L.A. Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Allen White ruled on June 30 to dismiss the Friends of the Temescal Pool’s lawsuit, which asked the court to order the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to repair and reopen the former YMCA-operated pool in Temescal Canyon.   ’We’re disappointed in the decision; we and our lawyers believe that the motion was wrongly decided,’ Friends President Jane Albrecht told the Palisadian-Post on Monday. She said the group will appeal the ruling to the California Court of Appeal.   In January, Friends, along with a group of 12 elderly and/or disabled residents, filed the lawsuit against the Conservancy and its partner, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority. This spring, the Conservancy filed a demurrer (motion to dismiss) the case, and a hearing was held before White on June 18.   Friends argued that the Conservancy violated its agreement with the Presbyterian Synod, from which the state agency purchased the land in 1994, by failing to keep the pool open last year and did not meet its obligations under Proposition A (which provided some of the funding for the state to purchase the park), the Americans with Disabilities Act and the California Disabled Persons Act to provide recreational opportunities and access for disabled and senior citizens.   According to the lawsuit, ‘The pool was the only part of Temescal Gateway Park that was open and accessible for recreation use by many handicapped and senior citizens of the community.’ The YMCA, which leased the handicapped-accessible pool, offered rehabilitation programs.   The pool was initially closed in February 2008 for repairs, which were estimated to cost $400,000, and in December, the Conservancy board decided to develop a long-term plan for the park before possibly offering a new pool lease to the YMCA or another entity. The board also chose to temporarily fill in the empty pool with gravel and dirt, declaring liability concerns.   ’No decision has been made as to the future use of the site,’ according to a press release from the Conservancy on July 7.   Conservancy Executive Director Joe Edmiston wrote to the Post on Tuesday saying that the planning process remains halted because the state froze bond spending in the midst of its budget crisis. The Conservancy had hired Dudek, an environmental and engineering consulting firm headquartered in Encinitas, to facilitate that process.   Edmiston believes it could be another year before the legal issues with the Friends are resolved. ‘By then, let’s hope, all the budget freezes will be over and we can begin planning work again,’ he wrote.   Laurie Collins, the Conservancy’s chief staff counsel, told the Post on Monday that ‘I think that the judge ruled correctly, and I don’t think they have any grounds for an appeal.’   In this situation, the judge could have given Friends the opportunity to amend its complaint, so the lawsuit could move forward, but ‘she found no validity at all to their causes of action,’ Collins said. White wrote in her ruling on June 30 that the Proposition A funds used to purchase the property were to benefit projects for at-risk youth. ‘Nowhere does Proposition A require the maintenance of the pool to benefit disabled persons nor require that the pool be maintained in perpetuity,’ she wrote. White also did not accept the Friends’ allegations that the pool closure violates ADA or CDPA. She wrote that the ‘plaintiffs fail to allege that the Conservancy has denied them access to the park or failed to remove architectural barriers to the use of the park.’ At the June 18 hearing, Friends agreed to concede its charges that the Conservancy breached its agreement with the Presbyterian Synod by failing to keep the pool open. Albrecht said the group did not believe that point was the crux of its argument. Albrecht continued that Friends is not discouraged by the ruling, which she believes could be reversed in the appeal. In addition, ‘the court case was one small part of our effort to save the pool,’ she said. Friends still hope to collaborate with the Conservancy and is developing a business plan to reopen the pool that will be announced in the next few weeks. ‘We want to find a solution that benefits the people and the park,’ Albrecht said. ‘We’re proceeding full speed ahead and are optimistic.’ The group has already received a donation of $100,000 to repair the pool from Stephen Groner, a real estate investor who lives in Santa Barbara. Groner’s mother, Barbara Groner, drove from Santa Monica to swim at the pool every day for 15 years before she died last year. In addition, Friends has continued its community activism, with about 60 people marching in the Fourth of July parade next to a 40-ft.-by-20-ft. ‘Save the Pool’ sign being hauled on a flatbed trailer. Ilene Cassidy, co-founder of Friends, rode in the parade as one of the Community Council’s Golden Sparkplug winners for her efforts to save the pool. All along the route, Cassidy said, ‘people were screaming ‘Save the Pool’ and shouting with support. It was overwhelming. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.’ Albrecht said that the march was not meant to be a protest, but a remembrance of the fun people had at the pool every summer and year-round for many decades. ‘I was delighted to see the broad and enthusiastic support that we received from the crowd,’ she said.

‘It’s a dream come true,’ said Denni Geed, an Englishman who recently opened London Colour Studio on Sunset across from Ralphs. ‘I’m lucky to get a salon in the Palisades.’ In these perilous economic times and facing entrenched competition from a half-dozen salons in town, Geed has a strategy’his experience and his prices. ‘Our services are about 30 percent below our competitors,’ he said. A cut and blow dry starts at $45 for women, and men’s cuts start at $28. ‘We are definitely a color salon,’ said Geed, who previously owned a salon in Topanga Canyon. ‘I do dimensional hair coloring, which is more advanced than regular coloring.’ For example, instead of using just one color for women who get highlights ($65), Geed might blend different colors, including gold and brown tones. A native of Cambridge, England, Geed started his career as a stylist when he was 14, working part-time shampooing hair in a beauty shop that his mom favored. ‘I went into the salon where there were 25 cute girls working, and I couldn’t believe my luck,’ he said. ‘I asked, ‘Where do I sign up?” Instead of going on to college, Geed worked as an apprentice at Vidal Sassoon in London for three years. ‘British hairdressers are trained differently than American ones,’ he said. ‘From day one you’re working on hair, and instead of nine months of training, it’s three years.’   After working briefly in Milan, Geed moved to Los Angeles (where he worked for Carlton Salons for seven years) and then to New York City, where he joined the Jacques Dessange salon on 64th and Madison. After a short time, the company sent him to train in Paris for six months, and when he returned he helped launch the company’s new salon on Fifth Avenue across from Rockefeller Center.   In 1989, Geed returned to Los Angeles, where he met his wife Sally (they now have two children, Dylan and Libby) and opened his first salon, Sienna Hair Colouring Studio, in Topanga in 1991, which was instantly popular.   ’I had a nice monopoly up there,’ Geed said, ‘but I wanted to be in a busier neighborhood; I wanted to be in the Palisades.’   Last November, after a brief search, he found a space next to the Coldwell Banker office, and spent the next six months designing and constructing the interior. ‘It was important to me to design the space,’ Geed said. ‘I’m going to be there every day, so it’s got to feel right for me.’   Customers might feel that this is more like a meditative retreat than a beauty salon. Instead of sitting in a chair, facing a wall of mirrors lit with fluorescent lighting, clients face a slate wall with water rushing over the surface into a turquoise/black pebble bed.   The salon’s interior stonewalls provide a cool, comfortable feel and the stone-laid floor is lit with miniature spotlights. If a customer insists upon looking in a mirror, two overal mirrors are encased in wood and copper on either side of the waterfall wall.   ’I brought the outdoors inside,’ Geed said of his salon design.   While having their hair done at London Colour Studio, customers don’t have to look at Geed’s tools of trade, such as blow dryers, hair products and accessories. He keeps his ‘junk’ in a organizational palette that can be moved from chair to chair or put away. He invented the palette in the mid-90s and ‘it’s now used by all the major hair companies, like Logics, Joico, Matrix, Redken and Sexy Hair,’ said Geed, who has applied for a patent.   This fall, he wants to offer a fundraiser to all local schools. ‘I would have a whole team of haircutters and we would suggest a price to the people in the salon and that money would go towards the school,’ Geed said.   London Colour Studio is currently open seven days a week. Call: (310) 573-9444.

