I still offer up the John Denver Memorial RV Park.
After 77 percent of Pacific Grove voters resoundingly defeated Measure P, officials are determined to find new ways to raise revenue – fast. Measure P would have levied a 5-percent tax on event and venue admissions, bringing an estimated $4.2 million annually to the city.
Next we will get invisible solar panels. Kind of like those glue on fire sprinklers a contractor once installed all over Monterey.
When you look out over the Monterey Bay from the outdoor patio of the Beach House at Lovers Point, you understand exactly why these are the most sought-after seats at the Pacific Grove restaurant. But managing general partner Kevin Phillips had a conundrum: How to make the 30-some patio seats usable on those foggy, drippy days for which Pacific Grove is famous.
“It turned out that there was a very elegant solution with a great side benefit,” said Phillips.
The answer was the installation of innovative solar panels above the patio — a translucent, weatherproof array that allows sunlight to filter through while also shielding patrons from the weather.
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.
Gang hits, knife fights, it just aint as safe anymore.
The gunman who Monterey police believe murdered a 28-year-old man on Cannery Row last month was identified Tuesday as Jorge Luis Mendoza.
The murder victim, Raul Melendez of Monterey, was followed from the restaurant to the Cannery Row Parking Garage on Wave Street at 1:40 a.m. on Nov. 23. He was shot multiple times. He was transported from the bloody scene to Natividad’s trauma center, where he died.
Monterey police also released the names of the men who were behind a double stabbing during a fight at the Blue Fin Billiards and Cafe at 685 Cannery Row.
Joel Robledo, 40, of Salinas and Frank Guzman II, 27, of Castroville, stabbed each other while fighting on Dec. 3.
Police described the two men as “rival gang members from Castroville and Salinas.”
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.
Just because it’s not Salinas or Watsonville doesn’t make it any safer.
Jorge Luis Mendoza, 21, is wanted by the Monterey Police Department as the possible culprit in the killing of Raul Melendez, 28, who was shot Nov. 23 at the entrance to the Cannery Row parking garage on Wave Street.
Monterey police detectives say Mendoza is a gang member who most recently lived in Salinas. He’s currently on parole for assault with a deadly weapon and is considered armed and dangerous.
Melendez suffered several gunshot wounds and was transported to Natividad Medical Center, where he died of his injuries.
Monterey investigators also identified the men who stabbed each other Saturday at the Blue Fin Billiards and Café, as Joel Robledo, 40, of Salinas and Frank Guzman, 27, of Castroville. Both men were transported to Natividad Medical Center for their injuries.
Both men got stabby and stabbed each other. No winner in this knife fight.
The double stabbing comes a little more than a week after a man was shot and killed in the Cannery Row parking garage. Hober said this is not an uptick in violence in Monterey and that police have no reason to believe the two incidents are related. The only commonalities between the incidents are time of night and location.
“I don’t think this is specific to Monterey. I don’t think there is an uptick,” Hober said. “I think that what’s happening is two incidents that happened close to each other, where it started in the bar venue and resulted in the violence.”
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.