When Palisadians Nancy and Erik Jorgensborg reopened Fisher Hardware and Lumber in Santa Monica in November, they were delighted at its instant success. “People have actually walked in and cheered, they’re so glad we’re here,” said Nancy, whose father, Bob Sievers, owned the original Fisher Lumber until 1980, at which time it was sold to Weyerhaeuser Co., a national lumber company. However, the land was then sold to the City of Santa Monica, which apparently intends to extend Memorial Park, which is adjacent to the site. “While this new space is a lot smaller than our other location, the only thing we don’t carry is green framing lumber,” Nancy continued. When Fisher Lumber, which operated for 82 years in Santa Monica, closed down last February, the couple saw the opportunity to fill an obvious void in the local construction supply market. Finding the right location was the biggest challenge. After months of looking, around they were able to secure a long-term lease at the corner of Colorado and Lincoln Boulevard, on the former Earl Scheib Body and Paint Shop site. Ironically, it was once the site of the Woodshed, the small lumber and hardware store Fisher operated before it opened at 14th and Colorado in 1975. While the new store carries half the stock and there is no automotive department, it does have adequate parking. “Fortunately, we have almost as much parking as before, so it’s easy for people to just run in and out and get what they need,” continued Nancy, who met Erik at her father’s store. “What we offer here is service, which Fisher has always been known for.” Need paint, cleaning supplies or drilling tools? The new Fisher hardware occupies 8,500 sq. ft. (about half the space of the former store) and caters to the needs of individual homeowners as well as contractors. It not only carries a full range of building and remodeling materials, from nails to garden supplies, but can also custom-order moldings, as well as windows and doors. All eight employees worked at the former store, “so they are very knowledgeable,” said Erik, who worked for 30 years at Fisher Lumber, where he was the president and general manager at the time it closed. He said that while his store prices “are competitive with Home Depot, what we offer is the convenience of not having to drive there.” Erik said that while half of their business is with contractors, he is aggressively going after even small remodeling jobs. “You just have to look up and down the streets in both Santa Monica and the Palisades to know how much remodeling is going on, which is great for us,” Erik said. “In the Highlands where we live some people are replacing their windows and come to us for help. I also just helped my neighbor with a new fence. We do that as well.” The Jorgensborgs, who both worked at Fisher after they finished college (Nancy graduated from PaliHi in ’68; Eric from Loyola in ’67), have two children: Haley, 22, attends the University of Colorado at Boulder; son Christopher, 26, is currently helping out at the store. Contact: 395-0956.

Globalization brings economic interdependence to the world, speedy communication and cultural exchange. But interconnectedness also brings a broadening of security threats and approaches to contain them. Palisades resident Dan Caldwell, political science professor at Pepperdine University, will address the question of security in the 21st century and sign “Seeking Security in an Insecure World” (Rowman and Littlefield) on Thursday, February 9 at 7:30 p.m. at Village Books on Swarthmore. Caldwell and co-author Robert Williams, associate professor of political science at Pepperdine, offer an overview of the range and nature of new threats to world security in their book, intended for a lay audience. “We started this book before 9/11 as an academic text, but then after the event we thought general readers and citizens needed to get the lay of the land,” Caldwell told the Palisadian-Post. “This is the only overview of contemporary threats. There are many books on bioterrorism, environmental degradation, infectious disease or nuclear threats, but none that has reconceptualized the concept of security.” The book offers a historical view of security, beginning with the traditional paradigm, where the state (nation) was the focus of concern and national security policy and defense policy was generally limited to matters relating to the use of military force. “Prior to 9/11, many people in the United States and other parts of the developed world lived in a kind of fool’s paradise,” the authors write. “The collapse of the Soviet Union a decade earlier had brought to an end the prolonged period of intense insecurity associated with the Cold War and ushered in a brief period in which the principal security concern in the developed world appeared to be whether or not to take responsibility for the protection of people in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda.” In the new paradigm, security involves defense against many different kinds of threats, including environmental problems, the collapse of currencies, and human trafficking, and recognizes that threats against the lives of the citizens and other values of the state may come from the state itself. The authors each drafted seven chapters, then traded, edited, advised and rewrote. A sampling of chapters includes traditional sources of insecurity: nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, disease, cyberthreats, drugs and thugs. The