Marina Del Rey Ca

When I moved to L.A. from New York, living near a beach was a profound novelty, and I used to spend my Sunday afternoons at Temescal Canyon beach in a sand chair, reading. Twelve years later, seven of them in Pasadena and Eagle Rock, my family of four makes it to the beach twice a year, tops. Not that we don't try: I often look for deals in Santa Barbara (as if!), San Diego or Santa Monica, but they can be hard to come by, especially this time of year.

Blanca Wilterdink was on her regular walk Friday along the Marina del Rey channel when a stranger stopped and asked if she had heard about the whale. "A what? A whale?" Wilterdink asked. "I thought, 'This lady must be mistaken.' " She looked to the water and called her husband, who raced over on his bike with a pair of binoculars. Sure enough, there was a 20-foot-long gray whale swimming playfully around the Marina del Rey breakwater. "It was such a beauty," she said.

We know where residents of a plush Marina del Rey tower didn't go to toast their good fortune the other day when they finally won a decade-old fight against noisy neighbors. They didn't go next door to the Fantasea Yacht Club--the current occupant of the building at the center of the noise dispute.

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.

The best time to spot the "sneak-aboards" is in the early morning, at shower time. Their boats, after all, are hardly the showpieces of the marina, and don't have the amenities of the gleaming yachts with wood-paneled libraries and sunken Jacuzzis.

The Board of Supervisors has quietly handed one of Los Angeles County's most generous and best connected campaign donors a deal that cements his hold on a prime piece of Marina del Rey through much of the new century. The supervisors--acting without public discussion--on Tuesday unanimously approved 39-year lease extensions on two waterfront parcels in the publicly owned marina. The leases on the prime property are controlled by lawyer Doug Ring.

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.

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.

County officials said they will meet next week to discuss a judge's recommendation that they rewrite an ordinance restricting the kind of houseboats permitted in Marina del Rey. Until then, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said it will continue to enforce the ordinance until otherwise directed by the Department of Beaches and Harbors. "There is no directive to discontinue enforcement at this time," said Deputy Paul Carvalho. On Thursday, Culver City Municipal Judge Allan J.

Some look like rusted house trailers stacked along the water. Others are just homemade, flimsy rooms hammered onto the backs of rickety boats. For years, well-heeled residents in Marina del Rey have complained about such unseaworthy houseboats, saying the growing numbers of "junkers" have turned the posh marina into a virtual haven of cheap housing. That is about to change.

With the affluent Westside of Los Angeles escaping much of the economic angst gripping Southern California, shopping center owners near the coast are spending lavishly to burnish their malls and beckon new shoppers. But there is also tiptoeing going on as these expansion-minded malls try to avoid the impression that they will overwhelm their neighborhoods with more dense development, worsening traffic and endless waits to turn left.

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.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors backed a new housing policy for Marina del Rey on Tuesday that would expand the number of low-income apartments but failed to satisfy affordable-housing advocates. The guidelines -- if given final approval by the board -- go beyond a county task force recommendation by no longer allowing developers to pay a fee in lieu of building affordable apartments.

Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday postponed for two weeks a vote on how much affordable housing to demand in new apartment developments planned for county-owned portions of Marina del Rey. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky requested the delay to allow county officials to review the effects of requiring more moderate-income units. Affordable housing advocates have criticized the county's approach, saying it does not go far enough to provide for low-income tenants.

Rejecting calls for a more aggressive push to add low-income housing in Marina del Rey, Los Angeles County supervisors Tuesday unanimously gave a green light for plans to redevelop a major apartment complex on publicly owned land near the waterfront. The decision deals a blow to affordable-housing advocates who had pressed the county to require more low-income apartments than proposed for the site.

With Westside rents hitting records, a group of affordable housing activists has identified Marina del Rey as the next stop in a long campaign to secure more low-income apartments along prime coastal land. Unlike most waterfront developments, the marina is owned by Los Angeles County, which leases it to developers, so county supervisors are in a position to demand more affordable apartments.

The environmental group Heal the Bay has called for the closure of Mother's Beach, a popular recreation area in Marina del Rey, and the imposition of a $60 yearly boater's fee to help clean up the waters of the world's biggest man-made marina. "The extent of the marina's pollution goes far beyond the trash and oily sheen commonly seen floating on the water's surface," the group said in its "State of the Marina" report, which was released last week.

A Culver City municipal judge ruled Thursday that a county ordinance designed to rid Marina del Rey of unsightly houseboats is discriminatory. "Thank you! Thank you!" shouted Katherine Campbell, who won the right to continue making a derelict cabin cruiser her home in the marina. The case represented a defeat for what some have termed "a poor-people-removal" plan.

Bernard Lloyd gazed across the waterfront of his Marina del Rey neighborhood Saturday toward the site of a proposed 225-foot-high luxury hotel. He said he couldn't help but wonder whether the area was on the verge of becoming an over-developed concrete jungle choked with traffic at all hours. More than two dozen projects have been built, are under construction or are winding their way through the permit process.

A Bay Area environmental group filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging that Southern California Gas Co. operations near Marina del Rey are polluting a local water table. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, charges that the utility is in violation of Proposition 65, which prohibits discharge or release of chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects.