Local homeowners discuss city concerns

By Dexter Gauntlett
Daily Bruin Staff

Traffic, parking, speeding, the Westwood Medical Building
supergraphic ““ all the usual Westwood suspects showed their
faces at Thursday’s Holmby-Westwood Property Owners
Association meeting while a new delinquent ““ helicopter noise
““ made its debut.

The annual meeting was chaired by association president Sandy
Brown, who brought in UCLA faculty and Fifth District councilman
Jack Weiss to speak with local homeowners about the new medical
center and city-wide concerns within the district which spans from
Beverly Hills to Westwood and Wilshire to Sunset Boulevards.

Diana Brueggemann, director of government affairs and community
relations for UCLA, began by reporting that the university is under
a time crunch to seismically renovate several structures on
campus.

With Kaufman Hall under renovation, the World Arts and Cultures
department has moved to a temporary building on Kinross Avenue in
the interim.

Seismic upgrades must be done by 2004 or UCLA will lose federal
funding, she said.

Brueggemann also relayed to community members the measures UCLA
is taking to accommodate the increase in students.

Last year’s change in the regulations for summer school
resulted in a 40 percent increase in summer session enrollment, she
said.

“We have made some two-unit seminars into four units, so
we are trying to make students’ stay a little shorter,”
she said.

Chief operating officer for UCLA health systems Frances
Ridlehoover discussed the progress of the new medical center on
schedule to replace the current hospital in 2005. The new, slightly
smaller hospital will consist of four towers and will have 450
surgical beds.

The hospital is the largest organ transplant hospital in the
country, Ridlehoover said, which results in hundreds of helicopter
landings per year. Last year, the medical center received 901
helicopter landings.

The hospital has received several complaints from homeowners
that helicopter landings are disruptive in the early morning hours
due to the loud noise they cause as they approach the hospital,
Ridlehoover said.

Because organs can survive outside a live body for only a short
amount of time, doctors must transport them in a timely manner,
Ridlehoover said. Additionally, only patients in critical condition
are transported by helicopter, and the hospital routinely denies
access to the heli-pad for senators and large monetary donors,
Ridlehoover said.

“We’re very careful of how we use our helicopters
and who we let use our heli-pad,” she said.

Councilman Weiss assured homeowners he was not one of the
helicopter pilots and discussed the first six months of his
four-year term as Fifth District councilman.

One of the main issues that met Weiss this summer was the
continued controversy surrounding the 10-story supergraphic on the
side of the Westwood Medical Building painted by artist Mike
McNeilly.

For two years the artist and city-leaders have quarreled over
the legality of the mural that has featured a movie advertisement
for Pearl Harbor and currently a depiction of a female Marine.

Weiss said the mural violates the Westwood Specific Plan, which
objects to all “visible blight” in Westwood.
Regulations for a supergraphic such as McNeilly’s are not
listed.

Weiss said he has developed a strategy to go after the artist
and business owner to remove the mural.

“It’s not a free speech issue; it’s an issue
of our policy and laws,” he said.

McNeilly though maintains that the city has violated his rights
to free speech by asking him to take down the mural.

Weiss also said he has improved emergency preparedness for the
city by reexamining all the plans and increasing the capabilities
of emergency response teams, such as the L.A. bomb squad and
hazardous material units.

During the question and answer session of the meeting, some
homeowners complained of chronic speeding down Lindbrook Avenue,
the lack of parking space and poor street conditions.

Paul Wazzan, chair of the association’s traffic committee,
said they are tabulating responses to the 400 surveys distributed
to Westwood homeowners that will illuminate what problems need to
be taken care of first.