Open one day a week. That’s an art gallery schedule!
The bakery is open Saturdays, but closed Sundays and Mondays.
Pacific Grove residents can rest a little easier. After a temporary shutdown due to sewer line repairs, Pavel’s Backerei on Forest Avenue is opening with a limited supply of baked goods for sale on Friday morning, the owners announced on Facebook Thursday night.
City Manager Ben Harvey said the temporary closure is the result of a broken sewer line in combination with an out-of-order employee bathroom.
Crews with Mr. Rooter were busy repairing the line Tuesday, but the business owners, Paul and Johanna Wainscoat, said the timing on the closure could not be worse.
The baker said there have been five times in the last two years when the bakery was closed and repairs could have been made without disruption, but he said the property owner did not take care of the sewer line.
More than nine months ago, A.G. Davi took over management of the property. Jeff Davi, the president of the company, said he doesn’t believe the landlord knew the line was broken for two years.
“It is not true. There was a leak in the summertime. There was an issue that was resolved. (We) thought we fixed it satisfactorily, and of course, it wasn’t the case,” Davi said.
Davi said redoing the sewer line is an expensive job, but it is now the only option on the table, and it is going to take a few days.
“It has to be completely redone, and the city is involved, and the city wants it done right, so we have to have the whole thing replaced,” he said.
The repairs are expected to take at least three days.
No functioning bathroom? Eeeew.
City officials said on Monday that the bakery had to cease operations so that the building’s owner, Gary Delahanty of Carmel, could make major repairs to a non-functioning employee bathroom and a leaking lateral sewer line that runs to Forest Avenue.
According to Harvey, there has been a long-term dispute between Pavel’s management and the property owner that came to a head recently when the Monterey County Health Department got wind of the non-functioning employee bathroom. The city soon got involved, and once city Building Official John Kuehl determined repairs had to be made, Harvey said they had no choice but to shut down Pavel’s until repairs were complete.
Crall thinks the hotel project is a bust.
Michael Crall, a partner and chief development officer of Domaine Hospitality Partners, the development group behind the project, confirmed Wednesday that he and fellow partner Grant Sedgwick have both resigned from their positions as officers of Domaine.
While Crall noted that he could no longer speak on the company’s behalf and said he had not spoken with Meer since Sept. 8, he did say that he does not believe that either Meer or Clark are capable of completing the project. He also claimed the fundraising practices conducted by them has “exposed the company to liability under both state and federal securities laws,” but declined to elaborate.
Wonder why.
According to a population census taken on Nov. 25 by husband and wife Thom and Kim Akeman, volunteers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s shoreline program Bay Net, the Pacific Grove Harbor seal population has declined by one-third. Numbers have plunged from about 700 individuals, based on preliminary counts taken by Monterey Bay Aquarium researcher Teri Nicholson in the 1990s, to fewer than 500 in the last couple of years, the Akemans reported. Uncharacteristically warm waters, which depleted the marine environment of oxygen and food, are to blame, they added.
Harvey sees the one time the trash is covered. Here are three other time I passed by the mentioned location. He’s also bothered by the squawks and cries of the gulls, but not the smell of the open garbage next to his part time residence?
City Manager Ben Harvey, clad in a baby blue sweater over a white button-up shirt, strolls down 16th Street with a cup of coffee in hand. It’s early afternoon, and while there are still no gulls around, Harvey stops between Fandango Restaurant and Grove Market, and turns to face a dumpster area.
“This is what I am talking about,” Harvey says, visibly annoyed, yet composed.
Harvey takes a few steps toward a nearly empty parking lot in front of the restaurant, and points to a big, black dumpster with its lid shut. The container stands next to a small trash can filled with a tied-up garbage bag.
In addition to using predatory birds to scare off gulls, part of the program would also include stepping up enforcement of dumpster lid closures.
Originally, they were to have a natural finish, but after considerable rotted wood was found, the artists ended up painting the chainsaw-sculpted whales.
Since then, kids have frequently been spotted climbing on the sculpture and its base, raising both liability and safety concerns and prompting the proposal to put a fence and lighting around it. But that idea raised the ire of some residents like Luke Coletti who is adamant the park, which is zoned open space, remain so without a section of it sequestered off.
Brodeur said any new policy is likely to be better than what ill-defined guidelines were in place.
Commandeered a rowboat. Not the fastest getaway.
Hop aboard
Officers arrested Adrian Chronister of Pacific Grove on Friday after he fled by jumping into Monterey Harbor and trying to steal a vessel to escape, police said.
Chronister, 26, was on felony probation. He was booked on charges of obstructing/resisting an officer, possession of drug paraphernalia, attempted theft of a vessel and three commercial burglaries (two in Monterey and one in Pacific Grove).
Except from Bill K(r)ampe. He just loves them.
Some are calling them kitschy, even an eyesore. That’s how a group of Pacific Grove residents are characterizing the completed sculpture of a pair of breaching whales in the city’s Berwick Park located along picturesque Ocean View Boulevard.
“I don’t like to be judgmental of art but if we can see real whales out there we don’t need to see cartoon characters of whales that basically distract your eye from the real thing,” said longtime resident and artist Jane Flury.
Local activist Luke Coletti agreed.
“The whales are nothing more than a garish eyesore and detract from the natural art of Berwick Park,” said Coletti, about the wooden sculpture that was completed in October.
Wooden Whales Get Weak Welcome
Police Cmdr. Rory Lakind said it appears the burglar got into the Pacific Grove Youth Center through an open window. He said Pacific Grove doesn’t typically have many nonresidential burglaries. With the youth center break-in following burglaries in the same week at nearby Hopkins Marine Station and St. Angela Merici church, police are investigating if the three crimes are related.