By BETSY R. ROSENTHAL Special to the Palisadian-Post When I wrote about the badminton ladies of Pacific Palisades in 2005, it was with a heavy heart because we had just lost two of our most active racquet-wielding women: Dorothy Perry and Mary Arlen. This time I can report life-affirming news. Just before Thanksgiving last year, the badminton bunch (we can no longer go by the appellation ‘badminton sisterhood,’ since several men have joined us), ate and drank at a festive party celebrating our oldest player, Bertha Lucas on her 90th birthday. Although she is no stranger to badminton, Lucas is a relatively recent addition to our group at the Recreation Center. She shows up every week and whacks that birdie like a woman half her age. When she strategically taps the shuttlecock ever so slightly over the net, into the Siberia of her opponent’s court, you can rest assured that that birdie isn’t coming back. There’s no stopping this great-grandmother sixteen times over. Back in 2005, we played in the old gym at the park, where boundary and service lines for doubles and singles were painted on the floor. In the new gym where we play now, there are no badminton courts outlined on the floor and every Wednesday morning, a couple of the players arrive before our official start time to lug the equipment from the storage closet, and then mark the essential boundaries and lines with green tape. Marianne Lu, a stalwart, sometimes returns from her visits to Taiwan bearing cheap tape for us. There have been other changes, as well. I no longer dive for the birdie’my bad knees can’t take it. I’m no longer the youngest player, competing against women my mother’s age. Now I’m my mother’s age, or at least I feel like it when these younger, more agile men and women join us. Fortunately, we still laugh at ourselves, particularly when we’re poised for the perfect slam and all we hit is air. And we still curse that darn net that keeps us from getting the birdie to the other side. In addition, other things have gone unchanged. We still have two Barbaras. Former PE instructor Barbara Vatcher still directs us which court to go to, who to partner with and when to sit out. If she misses a day, we wander around like bewildered kindergarteners on the first day of school. The other Barb [Yuki] still brings me pencils from every distant land she visits. My pencil cup overfloweth with the kiwi-adorned one from New Zealand, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame pencil from Cleveland, and even one with black-eyed egg-headed aliens from the International UFO Museum in Roswell, New Mexico. Coach Vatcher’s husband, Don, offers to sit out whenever possible so he can sneak off to the library. And Mary Elsom never fails to remind us of her height by perpetually sending the birdie sailing over our heads. The philosophy of our play has remained consistent’have fun, get the blood pumping and never play with the same partner twice in a row. As long as Bertha Lucas keeps coming to the gym, toting her badminton racquet and hitting the impossible shots, none of the rest of us can ever use age as an excuse for inactivity. I say, hit it up and let’s see who serves.   Rosenthal and husband David have lived in the Palisades for 19 years and have three children. The badminton group meets every Wednesday from 10 a.m. to noon, year-round. Anyone is welcome to join.

A series of ongoing issues are suddenly coalescing and threatening the future of two mobile home parks along Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades: Palisades Bowl and Tahitian Terrace.   The situation has become especially complex and harrowing for homeowners in these two parks (just north of Temescal Canyon Road) because of the projected cost to repair the slumping hillside below Asilomar Boulevard and above the parks. This cost is conservativeloy estimated at $40 million, according to a city spokesperson who is not authorized to be quoted.   The City of Los Angeles owns the uppermost portion of the endangered hillside’an easement next to Asilomar Boulevard. The middle portion of the hill belongs to Tahitian Terrace owner Desmond McDonald, and the bottom portion is owned by Palisades Bowl, LLC, for Eddie Biggs.   Who will pay for the ultimate remediation? Councilman Bill Rosendahl said that this hasn’t been determined yet. ‘I have no clarity where the money will come from,’ he told the Palisadian-Post. ‘We’re investigating the options.’   In 2005, 11 Bowl units were evacuated because of land slippage. Two years later, the three hillside owners hired Ninyo & Moore, a geotechnical consulting firm in Irvine, to investigate and make recommendations. In addition to analyzing soil samples, checking groundwater and measuring slope movement, the firm’s engineers also examined historical photographs and prior reports done in 1958, 1962, 1980 and 2001, and concluded that the Asilomar slope has older and younger landslide deposits as well as an area of recent movement.   