1903 Los Angeles Times. Ocean Park Beach Gift, Aug 29, 1903
Would Spoil Gift at Santa Monica.
Councilmen Act Queerly about Ocean Park Affair
Deed to Valuable Beach Strip is Signed up, but City Fathers for Third Time Break Appointment With Would-be Donors
SANTA MONICA, Aug. 25—The unusual spectacle of a City Council deliberately avoiding an opportunity to “get something handed ‘em” is the topic of discussion here and at Ocean Park. It is proposed to present free to the city a little more than one-half mile of beach front in Ocean Park, extending northward from Marine street, the same is to be kept unincumbered [sic] for the use of the public perpetually. G.A. Hart of Los Angeles, one of the proprietors of the Natick House, A.R. Fraser, and the Ocean Park Improvement Company are the would-be givers. The Santa Monica Board of City Trustees is the proposed and unwilling recipient.
Three times the owners of the beach acreage have made solemn appointments with the trustees to meet together and arrange the transfer of the deed, and three times the City Dads have failed to show up. This afternoon was the third time. The appointed place of meeting was the committee room of the Council chamber, and the hour 2 o’clock. The owners were there, as usual, but no aldermanic togas turned the corner, and after waiting an hour and thirty minutes the disgusted philanthropists went home.
It is charged by Ocean Park people who find some pleasure in remembering that of the five Trustees not one stands openly pledged in the interests of the South Side—that the Trustees are quietly trying to steal from Ocean Park property owners the credit for a deed of public generosity, and cloak themselves with the glory of [bogus] sagacity and strong-handedness. Yet time immemorial it has been generally known that the Ocean Park improvement Company proposed to deed to the city of Santa Monica, without money and without price, the Ocean Park beach from Marine street northward for half a mile or so. A year ago, the Trustees, sitting as a Board of Equalization, a written protest against the $18,000 a comment and an affidavit declaring their readiness to turn the property over to the public and stating that they do not count this property as “a personal assert to the extent of one mill.” The Board’s reply was to make the appointment for this afternoon to discuss the protest; then the board immediately went into session as the Board of City Trustees and formally adopted the reevaluation raising the assessment from $2000 to $18,388—and this afternoon failed to keep the conference appointment.
Hence certain caustic comments from the South Side.
The deed consummating this gift was signed up at Ocean Park today. The property, by the deed, is conveyed by the Ocean Park Improvement Company, as H.E. Lavaxes, Dana Burks and W.T. Gibbons, as trustees, to hold for the use of the people until such time as the municipal boundaries shall be enlarged to embrace it, when the trustees shall turn the property over to the city, to be held in perpetually for a public pleasure grounds. It is stipulated in the deed that this stretch of beach shall not, or any portion of it, be built upon or in any way encumbered for private purposes.
Notes and Personals:
The body of William Boulton, the mining man who died of heart disease Saturday afternoon while diving into the North Beach plunge, was shipped today by express to Moskrais Csio, the home of Bouton’s father. The meeting of the . . . was directed by the local judge Knights of Pythias, to which order Boulton belonged.
At the regular meeting of the Chamber of Commerce Wednesday evening the Public Amusement Committee under whose direction the tri-weekly band concerts and dances are being given will report results.