Since Giving Tuesday I’m sure you have been bombarded with appeals from countless organizations, local, national, or even international that are doing exceptionally valuable work that enhance the public good. It’s sometimes hard to select those that deserve our membership, donations, and/or direct participation.
There is one major advantage to supporting local organizations that align with your values, in that you can quickly see the direct benefits of your donation and often can actually participate with your volunteer labor in realizing their goals. In addition, while the City of Santa Monica has had a long history of supporting, in countless ways, ambitious initiatives for the public good, it is currently in a major cash crunch: some would say verging on bankruptcy (see https://smmirror.com/2024/12/sm-a-r-t-column-climbing-the-vertical-learning-curve/ and also see https://smmirror.com/2024/11/s-m-a-r-t-column-your-city-is-broke/ ). So the city’s ability to support worthy public initiatives beyond just “keeping the lights on” so to speak, is very limited. In this period of inevitable municipal contraction, the efforts of citizen volunteers is often the only way to make progress on major problems.
One major problem we face, for which the City is completely unprepared, are absorbing the negative impacts of the 9000 units the state requires us to build by 2028. These include water shortages, traffic overload (including significant parking problems), and the damage to the City’s historic fabric among other significant problems.
The five voluntary organizations listed below are just a sample of local organizations preserving our historic fabric essential for our City’s future.
HEAL THE BAY: https://healthebay.org/ (CEO Tracy Quinn). We are here because of the beach. Tourists come for our beach. Our streets are numbered from the beach. Our road signs all have a yellow stripe representing the beach. Our largest hotels are on the beach. Our visitors arriving down Wilshire are greeted by a blue wave sculpture and the Pier is our Eiffel Tower (our pier is actually about 50% longer than the Tower is tall). Santa Monica has always been about the beach.
So 38 years ago Heal the Bay stepped up and started issuing report cards for beach pollution, organizing beach clean-ups which now gather upwards of 22,000 lb. of trash per event, and eventually they started managing a small public aquarium at the foot of the Pier among other aquatic initiatives. They have also expanded their portfolio to include inland watersheds that are often the source of the pollution that dumps into our bay. Finally, they have become, through, no fault of their own, on the front lines of sea level rise which has become a major issue for the entire City: can a beach city survive without its beach?
MUSEUM OF FLYING (https://www.museumofflying.org (Director of Operations Steve Benesch, $50 membership). Moving from the water to the air, the Museum of Flying was started 45 years ago from the memorabilia of Douglas Aircraft’s founder Donald Douglas Sr. Ten years later they opened a superb new facility on the north side of the runway that included actual aircraft and runway access. Because of financial constraints, in 2008 the museum moved back to the south side of the runway in a smaller facility where it is today headlined by the DC3 monument (see photo above: the plane that taught America to fly).
Apart from its massive role in aircraft production during WW2 and birthing the jet passenger era with the DC-8, Douglas played an incredibly beneficial role in Santa Monica’s history by providing solid employment for generations of workers, engineers, fabricators, and specialists many of whom lived in Sunset Park. Its presence helped our tourist-dependent (and vulnerable) City survive the ravages of the great 1930s depression and the periodic recessions till 1963 when Douglas’s planes became too big for our short runway (The City Council refused to allow extending the runway).
The important lesson here is that Douglas Aircraft, for our City, was the equivalent of getting say Facebook or Amazon to locate their headquarters in your city. Aviation was the pinnacle of technology between 1920 and 1970: the manufacturing equivalent of AI or super computers today. At this time we have not yet replaced their economic equivalent but it reminds us to keep looking for those recession-resistant industries to buffer our City from the inevitable roller coaster of a tourist-dependent economy. Should the airport be closed, probably for housing the 9000 units mentioned above, there will still be seven traces left (if you know where to look) of Douglas’s heroic era: Douglas Park, the landmarked beacon at the east end of the runway, the landmarked compass rose at the west end of the runway, the airplane in the City Hall mural, the Aero cinema, Douglas’s home on Woodacres Road, and of course the Museum of Flying. That museum tells the story of when Santa Monica was on the cutting edge of a key industry and reminds us to keep looking for today’s version of that goldmine.
