Discussion at tonight’s Pacific Palisades Community Council meeting at 7 p.m. in the Palisades Branch Library community room, 861 Alma Real includes the four proposed outdoor Sunday concerts at the Palisades Recreation Center (July 11,18, August 1,8), as well as an update on Potrero Canyon. The public is invited. Kevin Regan, area manager for the L.A. Department of Recreation and Parks, will discuss the status of the city’s 15-year infill and stabilization project in Potrero, including plans for financing riparian habitat restoration in the canyon below the Recreation Center. The last public meeting on the future of Potrero Canyon was held in July, at which time Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, following a PowerPoint presentation showing the massive resculpting job of the canyon, fielded questions from residents on access to the canyon, safety, funding, and the size of the proposed lots if and when they are sold. At the time the Councilwoman pledged to find some money to complete the massive 30-acre project. To date $30 million has been spent, almost all of it on Phase I and II of the three-phase project. The funds were used to shore up the canyon and provide proper drainage. The storm drain system, which will collect runoff from throughout the canyon, was laid in 1988. The following year filling began and is 95 percent complete. The 5 percent that remains involves repairing two landslide areas, one off Friends Street, the other towards the mouth of the canyon off Alma Real. Cost: over $1 million. While the Coastal Commission has approved the repairs, ‘there is no money to do them,’ a representative of Recs and Parks, who preferred not to be identified, told the Palisadian-Post in a phone conversation on Tuesday. One solution to pay for the remainder of the project would be to sell the city-owned lots on the rim of the canyon. However, the Commission ruled that no lots could be sold until after the entire park project is finished. ‘Clearly, the solution would be to have that stipulation removed,’ the representative said. There is also a question of where the funding for the landscaping, Phase III, will come from. Design plans include 7.9 acres of riparian habitat, with the remaining 22 acres to be planted in coastal sage. Scrubbed from the plans last year was a recirculating stream that would have flowed through the canyon. At the July meeting Miscikowski pointed to the high cost ($13 million) of installing the fresh-water stream. ‘It reminded me of Disneyland,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t see that this was part of a natural, rustic canyon.’ She cited the example of Los Liones, another coastal canyon that reflects the seasonal profile of Southern California with wet winters and dry summers, adding that the riparian plant community would be maintained by installing an irrigation system. Phase III alone is estimated to cost ‘anywhere from $7 to $12 million,’ the representative said. ‘And if money were no object it could be completed in two years.’ Asked how much money has been committed to date to complete the project, the representative said ‘None.’ Asked if funds were forthcoming from the Councilwoman’s office, as promised at the public meeting last July, the representative said ‘I haven’t seen any yet.’ Nor was the representative expecting any, ‘given the current lack of discretionary funds in the city’s budget.’ Still in the plans for Potrero is a 12-foot-wide concrete fire road that would run along the DePauw side of the canyon, which would also double as a path from the Recreation Center to the highway. In addition, there are plans for restrooms and parking at the base of the canyon, off PCH. At last July’s meeting with the Councilwoman several residents wondered whether there would be access to the beach from the canyon. ‘The best of all worlds would be a pedestrian bridge over PCH, and so far nobody has said ‘No,’ Miscikowski said. Others worried about the fire hazard in the canyon, particularly from the homeless. ‘The fire department has access to the canyon and agreed to reduce the width of the fire road to 12 feet [from 20 feet],’ said Miscikowski. ‘In addition, the same brush clearance ordinance required citywide will apply to the native habitat.’ As to controlling unwanted occupation in the canyon, Miscikowski recommended that a locked gates open from dawn to dusk be installed and welcomed ideas from residents. Regarding the roads, there were questions concerning future access through the canyon. Would there be only one major access route? At the time it was suggested that smaller foot trails would be determined with community input. Currently, besides the fire road, the canyon is crisscrossed with construction routes and makeshift footpaths. Finally, people wondered what the city would have to do in order to sell the lots. ‘The city must secure permission from the Coastal Commission and certification from Building and Safety that the lots are stable,’ Miscikowski said at last July?s meeting. (Editor’s note: Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski has posted the Recreation and Parks briefing on Potrero Canyon presented July 28, 2003 at the Palisades community meeting on her Web site. Go to http://www.lacity.org/council/cd11/potrero7-28_files/v3_document.htm)

