Costa Mesa Ca

Not too long ago, Rena Puebla and Ellie Genuardi had a hard time getting distributors to carry their unique cake toppers -- porcelain-like figurines that interchange to make gay, straight and interracial couples. When they pitched the figurines to home shopping networks, executives shot them down. Ditto mainstream stores. No one told them expressly why they wouldn't carry the decorations, but to the business partners who designed the diverse dolls, the message was clear.

To start their morning Sunday, about 20 Jews attended a Mechitza Minyan service in a ballroom of a Costa Mesa hotel, praying in Hebrew, with separate seating for men and women. A few doors down, a group wearing sweat pants and T-shirts began their day by breathing deeply and twisting their bodies in a class titled "My Body, My Temple: Yoga for the Jewish Soul." A couple of hours later, a third group engaged in a discussion about Israel's national security agenda.

The Planning Department, in an effort to save time with routine requests, is offering electronic permits. The city is expected to launch its online Planning-Department counter by the end of this month. Residents can apply for residential water-heater changes, reroofs and residential electrical upgrades from their computers. The permit system will be accessible through the city's Web site at http://www.ci.costa-mesa.ca.us.

A nearly new but struggling shopping center for home furnishings near South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa has been purchased out of foreclosure at a fraction of its original value by Orange County investors who hope to nurse it back to health. South Coast Home Furnishings Center, which sold for $100 million before it was completed in 2007, was bought again for about $39 million Friday by Burnham USA, a commercial real estate developer and investor.

Police have set up a telephone hotline for drivers who may have erroneously been cited for running red lights. Those who received such citations, triggered by cameras mounted at Newport Boulevard and 17th Street from Oct. 3, 2003, to Feb. 11, 2004, are eligible for refunds, police said. City officials in February determined that the yellow-light phase was set at 3.6 seconds -- seven-tenths of a second shorter than required by law. About 579 citations were wrongly issued.

The municipal Parks, Recreation Facilities and Parkways Commission has four open seats. Commissioners advise the City Council on tree planting and removal, privatization and other issues affecting public land. Meetings are the fourth Wednesday of each month. The council will make four-year appointments from the applicant pool and current board members. Applicants may send resumes and cover letters to Mayor Peter Buffa, City Hall, P.O. Box 1200, 77 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa, CA 92628-1200.

The City Council is accepting applications for two of its advisory committees. Members are needed for the Child Care and Youth Services Committee, which makes recommendations to the council on issues that affect young people. The committee is working on a directory of child care and teen services. There are three openings. Also needed are members for the Redevelopment and Residential Rehabilitation Committee, which advises officials on housing issues.

It is a neighborhood in flux. Costa Mesa's east side is saying goodbye to retired World War II veterans who raised their families in its modest homes and is welcoming a new generation of professionals with growing families. They are upgrading the small homes and bringing children into the neighborhood again. Early days Costa Mesa's east side began as a town called Harper, named for a nearby rancher, and had its first post office in 1909.

The City Council is looking for residents who want to serve on the city's Planning Commission and its Parks, Recreational Facilities and Parkways Commission. The terms of two planning commissioners expire early this month, as do those of three on the Parks Commission. Both Linda Dixon, a planning commissioner, and Walter Davenport, chairman of the panel, said they plan to reapply for the four-year positions.

Membership in the city's six known street gangs is rising, and there has been a concurrent increase in misdemeanors, but there have been no reports of serious gang-related crimes in Costa Mesa, police told residents at a meeting this week. The police gang intervention unit held the meeting Tuesday in response to complaints about graffiti, vandalism and loitering by gangs near Joann Street on the west side. About 65 residents and apartment owners attended.

Not too long ago, Rena Puebla and Ellie Genuardi had a hard time getting distributors to carry their unique cake toppers -- porcelain-like figurines that interchange to make gay, straight and interracial couples. When they pitched the figurines to home shopping networks, executives shot them down. Ditto mainstream stores. No one told them expressly why they wouldn't carry the decorations, but to the business partners who designed the diverse dolls, the message was clear.

The Orange County Museum of Art on Friday announced its first firm commitment to move from Newport Beach to the Costa Mesa arts district, taking title to a 1.6-acre parcel next to the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall. Museum officials said they must break ground no later than 2013 and open the new museum by 2016 under terms of the land transfer agreement with the Orange County Performing Artscenter. Costa Mesa officials last year approved the concept of having a 300-foot condo tower built atop a 140,000-square-foot museum -- a strategy teaming nonprofit and commercial interests that has been used to fund expansions of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Seattle Art Museum.

BELIEING ITS name, Costa Mesa technically has no coastline, landlocked as it is by Newport Beach and Huntington Beach. And like a classic middle child, it has frequently been overshadowed by its more glamorous siblings, with its biggest claims to fame being the South Coast Plaza mega mall and the O.C. Fair -- at least in some people's minds. But this 16.8-square-mile bedroom community has been steadily establishing itself as a cultural epicenter. The site of a former lima bean farm is now a world-class arts hub, with seven performance stages, including the Orange County Performing Artscenter, South Coast Repertory Theater, the 500-seat Samueli Theater and a 46,000-square-foot plaza, complete with Richard Serra sculpture outside its entrance.

An Orange County land battle going back half a century has resurfaced, and as is always the case when it's real estate with a Newport Beach ZIP Code, things get thorny. At stake is a privately owned, undeveloped 402-acre parcel known as Banning Ranch. Costa Mesa, which flanks the property on the north, has had its sights on annexing the land, arguing that the city would be most affected if it gets developed.

Five Orange County men have been charged in a $1.1-million scam in which they allegedly sold foreign luxury cars on consignment but did not pay the vehicles' owners in at least 15 cases, authorities said Thursday. The case developed after several owners complained to police in July and August that they had sold their cars through the dealership, Harbor Motors in Costa Mesa, but had not been paid or received checks that bounced.

In the year since Costa Mesa became the first Southern California city to have a federal immigration officer at its jail full time, 360 people who were in the country illegally have been deported. The statistics cap a year in which illegal immigration has been a focus of the City Council. "I'm glad to see the federal government is helping us uphold the law.

More than 100 marijuana plants worth "tens of thousands" of dollars were confiscated this week by police raiding an empty house, authorities said. Tuesday's raid occurred in the 2100 block of Elden Avenue. Officers said the plants were so numerous that they had to cut the garage door down to get in. -- David Haldane

Costa Mesa's high-profile prosecution of an immigrant advocate ejected by police from a 2006 City Council meeting was dismissed by an Orange County judge Monday. The ruling was a significant defeat for the city, which had thrust itself into the national debate over illegal immigration when it shut down a dayworker center and lobbied successfully to become one of the nation's first cities to enforce federal immigration laws.