Yesterday, while perusing the agenda of the January HPOA meeting, which I wasn’t able to attend, I noticed the interesting statement that the “Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition [is] seeking new location within Hollywood Entertainment District BID.” This was in the Security Subcommittee report, because the GWHFC in the eyes of the HPOA comprises (to paraphrase Ted Landreth) “enemies of the people.” Well, I hadn’t heard about this, and made a note to look into it. And, as it happens, I was over at the CD4 Hollywood Field Office this morning scanning some emails for a whole different project¹ when I came across this email chain between Ted Landreth of the GWHFC, Sarah Dusseault (CM Ryu’s Chief of Staff), Nikki Ezhari (CD4 Hollywood Field Deputy), and others, announcing the Food Coalition’s planned move to a location near Hollywood and Gower! They’re raising funds to buy property (give generously here) and are more than 25% of the way to their goal. Details on their plans for the property and some other comments after the break.

The move was evidently precipitated by outlaw Hollywood developers CIM Group‘s purchase of property at the Food Coalition’s current location of Sycamore and Romaine. In what’s perhaps not a coincidence at all, a famous and beloved building at that location, Mole Richardson, was recently secretively demolished, something which CIM is famous for in Hollywood. In any case, according to Ted Landreth, CIM will “…obviously do all they can to get rid of us as soon as they break ground–on what could be the largest single development in Hollywood since Hollywood and Highland.” That makes some sense. And here are Ted’s visions for the new location:

…these are our intentions for the parking lot:

(1) To get ourselves off the street, at long last, but NOT into a building. We still feel strongly about meeting our clients where they live and spending as little as we can on ourselves in the process, so as to have as much money as possible to get our clients off the street…

(2) To enable us to provide more and better services of the kind we are already providing at Sycamore and Romaine, to wit

a five-day-a-week GWHFC/UCLA Mobile Clinic instead of the weekly clinic we have now—one day each for five different medical disciplines;

a mobile dental clinic to be operated by the UCLA School of Dentistry;

mobile showers and bathrooms on the order of the Lava Mae buses now in use in San Francisco;

…

(3) to come into the burgeoning anti-development row in Hollywood on the right side of the issue, by buying a parking lot and KEEPING IT as a parking lot, except when we use it for our own purposes between 5:30 and 8PM.

Image of GWHFC kitchen is ©2016 MichaelKohlhaas.org.

1. Stay tuned, more news soon!