CALIFORNIA HERITAGE MUSEUM https://californiaheritagemuseum.org/ (Toby Smith Executive Director, $35 membership). But life is not all just the environment or technology, preserving heritage and culture is equally valuable for a successful City. This is where the Heritage Museum performs a valuable and unique service in Santa Monica but also statewide. Their collection and shows of art works, paintings, posters, ceramics, photographs, sculptures, assemblages, and memorabilia reflects the cosmos of our artists’s concerns and their visions.
Located in an approximately 140-year-old landmarked Victorian building that was moved from Ocean Ave to its current location in 1977, this museum is part of a historic complex that includes a restaurant (The Victorian) and on Sundays the farmer’s market. Visiting the CHM is a perfect Sunday afternoon excursion.
SANTA MONICA HISTORY MUSEUM: https://santamonicahistory.org (Rob Schwenker, Executive Director, Individual membership $75). Located in the northeast corner of the Santa Monica Main Public Library, it is an incredible collection of over 600,000 documents maps, photos, diaries, books, and memorabilia that document and preserve our City’s past. Just to make it clear that museums aren’t just about the musty past, SMHM is currently showing two exhibits that have direct relevance to the challenges of today. There is the current exhibit, in collaboration with the Santa Monica Conservancy, called “Unhoused: A history of Housing in Santa Monica” which speaks to the important issues of housing and the unhoused in our City. And also there is an exhibit, in collaboration with the Quinn Research Center, about Vernon Brunson a seminal black poet, playwright, organizer, and columnist for the California Eagle. This exhibit, among other things, speaks to the many missing and untold stories of minorities that exist hidden in our City.
Additionally, the SMHM is buttressed on one hand by the used book store, and on the other hand the Public Library which has its own substantial collection of documents, photos, catalogues, etc. The used book store (also on the ground floor of the main library) is a book lover’s nirvana that sells old and used books, (many in excellent condition) whose proceeds go to buy new books for the Public Library. This excellent example of recycling, run by Friends of Santa Monica Library, is also a place where you can volunteer directly to help the City reopen its shuttered libraries which are really a financial casualty of “long covid”. The SMHM acts, in essence, as our own personal Smithsonian Society.
SANTA MONICA CONSERVANCY https://smconservancy.org/ (Kaitlin Drisko director, $45 membership) This 20+ year-old organization is the newest of these preservation organizations with over 350 dues-paying members. It is headquartered in a 1897 Landmarked Shotgun House that was moved to its current location in 2014 directly across the street from our landmarked Ocean Park Carnegie Library. The Conservancy runs five regular tours (the Downtown Walking Tours, the Annenberg Beach House, the Shotgun House, the Main Street Tour, and the Third Street Historic District Tour). In addition, they do a plethora of historic podcasts, salons, landmarking advocacy, educational programs, and thematic walking tours. In a sense, to use a computer analogy, the SM History Museum preserves the software (City memorabilia) while the SM Conservancy preserves the hardware (buildings). Because one of the key roles of the Conservancy is the preservation and rehabilitation of historic buildings, it will be involved in many upcoming challenges (e.g. restoring the Civic Center Auditorium) and those battles created by the buildout of our required 9000 new units. That buildout will inevitably involve ripping out a huge part of our urban fabric, threatening it and many other historic resources.
None of these five organizations require the preservation of every single snowy plover, propellor, photo, postcard or property. But enough have to survive to tell our story and someone needs to be there to actually tell the story. And that’s where you come in. These five organizations cover the environment, aviation, art, history, and architecture. Thus they offer something of interest for everyone. They are a gift to your City, So if you receive a solicitation from them, please donate generously and actively participate.
By Mario Fonda-Bonardi, AIA
S.M.a.r.t Santa Monica Architects for a Responsible Tomorrow
Thane Roberts, Architect, Mario Fonda-Bonardi AIA, Robert H. Taylor AIA, Architect, Dan Jansenson, Architect & Building and Fire-Life Safety Commission, Samuel Tolkin Architect & Planning Commissioner, Michael Jolly, AIR-CRE Marie Standing. Jack Hillbrand AIA Landmarks Commissioner.
This is an update of the article that appeared February 29, 2024
For previous articles see www.santamonicaarch.wordpress.com/writing