last section covers such topics as political and social conditions of insecurity, ethnic conflict and security, and living in the aftermath of the World Trade Center with the threat of terrorism. Caldwell wrote the chapter on infectious diseases, in which he reviews the devastating results of biological warfare. He notes that biological weapons pose a particularly significant threat because of certain characteristics, including extraordinary lethality, small size, low production costs and accessibility to rogue states and terrorist groups. While we can deal with the crisis by learning more about the threat and preparing to deal with it, Caldwell said, “in the end, peace and security require more than defensive responses to the threats we perceive.” The authors point out in the first chapter that threats should be viewed at as products of capabilities and intentions. As an example, “the United States and Russia continue to dwarf all other international actors in their WMD capabilities. But because their intentions toward each other are now benign, their WMD capabilities pose very little threat to each other. Rogue states have vastly smaller WMD capabilities, but because we cannot assume benign intentions, they constitute a clear threat to our society.” Caldwell said that what surprised him in researching the book was the connection between security and women’s education and the lot of women worldwide. “In Africa, women don’t have options, no education, and no possibility of working outside the home. When their husband goes off and has sex, gets AIDS, she’s a victim.” The authors write, “In seven African countries, babies born in 2004 have a life expectancy of 40 years or less, due primarily to the scourge of AIDS. In short, those who live in developing countries have less money, dramatically lower life expectancies, lower infant survival rates, higher death rates from infectious diseases, lower literacy rates and less access to safe drinking water and health care. “Economic circumstances are important because poverty is a key social condition associated with war and terrorism.” Looking forward, Caldwell and Williams suggest that Western policymakers and scholars must look beyond their own cultural constructs. “If our conclusions to this point have been correct’that seeking security today requires countering threats from nonstate actors, recognizing threats that are transnational and, consequently, indivisible in character, dealing with the problems of unintended consequences and operating in parts of the world that are especially unfamiliar to most of use in the West’then the ability to understand and even empathize with those in other cultures is more important than ever before.” Caldwell said that the challenge is to coordinate an international response to potential security threats, which is particularly difficult when considering that there are 200 sovereign states in the international system. The co-authors write: Sovereignty means that each of the states is free to address (or to ignore) global warming, or human trafficking or terrorism, as it sees fit….The failure of one state to curb greenhouse gas emissions or to stop the destruction of rainforests has a negative impact on all states that are attempting to address global warming. Furthermore, nonstate actors’terrorists, arms traffickers, nuclear scientists willing to sell their services to the highest bidder’exploit differences among states and operate in the gaps of the international system.” “There is no such thing as absolute security; it’s a matter of degree,” Caldwell said. “Providing security is managing insecurity, and in today’s world national security is an oxymoron. It’s a global problem.”

Jason Miles, officer in charge at the Pacific Palisades post office, continued to try to stay on top of postal service concerns this week despite some setbacks. Miles, whose first official day in the La Cruz office was January 23, told the Palisadian-Post on Tuesday that he was “addressing staffing and injury compensation issues.” He said one improvement was that there was no delayed mail (mail that arrives at the post office and is not delivered the same day). In terms of late delivery hours, he said that last Saturday, he had one carrier finish a delivery route at 6:10 p.m., and early his week, he had several employees delivering mail after 5 p.m. “I’m getting mail from the plant [Los Angeles Processing and Distribution Center] on time and in good condition,” Miles said. Resident John Marrone, however, told the Post Tuesday that he had not received a piece of mail sent a week earlier by priority/overnight from Woodland Hills to the Palisades. He had been calling Miles, who told the Post that the missing priority item arrived Tuesday in the Palisades on one of the later trucks dispatched from the L.A. center. “When I recovered the item, I called [Marrone] immediately and drove it out to his residence myself,” Miles said. Another resident said he had “no delivery whatsoever” last Wednesday, when he had been expecting “an important item of mail.” The item arrived the following day. This week, he told the Post that “there seems to be some sort of steady delivery schedule,” which he said might be related to Miles’ efforts to eradicate delays. “There are going to be isolated incidents,” Miles said, frustrated after hearing about the residents’ problems but focused on solving them. He added that he plans to hire more employees but could not say when.

