HELP US KEEP BERGAMOT STATION FROM OVER DEVELOPMENT!
Dear Friends of Bergamot Station,
In 2009, we sent an open letter to the community to save Bergamot Station and over 13,000 of our friends responded. Together we successfully stopped the MTA from turning the arts center into a maintenance facility for the Light Rail. Just seven years later, as the Expo station nears its opening, we face another challenge to the arts and ask the Santa Monica City Council to shift and correct its priorities.
--Is a 6-STORY HOTEL & 30,000 SQUARE FEET OF COMMERCIAL OFFICE SPACE more important than a singular arts center in Santa Monica that is known throughout the world?
One of the unique qualities of Bergamot is the availability to park at a gallery or galleries of your choice. Development will eliminate the parking and replace it with a lot on the site of the sanitation dept. that will hold less parking than we have now and make the galleries on the west end almost inaccessible. The view to the galleries will be totally obscured by the amount of construction/development that is planned.
--Should the Expo Station bring people to Santa Monica to yet another shopping center instead of a unique collective of art galleries and truly creative, cultural businesses?
--Who does the City Council support, Santa Monica residents and their families--or a private developer poised to profit on public property?
Bergamot Station is already profitable—and MEANINGFUL--and the galleries benefit the community, but the City’s current business approach is jeopardizing the survival of Bergamot’s legacy.
Since 1994, the art galleries have provided year-round exhibitions free of charge to the public, in a casual, comfortable, accessible and inviting open-air space. Bergamot Station is the largest public art space for non-profit events on the Westside and is the largest art gallery complex west of the Mississippi. The gallery collective is an active civic partner and has hosted thousands of educational programs, non-profit events and fundraisers, supporting the Red Cross, CLARE Foundation, Ocean Park Community Center, Los Angeles Ballet, and Step Up On Second, just to name a few out of the100's we have supported, and our past City partnership for the phenomenal program, Rosie’s Girls.
We hope you will support us in telling the Mayor and the City Council that we must preserve this valuable cultural resource as it is – and not transform it into yet another dense, crammed development project and construction site creating more traffic and congestion.
LINK TO LETTER HERE: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16koSwgU0qEnfTAD9tfmUh7eG_pmVHje77Eo6owvd5d8/pub
Please find the attached letter to send or customize it on
your letterhead. Email it to the attention of Mayor Tony Vazquez, and copy all
City Council members listed below. An asterisk (*) means they are up for
re-election this November.
LINK TO LETTER HERE: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16koSwgU0qEnfTAD9tfmUh7eG_pmVHje77Eo6owvd5d8/pub
*tony.vazquez@smgov.net: Mayor Tony Vazquez
kevin@mckeown.net: Councilmember Kevin McKeown
*gleam.davis@smgov.net: Councilmember Gleam Davis
sue.himmelrich@smgov.net: Councilmember Sue Himmelrich
pam.oconnor@smgov.net: Councilmember Pam O’Connor
*terry.oday@smgov.net: Councilmember Terry O’Day
*ted.winterer@smgov.net: Councilmember Ted Winterer
manager@smgov.net: City Manager Rick Cole
council@smgov.net: Santa Monica City Council
We value you for your support of the arts and kindly ask you to forward this email to your friends and colleagues so that they may join us in the effort to preserve Bergamot Station!
