According to the Los Angeles Times, the Santa Ana Performing Arts and Event Center building may soon leave behind the things of this world, and take on the fight against the evil alien power from beyond the stars that's keeping you from fulfilling your potential and living like Tom Cruise. In other words, the building's owner Mike Harrah is in negotiations to sell the place to the Church of Scientology. Harrah needs the money to realize his plan to build the tallest building in Orange County (a
Part dos of 3...
Every day, we drive by City Place, the unfinished development across the street from MainPlace Mall with cool live/work lofts and horrid restaurants (seriously: McCormick & Schmidt's and Corner Bakery as the anchor tenants??? Can't wait 'til Mother's Market opens to save us from that crap). And every day, we're reminded that SanTana councilmembers stricken with conflict-of-influenza sometimes do learn.
Consider Claudia Alvarez. Activists were furious with Claudia in 2004 aft
Yesterday, we promised to investigate why SanTana officials were so adamant in redrawing the boundaries for its much-vaunted Renaissance Plan so that planning commissioner Victoria Bentacourt could vote it. Actually, we knew what we wanted to write, but there were football games to watch, broder! But now, Betancourt.
President of Coneybeare Staffing, Betancourt is a developer's dream--not only will she vote on your project, she'll also buy property from you mere days after voting on it. Conside
Was walking up Main Street in SanTana the other day, and who was driving a massive Cadillac Escalade without a care to gas prices? None other than Mike Harrah, the Weekly's former landlord, one of many sugar papis to councilmember Claudia Alvarez, and the man who wants to build a 37-story building near a residential neighborhood that would be the tallest in Orange County.
Seeing Mike staring glumly into traffic reminded us we hadn't thought about his phallic skyscraper complex for a while. SanT
"What is it about SanTana's power structure that attracts them to moron landlords?" I wondered out loud as a friend drove up Broadway. We passed by a meticulously landscaped building--pretty really. But when it was owned by mega-landlord Mike Harrah a couple of years ago, the structure seemed pulled from Beirut. In fact, most of Harrah's buildings that aren't a manifestation of his ego (e.g. Orange County Pavilion, Santora Building, Original Mike's Restaurant) are similarly slummy (full disclos
Too bad that the Weekly moved its world headquarters away from SanTana and back to Costa Mesa's industrial-park blackhole this week (although the offices we now occupy ain't that bad), because the best non-Carona story to emerge this weekend was the shutdown of the revolutionary FOB II art exhibit by SanTana officials and not the usual elderly Vietnamese brigade of First Amendment haters. The exhibit, held by the Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association, got those aesthetic Know Nothings
Pulido: Pay your taxes!I'm supposed to be relaxing at the Parker Resort in Palm Springs, a beautiful lil' oasis where UC Riverside MFA program in creative writing is holding a writer's retreat (I'm an invited lecturer), but news that SanTana mayor Don Papi Pulido is busy lubing Orange County's seat for the Freudian 37-story symbol that is a proposed skyscraper has me too pissed off to swim in the night heat. The building, of course, is the notorious One Broadway Plaza, proposed by megadeveloper