The younger landslide area extends below the residential property located at 405 Puerto Del Mar, extending to the toe of the slope (Palisades Bowl) and then under the existing North Terrace Drive (Tahitian Terrace). The older landslide area is 85 feet or more below ground surface and extends beneath the mobile home parks into Santa Monica Bay,   The report summary, which was released last August, stated that ‘the existing slope condition is slowly creeping with more significant movement during inclement weather.’ In a three-month period, inclinometers placed in the ground to 39 feet measured a 2.7 inch land movement. This movement also incapacitated the instruments from giving further readings.   In their report, Ninyo & Moore recommended the following actions: ‘ A pile-supported wall at the top of the slope with tie-back anchors be constructed; ‘ removal of the active landslide deposits below that wall; ‘ and reconstructing the slope below the wall.   The report noted that existing mobile homes in the vicinity of the active landslide mass near the north end of Kontiki Way and the south side of North Terrace Drive at Tahitian Terrace should be relocated during the reconstruction period.   Prior to the removal of the landslide deposits, a soldier pile wall would be constructed near the top of the landslide and could include as many as 130 cast-in-drilled hole reinforced piles (36-inch-diameter) with five-foot spacing. Once grading is completed, a portion of this 30-ft.-high wall would also become a permanent retaining wall.   The same spokesperson for the city who cannot be quoted said that once the design is completed, the project put out to bid and residents relocated, construction would take a minimum of one year.   Residents of Palisades Bowl (which has 170 leased spaces) received a letter last month from Richard Norris, attorney for owner Biggs, that stated: ‘The greatest single problem for the Park is the fact that the hillside behind the Park is sliding.’   Norris writes that Biggs is involved in a never-ending series of lawsuits pertaining to the Park, combined with continuing litigation with tenants and the City of Los Angeles, and that his Park is operating at a loss without sufficient rents to cover operation costs or to finance ongoing litigation.   According to the letter, Biggs tried to raise rents, but was denied by the L.A. rent control board. He has also tried to convert the Park to condo ownership (tenants own the homes, but not the land, which is what they pay rent on), but the City of L.A. refused to allow his request to proceed.   The letter also threatens that unless tenants purchase the Park, dismiss all pending litigations against him, and take on the responsibility for the resolution of the landslide, Biggs may file for bankruptcy.   Norris also claims that Biggs recently received an offer of about $40 million from an international hotel developer.   At Tahitian Terrace, McDonald has his 22-acre site (which has 158 mobile home spaces) listed on a Coldwell Banker Real Estate Web site, but realtor Adrienne Barr told the Post on Monday, ‘We are not technically listing the property right now.’ McDonald has initiated the condo conversion process at Tahitian Terrace. Residents have been told that the prices for buying the land under their mobile homes may cost from $400,000 to $1 million, which for many seniors and low-income residents isn’t possible.   Although no one is forced to buy, many mobile home owners oppose conversion because once one home undergoes conversion, local rent control for all residents is removed. Low-income residents no longer come under city control, and those with moderate income who have been under rent control face rent increases over a four-year period to market value. When several residents, who oppose the conversion, raised questions about the liability of the hillside, they were given the following information by the Tahitian Terrace board:   ’Tahitian Terrace is not legally liable for the repair of the hillside. The slide was caused by a combination of natural geology and numerous offsite sources of causation. Based on all available opinions from the appropriate experts in geology, civil engineering and law, Azul Pacifico, Inc. (McDonald is president) and Tahitian Terrace have no legal liability (duty) to repair the hillside failure financially or physically. Without making promises, Azul Pacifico will, in all likelihood, retain responsibility for the repair of the hillside. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of each lot will be allocated to Tahitian Terrace’s goodwill participation in the prospective repair of the hillside.’   ’We know its prime real estate and its beautiful land, but the bluffs are not just for the super rich,’ said Councilman Rosendahl, who added that he’s committed to the people living in the two mobile home parks. ‘It’s a different day, now, from when someone could come in and buy the land and then throw people off.’