Adams Square

A capacity crowd filled the new Adams Square branch library on Saturday afternoon as its doors swung open to the public for the first time. Eager children, parents and residents swooped in to the 2,200-square foot library, which has been dubbed “Library Connection @ Adams Square,” to check out the offerings of their new neighborhood branch. “It has lots of books,” said Zhorzhik Hovakimyan, 6, who was perusing a book on monster trucks shortly after stepping into the new facility.

GLENDALE — City libraries will see reduced operating hours this year under a new plan meant to address a 5% budget cut, officials said Thursday. The new hours will go into effect Aug. 4 at nearly all libraries in an effort to bridge about half of the $427,000 in cuts to the libraries department that were made last month as part of the city’s fiscal 2008-09 budget, Libraries Director Cindy Cleary said. Many of the reductions reflect cuts in hourly staffing, or a reorganization of existing full-time workers to man service desks, which at some branches will have to be consolidated at certain times to accommodate the lighter rosters.

SOUTHEAST GLENDALE — It’s small, it’s high-tech, and in five days, Glendale’s newest branch library will open to a part of the city that has never had a book depository of its own. The 2,200-square-foot storefront library at the corner of East Chevy Chase Drive and South Adams Street entered development in 2006 and, together with strong political and community support, stands as the city’s smallest and most modern...

Restaurant zoning hearing postponed Zoning Administrator Edith Fuentes on Wednesday postponed a permit revocation hearing for the Adams Square restaurant de Revolution. The hearing was expected to consider the revocation of its conditional-use permit for alcohol sales due to alleged noncompliance with some of the conditions of the permit. Fuentes said she was willing to accept the business owners? request to have the hearing postponed so that they could sort out their permits.

GLENDALE — A Glendale Superior Court judge postponed the arraignment Friday for an Adams Square restaurant that has allegedly violated zoning laws, giving city officials and De Revolution owners more time to hash out the state of the business’ permits. The owners of the restaurant, which is at the corner of Chevy Chase Avenue and South Adams Street, were scheduled to be arraigned on a 13-count criminal misdemeanor case brought by the city that alleges the business operated without the proper zoning-use certificate and without the correct conditional-use permit for selling alcohol, Deputy City Atty.

GLENDALE ? A Superior Court Judge on Monday ordered De Revolution, an Adams Square restaurant that the city filed a criminal complaint against for allegedly violating zoning laws, to cease operations. The decision came at an arraignment hearing Monday, six days after the Glendale city attorney?s office filed a 13-count criminal misdemeanor complaint alleging that the business repeatedly operated in violation of its zoning-use certificate and sold alcohol without a conditional-use permit, said Dorine Martirosian, the deputy city attorney handling the case.

It is time for Glendale to require all prospective businesses to get a business license. Too often in Glendale, we find that a business shouldn’t be operating as it is, or that the city is investigating it for alleged permit violations. This can be solved with business licenses. From the business side, the permitting process is confusing, burdensome and heavy-handed. Residents complain that the city is not doing enough to track who has the proper permits to operate. In some cases, residents have taken to patrolling the business themselves.

Students young and old turned out on Thursday to help members of the Adams Square Merchants Assn. deck out the Christmas tree in Adams Square Plaza in holiday garb. John Muir Elementary School students came to the annual tree-decorating event for the first time, and adult students from Glendale Community College’s Garfield campus also lent a hand. About 10 Muir students — mostly sixth-graders, and all members of the school’s student council — walked to the plaza from their school, which is about two blocks away, said Jaclyn Scott, a teacher specialist at Muir.

Rarely, if ever, does an old gas station make for a nice place to picnic, play or, to just sit back and pass the time away, chatting with friends and neighbors over a few Cokes. But it’s a scenario that played out on Saturday at the opening of the new Adams Square mini park, and it’s a scenario that’s likely to play out on a regular basis for years to come, said Michael Teahan, who as president of the Adams Hills Homeowners Assn., was a force in designing and realizing the park.