CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
October 18, 2005 | Martha Groves, Times Staff Writer
A loft boom of another sort is taking shape 18 miles west of downtown Los Angeles. In an industrial pocket on the edge of Marina del Rey, body shops, tow yards and surfboard makers are waging a turf battle with developers of residential lofts and condos. The developers are winning in a big way. With 800 upscale residential units rising on half a dozen parcels, the gritty little area has become one of the busiest construction zones on Los Angeles' Westside.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 7, 2009 | Andrew Blankstein
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of an empty slip. Or in the case of Marina del Rey, more than 200 of them. In good times, there was a two-year waiting list for spaces and small boaters complained that they were being pushed out by bigger boats. But as of February, Los Angeles County officials said, the number of boat slip vacancies at Marina del Rey had nearly doubled to 259, compared with 133 a year earlier.
REAL ESTATE
March 21, 2004 | June Casagrande, Special to The Times
When Diane and Noel Diotte began dreaming of leaving their San Gabriel Valley condominium to live full time on their 34-foot sloop, one question nagged at them. What would they do with all their stuff? "A year later, my husband asked what we had in storage and I couldn't even remember," said Diane Diotte, an executive for an El Segundo-based software company. "That's how quickly you realize just how little possessions matter."
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 14, 2009 | Elaine Woo
Douglas R. Ring, an influential Los Angeles philanthropist and developer with extensive holdings in Marina del Rey, whose civic engagements included rebuilding the Los Angeles Central Library after two devastating arson fires, was found dead Thursday in his Brentwood home. He was 65. Paramedics summoned to his home by a housekeeper pronounced him dead at 12:40 p.m., said Ed Winter, assistant chief of investigations for the Los Angeles County coroner's office. An official cause of death will be determined after an autopsy and toxicology tests, but Winter said possible causes include a drug overdose.
REAL ESTATE
February 24, 2008 | Diane Wedner, Times Staff Writer
The loft-and-latte crowd is setting up house in the trendy Del Rey Arts District -- also known as the Marina Arts District. The tiny but flourishing neighborhood in Marina del Rey's old commercial hub is a hot spot for those with an artistic bent and is within walking distance of the beach and close to Venice's Abbot Kinney Boulevard.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
July 18, 2008 | Scott Gold, Times Staff Writer
All along, Carla Andrus' life seemed landlocked, literally and figuratively: She was born in Utah, raised in Watts and was scraping by in a tiny apartment near downtown L.A. when, one night, her husband came across a magazine ad for classic wooden boats being built in Marina del Rey. That, he told her -- teak decks, billowed sails -- looked more like the life he'd once fancied for himself. "Well," she said, "load up the truck," and the words would amount to her salvation.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
July 26, 1995 | RON RUSSELL, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Renee Mandel has lived on a boat in Marina del Rey for four years and has never once moved it away from the dock. In fact, she couldn't if she tried. Her 25-foot houseboat, christened the "African Queen," doesn't have an engine. And hers isn't the only one. So many unseaworthy vessels are moored in the nation's largest small-craft recreational harbor that critics say it has come to resemble a Third World port of call.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 19, 1988 | JULIO MORAN, Times Staff Writer
When 10-year-old Jaime Gonzalez walked into the Marina del Rey tackle shop owned by Mark Aguilera one weekday morning, the owner saw a little of himself. He saw a young boy planning to fish when he should have been in school, the kind of boy the anglers refer to as "pinheads," a term used to describe anchovies that hang around bait barges and children who hang around the docks. Aguilera asked questions. Why wasn't Jaime in school?
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 24, 1987 | BONNIE HEALD, Times Staff Writer
After its first year of deregulation, Marina del Rey has become the second-most-expensive marina in Southern California. In some instances, slip fees for small boats have risen as much as 40% this year, making Marina del Rey second only to Newport Beach in cost, according to a report by the Southern California Lease Exchange Committee. Some boat owners have reacted by leaving, taking their boats to cheaper, city-controlled marinas.
ENTERTAINMENT
November 29, 2003
Christopher Knight's criticism of the final proposals for the World Trade Center memorial were right on the money ("So Much to Say, So Little Time," Nov. 21). It takes a brave soul to be honest about shortcomings of an effort to commemorate such a tragedy. Two years is too soon to do the memorial justice. As bad as 9/11 was, I'm sure we're going to see worse things in the future, and we don't want to build a cult of the dead in the middle of our cities. Think what Israel would look like if they built monuments to the victims of every terrorist attack they've endured.