Atwater Village

[ This post has been corrected, see below for details. ] Two men and a woman who allegedly led police on a chase into Atwater Village today after burglarizing a home in an upscale West Glendale neighborhood have been detained, officials said. A witness spotted one of them running about 1:37 p.m. from a home on the 800 block of Cumberland Road and enter a silver Infiniti SUV, which fled the area, Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said. The home burglary alarm was activated, he said.

ATWATER VILLAGE -- Electronics and appliance giant Best Buy has announced the opening of a new store in Atwater Village. The store is part of a larger effort by the company to serve the needs of east Los Angeles and Glendale customers. The 45,000-square-foot store will open in the late fall at 2909 Los Feliz Ave., in Los Angeles. The establishment will help to anchor a complex already occupied by Costco and Toys 'R' Us. Best Buy plans to launch 650 new stores across the country by 2004.

Amber Willard GLENDALE -- Glendale Police netted more than $40,000 in cash and cocaine with a street value of $80,000 in a recent drug bust in Atwater Village. A tip from a police informant led police to set up surveillance on an apartment at 2810 Reservoir St. in Atwater Village starting July 4. Two days later, Glendale policearrested six men on suspicion of operating a drug trafficking scheme that had been doing business for years, Glendale police Investigator Oscar Rodriguez said.

The city of Glendale should not close the traffic flow across the rail crossing at Chevy Chase Drive ("Residents fume at street closure," Tuesday.) This closure would have an inimical effect in north Atwater Village and southwest Glendale. Glendale city officials were invited to attend a meeting on Sept. 19 in Atwater Village to explain the rationale for this proposed closure. I called five times and was finally told by Jano Baghdanian in Public Works that neither he, nor anyone else, would attend the meeting scheduled for that night.

Jenna Bordelon ATWATER VILLAGE -- Electronics and appliance giant Best Buy has announced the opening of a new store in Atwater Village. The store is part of a larger effort by the company to serve the needs of east Los Angeles and Glendale customers. The 45,000-square-foot store will open in the late fall at 2909 Los Feliz Ave. in Los Angeles, just across the border with Glendale. The establishment will help to anchor a complex already occupied by Costco and Toys 'R' Us. Although the management team has been in place for eight months, the store will hold a Job Fair in August.

Edward Weston has been the topic several times in the 10-plus years I've been writing Verdugo Views. And, each time, the Weston name gets noticed. The Jan. 12 column on Ivan Forbes' memories of living across the street from the Weston family was no exception. One of Forbes' memories was of watching the Weston boys build a sailboat in the backyard of their home on Perlita Avenue and then later seeing a crane arrive and lift the boat out of the yard. Marilyn Chrisman, who grew up on Irving Avenue in Northwest Glendale and attended Balboa Elementary, said Flora Weston taught school at Balboa for a while, and she and her boys lived on Allen Avenue, south of the school.

CITY HALL ? The City Council last week gave preliminary design approval to a mixed-use commercial development slated for Los Feliz Road at Glendale?s entrance from Atwater Village. The council unanimously approved Stage I design approval for the Mitaa Plaza development at 435 Los Feliz Road. The project had previously received the first stage of approval, but revisions to the project prompted a second look. Mayor Frank Quintero said he was glad to see the major project progressing again at a time many other developments have stalled indefinitely.

Area residents will be going out of their gourds this Halloween season with tons of pumpkins available at various patches in the region. The following is a list of just a few: TONS O' PUMPKINS GLENDALE - YMCA of Glendale's annual pumpkin patch will run from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week through Halloween at the YMCA, 238 S. Brand Blvd. A truck full of 80 tons of pumpkin has been unloaded into the YMCA lot. Children can explore hay tunnels, touch real corn stalks, gourds and Indian corn and look at more than 5,000 pumpkins.

Claudia Peschiutta LOS ANGELES -- The opening of a Best Buy store Friday near the Glendale border brought with it jobs and grant opportunities for area residents. About 150 full- and part-time employees have been hired to staff the 45,000-square-foot electronics and appliances store, at 2909 Los Feliz Blvd. in Atwater Village. In celebration of the store opening, Best Buy has pledged to provide up to $3,000 in grants to bring to life the ideas of local children on how to improve the community.

Public deserved to hear about changes I want to thank you for bringing this backroom staffer decision to light ("It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing," Sept. 20). There's more to it, however. Something key that's missing from the article is the city staff's real agenda, which, from my understanding, is to discontinue the "dance" portion of the summer concerts. This, of course, would be a very unpopular decision. The dance floor is a huge attraction and is the singularly unique part of the whole program.