After an hourlong discussion, no new motion was proposed at last Thursday’s Community Council meeting regarding the Landmark condominium/townhouse development on Tramonto Drive in Castellammare, recently downsized from 82 units to 61. Although the council voted last March to send an appeal to the California Coastal Commission in support of Castellammare residents who objected to the controversial project, the commission is expected to approve the ocean-view project at its February 8 meeting near San Diego. The council learned at last Thursday’s meeting that while the proposed development now has the support of two of its most critical opponents, it is still opposed by the Castellammare Mesa Homeowners Association, as well as Council advisor Jack Allen. “One of the reasons the Council originally objected to the Landmark project was that the applicant did not provide a shoring plan indicating how the hillside would be stabilized during the excavation. A shoring plan is still not available,” Allen said at the Council meeting. “If they start excavating they could trigger a slide. With temporary shoring we could at least know how they are going to hold that hill up there.” Allen, a retired attorney, was also concerned about who would be liable in the event that the hillside did give way. “If there’s a slide, who’s going to pay for it?” he asked. “Inevitably, the city pays for it and we get hammered. That’s why we have to be concerned.” Andrew Martin, president of the CMHO, who has been involved in the appeal process for the last six years, is also opposed for the same reason. He noted that in the staff report recently released by the Coastal Commission that both the “applicant and the City of Los Angeles acknowledge, for the first time, I believe, that excavation could reactivate the slide” and poses a risk to the stability of single-family homes adjacent to the slide. “However, there is no remedy for these homeowners other than suing the developer, the City or the Coastal Commission,” said Martin, who asked that the developer be required to post a bond indemnifying those homeowners for a period of 10 years from the date of the project’s completion. He also asked that the number of units be further reduced to 50, in an attempt to mitigate the traffic impact on Tramonto, Los Liones Drive and Sunset. Castellammare residents have been battling the project since it was proposed by developer Ken Kahan in the fall of 2000. Their concern centers on the advisability of building on the Revello landslide, where a 12-unit apartment building collapsed in 1965. The property, located at 17331-17333 Tramonto, will occupy 3.98 acres of hillside, overlooking Santa Monica Bay, above the Sunset/PCH intersection. The design, which resembles an Italian hillside town, will consist of several buildings built into the bedrock, with parking provided in a subterranean garage. Once the project is approved, the existing structures on the lot will be demolished, including two apartment buildings, requiring the relocation of residents in 20 units. The biggest challenge for the builder is to repair and stabilize the existing landslide, which requires digging down to bedrock and replacing it with compacted fill to support the proposed buildings. The plan also includes embedding soldier piles in the bedrock. While an environmental impact report (EIR) has been done, it in no way negates the risk. “The risk is there whether we do the project or not,” noted Kahan, who believes that building on the hillside “will improve it.” That was also the conclusion of the Ocean Woods Terrace Homeowners Association, which includes 36 condominium owners who reside immediately adjacent to the proposed project. Council member Barbara Kohn, who represents Area 1 (Pacific View Estates, Castellammare, Paseo Miramar), read a letter from the association’s lawyer which stated that having “worked tirelessly” with the developer to preserve their views, they were now in support of the project, which they believe will resolve prior soil and geologic problems and “provide a safer site than what exists today.” Also now in support of the project is Todd Sadow, who along with two of his neighbors, has reached a tentative settlement with Kahan, which they expect to sign this week and which would bring an end to the lawsuit they currently have against the City. “Because of where our homes are we would be the most seriously affected if there is a slide and it is because of the geological concerns that we were originally opposed,” said Sadow, who explained that his group had hired a forensic soils engineer who concluded that there were not enough borings for the depth of the slide, which the developer has now apparently addressed to their satisfaction. “In your agreement, are the homeowners going to absolve the city?” Allen asked Sadow. Before Sadow could respond, Kahan pointed out that while there are still issues to be resolved, he felt the project had already come “a long way” in answering residents’ concerns, “even going so far as to switch architects” to provide greater view protection and, now, “by downsizing the number of units.” Kahan also pointed out that residents could still voice their concerns not only at next week’s Coastal Commission hearing which will focus on environmental protection issues, but also during the building permitting process, during which time specifics regarding the shoring plan and liability will be dealt with. In further trying to appease Council members, Kahan said that since the owners of the new units “can sue us for 10 years after the project is complete, you can be sure we are going to get it right,” and that his company would be adequately insured against any losses. When Kahan, president of California Landmark and principal manager of Palisades Landmark, was asked specifically how much insurance he would have, he responded “at least $10 million.” Alice Beagles, who lives adjacent to the site and is the Palisades Historical Society representative on the council, felt this amount was far too low. “That would be enough for only five to seven homes,” she said, passing around a copy of a photo of the 1965 Revello slide. “This is a picture that haunts me,” said Beagles, pointing to a collapsed apartment building. “Last time there was a slide there was redlining. People couldn’t sell their homes in Castellammare because buyers couldn’t get a mortgage. That went on for a long time.” Paul Glasgall, the council’s Highlands representative, said he was in favor of the Landmark project, considering “that in 40 years the City has done zip about that slide. At least this way we get a nicer view and I think it will improve the area. Hopefully it won’t come down the hill.” (Editor’s note: The Coastal Commission hearing on the Landmark project is scheduled for 10 a.m. on February 8. It will be held at 276 4th Avenue in Chula Vista, south of San Diego.)