voted 68-2 last April 13th to continue a lawsuit the group has filed against the developers of the Marina Place shopping mall, turning down a $9 million package of relief measures. The site is an 18 acre parcel which once was a Hughes Helicopter plant, located on Washington Blvd. just east of Lincoln Blvd… One of the reasons the Culver City Council Oked the Marina Place last year was because "L.A. is building big projects just outside of our City limits, we get all the traffic and L.A. makes all the money". The Culver Planning Commission said "the impact of traffic from Marina Place would be insignificant when measured against the traffic generated by major developments OK'd by L.A. near the project site."
To read more, click here:
L.A. and Culver City at War (against the public)
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August 1989--Lincoln Blvd. Traffic War
LINCOLN BLVD.:
Battleground of the Giants
Can We Take It All?
Can you imagine 540,000 more cars a day in the Westchester to Venice area? That’s what we face if 5 huge developments are built along Lincoln Blvd. as the owners are threatening to do. Two projects, Playa Vista and the LAX expansion will contribute 310,000 cars alone.
According to traffic studies performed by both L.A. and Culver Cities, rush-hour traffic will triple on Lincoln Blvd from what it is now, which is already abominable.
Fresh from ok’ing the Marina Place Mall in March of this year, the Culver City Council has just announced their opposition to L.A.’s Playa Vista, with Mayor Steven Gourley calling it “potentially disastrous”. Culver officials are also threatening a lawsuit over the L.A. City Council’s July 10th ok of the Channel Gateway project, partially in retaliation for a suit filed by the Venice Town Council and L.A. City against Culver City for their approving Marina Place.
Now that both projects are approved, how do the 2 cities plan to deal with the traffic? Well, local businesses lose again to let the giants build…
To read more, click here:
Lincoln Blvd. Traffic Capacity War
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NOVEMBER 24, 1995

The first major news article covering the Ballona battle from our perspective:

SUBDIVIDING PARADISE
L.A. WEEKLY,
BY J. WILLIAM GIBSON

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May 1997: The truth is ugly enough, but Friends of Playa Vista launch campaign to accuse their opponents of lying
click here: Desperate Developer Deception_______________________________________________________________
April 1998--Ballona Baloney
By Rex Frankel
It's Friday afternoon. The rush hour traffic is whizzing by 10 people who are holding signs at a street corner covered with wildflowers south of Marina Del Rey. This curious, devoted group, who call themselves "BEEP!", has shown up every Friday at 5:00 P.M. for the last two years to protest the proposed real estate development, called Playa Vista, which will wipe out these wildflowers, replacing them and much of the marshy Ballona Valley nearby with a square mile of concrete, condominiums, and congested traffic. Vying for the right to pave over this rare L.A. open space are two of wall street's biggest financial powerhouses, Morgan-Stanley and Goldman Sachs, and the producer of many of Hollywood's recent blockbuster movies, Steven Spielberg -- and his multi-billionaire computer-monopolist partner, Bill Gates.
To read more, click here:
Ballona Baloney: the full story
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April 1999
The Playa Vista Papers
STUNNING WHISTLEBLOWER REVELATIONS SHOW PLAYA VISTA/BALLONA WETLANDS DEVELOPER'S SECRET POLITICAL STRATEGY TO HELP RE-ELECT RUTH GALANTER AND BILK THE TAXPAYERS
…What isn't well known, until today, is actually what the current owners of the land paid for it. According to a shocking, revealing, and extremely cynical 188-page internal memo written by Playa Vista’s owners and given to the citizens who oppose this development by an active whistleblowers network inside the development company, the firm Playa Capital LLC only paid $101 million to acquire this fragile urban open space. Galanter, who claims to be a "strong environmentalist", wants the government to help develop 2/3rds of this land with incentives of well over twice what the entire parcel is worth. Galanter is amply rewarding the developer for their huge campaign contributions.
But the Playa Vista developer's assistance to her campaign goes much farther than that. …
To read more, click here:Insider whistleblowers release Playa Vista internal memos
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June 1999: Playa Vista hosts "Smart Growth" convention"
DreamWorks can't exemption from responsibility for Toxic Waste at their future studio left by previous tenants
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DREAMWORKS BAILS OUT
September 1999
On July 1st, the super billionaires at DreamWorks said "Hasta la Playa Vista". They're out of here! Blaming the high cost of construction and lack of financing, they won't help in the destruction of the Ballona Wetlands…
On August 2nd, Councilwoman Ruth Galanter announced that she has now realized that there are more wetlands needing to be preserved than she has claimed for the past ten years. While she continues to support the first phase of the project, which is east of Lincoln Blvd, she now says that the proposed second phase, everything west of Lincoln Blvd., should be acquired by the government and preserved…
Last month, the Vice President of Playa Vista, David Herbst, admitted that the project "has a methane problem" before the City Council's housing committee…
To read more, click here:
DreamWorks Bails Out
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August 2000--Playa Vista developer's finances in deep trouble;
the full story of the discovery of explosive gases under Playa Vista's condos
click here: Self-Heating Condos
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EARLY 2003
PLAYA VISTA OPENS THEIR POLLUTION-TREATING "MARSH"
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/16006/
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January 2003
Lincoln Blvd. Widening through future State Park halted; BEEP's alternative gets good review by Coastal Commission; and more in BEEP's Save Our Ballona Park newsletter
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September 2004
If, 200 years from now, your remains were moved to make way for high-end apartments and condos, you'd at least hope your surviving relatives would be bummed. And so it is for some Native Americans, who fear that a more than 200-year-old Gabrielino-Tongva burial site just east of the Ballona Wetlands will soon be paved over with 2+2s and modern living, now that the Los Angeles City Council has given its approval to Phase 2 of the controversial Playa Vista development south of Marina del Rey. Can you say Poltergeist?
To read more, click here:
Community Fights Last Phase of Playa Vista