Los Angeles City Hall

A summary of significant Los Angeles City Hall decisions affecting the Westside in the past week. CITY COUNCIL * STREET FAIR: Approved the closure of Abbot Kinney Boulevard from Venice Boulevard to Brooks Avenue from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sept. 19 for the annual Venice Street Fair hosted by the Abbot Kinney District Assn.

The park surrounding Los Angeles City Hall will soon be getting a California makeover, with less green grass and more native and drought-tolerant plants. The City Council voted Tuesday on a plan to restore the grounds around the building after the sprawling lawn was destroyed last year by the Occupy L.A. encampment. Officials considered several options, including one that called for much of the grass to be replanted and another that would have eliminated nearly all of the turf and replaced it with plants that require less water.

CITY COUNCIL LOAN: Approved a $700,000 loan to A Community of Friends, a nonprofit organization, to buy and renovate a 24-unit apartment building for the mentally disabled at 235 S. Berendo St. The complex is for low-income tenants. WALK OF FAME: Approved placing the name of legendary rock 'n' roll disc jockey Alan Freed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A ceremony is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Dec. 10 at 6381 Hollywood Blvd.

Occupy L.A. protesters want their murals back. During their eight-week encampment on Los Angeles City Hall's lawn, protesters painted colorful pictures and slogans on plywood walls that city workers installed to protect two monuments near Spring and 1st streets. After police cleared the park in the early morning of Nov. 30, arresting about 300 people, the walls were taken down. In January, the city's Department of Cultural Affairs issued an open call "to public and private entities, including but not limited to museums, galleries, arts organizations or educational institutions" wishing to store and exhibit the murals.

CITY COUNCIL * ANTI-CRIME BILL--Voted to support the anti-crime bill that has been pending before Congress. The bill's provisions include funding for 1,000 to 1,500 additional police officers for Los Angeles, a $25-million grant to the city for drug treatment programs and money for more prosecutors, prisons and shelters for battered women.

We've heard it before. Indeed, we've been told that Downtown is "coming back" so often in recent years that cynicism might be forgiven. But if scores of real estate developers can attest to the difficulty of reviving the spirit and bottom line of Downtown businesses, the persistence of others and the entry of new players give us reason to hope again.

There were vinyl albums by Etta James and the punk band X. There were cosmetic kits, one with seven kinds of nail polish. There were sleeping bags, luggage, cutlery, a small red guitar with a broken neck and a collection of Ernest Hemingway stories. Hours after police launched a nighttime eviction of the Occupy L.A. encampment, Los Angeles City Hall's south lawn offered enough personal possessions to sustain a small community — except that no one was left to claim them. City crews on Wednesday began the long and potentially expensive process of restoring the 1.7-acre park that served as ground zero for Occupy L.A., saying they expected to send 30 tons of refuse to the landfill.

The groundswell of populist anger against banks and politicians picked up momentum in Southern California as powerful labor union support helped galvanize protests nationwide. Rallies extended to the 18th day in New York, where Occupy Wall Street planned a massive solidarity march with unions Wednesday. Protesters spent their fourth night camping outside Los Angeles City Hall, disrupted a bankers conference at a Newport Beach yacht club and demonstrated outside a financial executive's Bel Air home.

Yurts are built to travel, but this one had come farther than most. A traditional nomadic Mongolian home was erected outside Los Angeles City Hall on Saturday, part of a colorful cultural celebration that brought together artists from across the U.S. and several from Mongolia. Photos: Mongolian cultural festival The yurt, its wooden beams carved with intricate designs and covered with an off-white tarp, served as a centerpiece of the event, which showcased Mongolian culture with a celebration of the Naadam summer festival.

The push by Los Angeles' elected officials to address a growing financial crisis hit a new stage on Friday: open battle. Just as credit rating agencies want them to work in unison on erasing a $212-million budget shortfall, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and members of the City Council traded threats and accusations on city spending and political leadership. Villaraigosa started the day by promising to veto plans by the council to spend money from its discretionary accounts. The council ignored that warning, allocating $389,000 for a new park in the San Fernando Valley and $95,000 for sidewalk repairs in South Los Angeles.

It's probably accurate to assume that most civilized visitors to Los Angeles City Hall's third-floor rotunda do not try to climb the marble columns, balance on the historic light fixtures or lie on the ground directly under the enormous bronze chandelier for perspective's sake. But on a recent Saturday, Heidi Duckler and two of her dancers did exactly that, laying claim to the notion that if you can't fight City Hall, you might as well dance in it. During a first rehearsal for a new site-specific production by Duckler's Collage Dance Theatre, Marissa Labog and Roberto Lambaren experimented with rigorous horizontal and inverted balance poses between walls and columns that reflected formidable break-dancing skills while Duckler pointed out various Roman and Byzantine architectural details of the cavernous rotunda to a reporter.

In a city famous for its panoramic views, the one from the top of Los Angeles City Hall offers something more than shimmering city lights, jagged mountain ranges and the distant glimmer of the Pacific Ocean. From the landmark tower, Los Angeles' history unfolds below: the pueblo that the city founders created, the grid of streets that first carried trolleys and horses and eventually cars, the imposing stone low-rise towers of L.A.'s prewar period, followed by freeways, parking lots and several generations of skyscrapers reaching ever higher.

As Google and Microsoft battle for dominance in technology, a skirmish in Los Angeles City Hall is offering a rare public glimpse into a rivalry that could help determine the fortunes of both companies -- and, quite possibly, how workers in the future will communicate. The two tech giants are clashing over a $7.25-million contract to replace L.A.'s outdated e-mail system. The stakes are high enough that both companies have fielded teams of lobbyists and executives to press their case in City Hall.