This Sunday afternoon, the intersection of Glendale and Glenfeliz boulevards in Atwater Village will be taken over by brewery tents, wine tasting stations and food trucks for the first Atwater Village Beer, Wine & Food Festival. Organized by the folks behind 55 Degree Wine shop and the adjacent Link N Hops gastropub, and sponsored by the Atwater Village Chamber of Commerce, the festival will showcase more than a dozen breweries. Local favorites such as Eagle Rock Brewery, Angel City Brewing and Atwater's own Golden Road Brewery will be joined by farther-flung breweries such as Ventura's Surf Brewery, Triple Voodoo Brewing and Deschutes Brewery.

Edward Weston has been the topic several times in the 10-plus years I've been writing Verdugo Views. And, each time, the Weston name gets noticed. The Jan. 12 column on Ivan Forbes' memories of living across the street from the Weston family was no exception. One of Forbes' memories was of watching the Weston boys build a sailboat in the backyard of their home on Perlita Avenue and then later seeing a crane arrive and lift the boat out of the yard. Marilyn Chrisman, who grew up on Irving Avenue in Northwest Glendale and attended Balboa Elementary, said Flora Weston taught school at Balboa for a while, and she and her boys lived on Allen Avenue, south of the school.

If the heart of a bakery is its oven, then Proof Bakery's is ginormous. Really. It's a gas-powered Dalton with double doors and revolving shelves that can fit 18 sheet trays - or 72 pies - at a time. The oven, about the size of a 10-foot U-Haul truck, is 50 years old, inherited with the space, and its quirks provide the cult Atwater bakery its pulse. "When someone first showed me how to light it, you had to fill a basin with gas, light a newspaper and throw it in," says owner Na Young Ma. "It was like 'Backdraft.' "But I have learned to love it. " (She also has since installed a modern igniter.)

As CicLAvia prepares to isolate 10 miles of Los Angeles streets on Sunday for use only by pedestrians and bicyclists, organizers say they are eyeing a route through Burbank, Glendale. CicLAvia organizers have met with city leaders to lay out their dream route, which would start in North Hollywood and end in Atwater as they push to expand throughout the region. “We want to be in Glendale, Burbank, Pasadena. We want to be in the beach cities - Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Santa Monica and the Westside.

[ This post has been corrected, see below for details. ] Two men and a woman who allegedly led police on a chase into Atwater Village today after burglarizing a home in an upscale West Glendale neighborhood have been detained, officials said. A witness spotted one of them running about 1:37 p.m. from a home on the 800 block of Cumberland Road and enter a silver Infiniti SUV, which fled the area, Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said. The home burglary alarm was activated, he said.

CITY HALL ? The City Council last week gave preliminary design approval to a mixed-use commercial development slated for Los Feliz Road at Glendale?s entrance from Atwater Village. The council unanimously approved Stage I design approval for the Mitaa Plaza development at 435 Los Feliz Road. The project had previously received the first stage of approval, but revisions to the project prompted a second look. Mayor Frank Quintero said he was glad to see the major project progressing again at a time many other developments have stalled indefinitely.

CITY HALL — The future of Glendale’s southern gateway was locked into a five-story, 218-unit residential project Tuesday after the City Council voted unanimously to approve its construction. Long a darling of City Hall, the 2.18-acre project nearly succumbed to the credit market freeze and subsequent recession, but a renegotiated land deal kept it alive. The change in fortune for the so-called Triangle Project, to be bordered by Los Feliz and San Fernando roads and South Central Avenue, will ultimately be a boon for south Glendale in more ways than one, creating hundreds of retail and construction jobs and millions in city revenue, officials said.

CITY HALL — A six-story mixed-use complex proposed for the Los Feliz Boulevard entry into Glendale breezed through its initial design review Tuesday, despite objections from Atwater Village residents who said the project would only add to existing traffic woes there. While city officials did not disagree with the poor traffic assessments, they also said the 175,749-square-foot proposal at 435 Los Feliz Road comes at a time when the depressed credit market has hamstrung nearly all other market rate development in Glendale, spurring the City Council to offer several permit deadline extensions to keep an unknown number of projects from folding altogether.

It was late at night on International Workers Day, or May Day, and the night was warm, without a single cloud in the dark sky. The 11th hour of the evening was fast approaching when I heard the sound of small explosions outside my living quarters. I didn’t know what to think. Perhaps gang warfare had surfaced on the streets of our quiet town. Maybe the leftists at Atwater Village and the Greens in Los Feliz had joined forces and declared war on our beloved city. I wondered if they had already crossed the borders of the Jewel City and were marching to City Hall.

Former Glendale Water & Power Commissioner Lenore Solis is upset with operations at City Hall and wants to see a change. With a history of community service and activity in Glendale, the City Council candidate feels she could be a catalyst for that change in the city. "I don't like what I see happening at City Hall," she said. "I'm very disappointed that our council is pandering to specific groups in the community and ignoring our neighborhoods." Among many endeavors in Glendale and the Los Angeles area, Solis has served on the Glendale Water & Power Streetlight Committee, been a board member of the Glendale Human Relations Coalition, served on the Peace Summit Organizing Committee and the Verdugo Skate Park Design Committee, she said.