(Editor’s note: On Memorial Day, May 29, the new World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., will be dedicated. American Legion Post 283 will host a corresponding event on that Saturday to honor Westside veterans and to observe the memorial dedication. The festivities will begin at 11 a.m. with a satellite broadcast of the Washington dedication ceremony, followed at noon by a patriotic program and luncheon. Veterans who wish to attend or would like a Certificate of Appreciation should write to the American Legion at 15247 La Cruz Dr., Pacific Palisades, CA 90272 and provide their name, address, phone number, branch and years of service, and whether or not they can attend. The following story is the first of three articles that will revisit WWII through the experiences of three Palisades veterans. Next week: Joe Klein, D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge.) By BILL BRUNS Managing Editor In February 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower established Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces in Reims, France, outside Paris. Several months later, as the war in Europe was rapidly drawing to a close, Capt. Ted Bergmann was assigned to SHAEF in Paris as a radio public relations officer. He was 24 years old. ‘On May 6, my superior said that something was going to happen in Reims’maybe the signing of the surrender’and I’d better get up there with a recording crew,’ recalls Bergmann, who has lived in Pacific Palisades since 1975. ‘We got to Reims in the early evening and went to the War Room, where we set up our equipment. We installed a microphone at every chair around the conference table, and a newsreel crew set up lights and cameras.’ At about 8 p.m., Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff General Walter Bedell Smith entered the room and barked his disapproval: ‘What in the hell do you think this is, a Hollywood sound stage? Get those goddam microphones off the table!’ Smith was taken aside by a Navy captain, Eisenhower’s aide’who also happened to be a former CBS Radio vice president’who explained that the event facing them was going to be a historic moment and should be recorded for posterity. ‘The general relented, but only partially,’ Bergmann recalls. ‘We could have only one microphone, which we put in the middle of the table, and we couldn’t have any wires showing. So I ordered a hand drill and drilled a hole in the table for the microphone wire.’ Bergmann says that at about 10 o’clock, everyone was told that the show was on. In marched all of the Allied representatives, who took their positions on one side of the table. Then three German officers were ushered in. Smith addressed the Germans, asking, ‘Are you prepared to surrender on all fronts?’ They replied, ‘We are prepared to surrender to the Americans, the British and the French on the Western Front, but not the Russians on the Eastern Front.’ ‘That’s totally unacceptable,’ said Smith. ‘You must surrender on all fronts unconditionally.’ The Germans explained that they were not authorized to commit to surrender on the Russian Front. Asked why, they said they feared the Russians would ‘take our armies and march them into Russia to be used as slave labor.’ Russian Marshall Susloparoff erupted with gales of laughter at hearing such a ‘preposterous suggestion,’ according to Bergmann. Bergmann continues: ‘The Germans were told to go back and get the authorization to surrender on all fronts or there would be no surrender. They were ushered out and our side of the table broke up and left, leaving me there with the technicians and the newsreel guys. I had brought along a bed roll, so I rolled it out under the table and went to sleep. Suddenly, at about 2:20 a.m., all the lights came back on and somebody shouted, ‘Get up’they’re back!’ So I rolled up my bed roll and we proceeded to have a surrender.’ The war was not officially over, however. ‘The agreement signed in Reims at 2:41 a.m. on May 7 would not become official until the heads of state ratified it: Truman, Churchill, DeGaulle and Stalin,’ Bergmann says. ‘If word leaked out to one side before the other, it certainly would have caused needless casualties on the front lines. Therefore, everyone in the room was warned to keep the signing a secret for 24 hours. ‘Eisenhower entered the War Room after the signing was completed and the Germans had been dismissed. A short time later, I recorded Ike’s statement declaring the end of the war in Europe. The recording was never used, however, because an Associated Press correspondent named Ed Kennedy failed to honor the secrecy agreement. Once back in Paris, Kennedy telephoned his London office to spread the news. Then it was on the wire to New York, and the surrender was announced.’ Let’s now skip ahead to 1990, when Bergmann and his wife, Beverly, returned to France on a vacation, and he visited the War Room in Reims for the first time since the War’s end. On the wall in the War Room, which now is a museum enshrined in glass, was a large photograph of the signing ceremony (shown on this page), and Bergmann saw that he was clearly visible in the picture. ‘I turned to a custodian in the museum and tried to explain that I wanted some of the postcards that had been published of that photograph. In trying to make him understand, I pointed to myself in the picture and said, ‘C’est moi, c’est moi!’ (It’s me!) ‘The custodian became very excited, as though I had stepped out of the photograph,’ Bergmann continues. ‘No one who had been present at the signing had apparently ever been back to the War Room. Most of the men present then were probably in their 50s, and would now’if they were still alive’be over 100 years old. The custodian asked me for my name and address so that the museum could invite us to the 50th anniversary celebration of the signing in 1995.’ When Beverly began making inquiries about the planned celebration in March of 1995, she was met with some unexpected suspicion at the city hall in Reims. The Minister of Culture’s office asked for some verification of her husband’s claim to being present at the signing, so she faxed several documents to Reims and the Bergmanns were finally rewarded with an invitation to be guests of the government for the anniversary event. ‘We later learned that there were a lot of people calling and claiming to have been present at the signing, and the city discovered that none of them were legitimate,’ Bergmann recalls. The Bergmanns were wined and dined for three days at the May celebration. ‘In addition to reviewing the French and American troops marching before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, I was treated as a celebrity and interviewed by American and French television and newspapers,’ Bergmann says. ‘They asked me, ‘What was your personal reaction when you stood at the table and watched the Germans sign the peace treaty?’ and I told them simply: ‘We won! We won!” The highlight of the trip was the commemoration of the signing in the War Room with U.S. Ambassador Pamela Harriman and the mayor of Reims. ‘I was honored there as the only witness to the official surrender in attendance,’ Bergmann recalls. ‘I surprised my hosts by presenting the museum with the photographs and recordings I had made of the surrender. I also explained why there was a hole in the middle of the table, something they had never noticed because an ashtray had been placed over the hole and nobody ever moved it because the room had become a shrine.’ Bergmann then presented the museum with something else: a small, porcelain ashtray’one of several that he had taken from the conference table as a souvenir in 1945. Seeing this, Ambassador Harriman replied in mock horror: ‘You stole it and it took you 50 years to give it back!’ ‘(Editor’s note: Ted Bergmann is a pioneer television executive, having gone from radio broadcasting into television in 1947 and five years later, at age 31, becoming head of the Du Mont television network. He later was co-producer of the popular series ‘Three’s Company.’ This article has drawn heavily on Bergmann’s first-person story in ‘The Journal of the Caucus for Television Producers, Writers & Directors,’ published in 2002.)

Within the last week 13 residential properties came on the market in Pacific Palisades, bringing to 73 the number of single-family homes available in the area through the Multiple Listing Service. This sudden 20-percent increase brings local inventory closer to where it hovered most of last year, before plummeting in December to record lows. Why the sudden increase in listings? Are homeowners ready to cash out, feeling that this real estate bubble can’t last much longer? Or is it simply because it’s spring, when there is traditionally an increase in listings? ‘I think it’s a combination of things, including the fact that it’s spring,’ said Frank Langen of Mossler, Deasy and Doe, who has one of the new listings. His 2-bedroom, 2-bath California bungalow at 758 Almar is priced at $1,249,000. ‘The owners are selling because they’re ready to move up,’ Langen said. Research by the Post into the new listings indicates that at least two of them involve families ready to purchase larger homes, two are because of transfers out of the area, one is because of a divorce, and one is a probate. Coldwell Banker agent Judith Lange finds herself in the enviable position of having three new listings, all probates subject to court confirmation. Two are flat, buildable lots a block from the Asilomar bluffs, listed for $1,695,000 and $1,495,000, respectively. The third, at 510 Almar, is attached to the two lots and has a 3-bedroom, 2-bath cottage on a 9,880 sq.ft. lot It’s listed for $1,795,000 and is billed in the MLS as a ‘teardown.’ Lange told the Post that it was simply ‘a matter of timing’ that the three properties came on the market this week. ‘Although the owner, whose family I have known for some time, passed away several months ago, it has taken this long just to get the paperwork in order.’ The three lots, two of which have been vacant for years, total nearly 24,000 sq.ft., over half an acre, providing a rare opportunity for someone to build a compound ‘this close to the bluffs,’ Lange said. The properties are located at the corner of Almar Plaza where Almar and Wynola meet. The least expensive property to come on the market in the last week, and the only property in the Palisades listed for under $1 million, was a traditional 2-bedroom, 1-bath house at 811 Galloway in the Alphabet streets. Listed at $899,000 by Kate Bransfield of DBL Realtors in Santa Monica, it received multiple offers and went into escrow on Tuesday. Bransfield said the owners decided to sell because they are ‘moving away.’ Bill Kerbox’s listing at 1020 El Medio, north of Sunset, ( a 5-bedroom, 5-bath listed for $5,295,000) was also snapped up within days of coming on the market last week. He sees the current increase in inventory as a ‘turning point in the market.’ Have we reached the top? ‘Maybe. What I do know is that if enough new houses come on in the next few weeks prices are going to start leveling off. Things have been so crazy lately that buying a house has become more of a competition than a negotiation’and negotiation is really the way most of us prefer to do business around here.’ The lack of sufficient inventory in the Palisades since the beginning of the year (which often fell below 50 available homes for sale) led to a buying frenzy in recent months, which further pushed prices up and resulted in some unusual real estate practices, with some buyers waiving appraisals and others bidding anywhere from 10 to 30 percent over the asking price. Anthony Marguleas, owner of A.M. Realty on Sunset, which deals only with buyers, sees the increase in inventory as ‘a good thing for all of us. It makes it easier to do business when there is more inventory.’ Coldwell Banker agent Joan Sather, who has a new listing this week at 443 Puerta del Mar, a 3-bedroom, 2-bath contemporary listed at $1,395,000, agrees. ‘After seeing so much of the inventory snapped up in recent weeks I think it was inevitable that there would be some new inventory coming up,’ Sather said. ‘Especially after tax season.’ Michael Edlen, who has been keeping statistics on the Palisades housing market for 18 years, sees the increase in inventory as ‘normal,’ and predicts that in the months ahead it will continue to climb ‘back to the level where it should be. Except for a couple of times in the last year, the number of available houses has always hovered around 100 in the Palisades. I predict there will again be at least 100 homes on the market before the end of the year.’

By Palisadian-Post Staff Writers The unsolved 1980 murder case of Palisades High School student Kari Lenander has made its way back into the news in recent months. At her family’s request and due to the unusual circumstances surrounding Lenander’s murder, the case was reopened in early 2002 by the LAPD Cold Case Homicide Unit. Now, a segment on Lenander will appear in the first episode of a new KCBS-TV program called ‘Lost Lives’ on Sunday, May 16 at 6:30 p.m., just prior to ’60 Minutes.’ The show will repeat Saturday, May 22 at 4:30 p.m. Earlier this year, a $50,000 reward offered by Lenander’s father and a $25,000 reward offered by the L.A. City Council were announced during a KCBS newscast in which a two-minute vignette of Lenander’s ‘Lost Lives’ segment aired. Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski introduced the reward as a motion on January 21 after Carl Lenander, Kari’s father, addressed their regular meeting and made the request. The Council has since increased its reward to $50,000. The daughter of Carl J. Lenander III and Joyce Fadden, Kari Lenander was murdered in July 1980, the summer before her junior year at PaliHi. The Brentwood resident’s body was found at 4:30 a.m. on July 26 in a street gutter in south Los Angeles. She would have turned 16 on August 4. The night before, Lenander and best friend Toni Garfield, also a PaliHi junior, had hitchhiked a ride at the corner of Wilshire and Barrington. The man who picked them up, a male Caucasian known only as Ken from Canada, gave the girls a ride first to the Hollywood area, where they stopped to use the bathroom. Lenander and Garfield had been drinking prior to hitching a ride, and when Garfield started to feel dizzy in the bathroom, she told Lenander she had to go home. Ken drove the girls back to Brentwood and dropped Garfield off at her house. It was the last Garfield saw of her friend. The events that followed, leading up to Lenander’s murder, remain unknown. ‘We believe Ken and Kari went to Kari’s residence, where she changed clothes,’ said Detective Tim Marcia, who, along with partner Detective Rick Jackson, has been investigating Lenander’s case for the last two years. Their unit was formed in early 2002 by then police Chief Bernard Parks. Lenander was found strangled and ‘police thought it was a sexual assault,’ Marcia said. Ken, who has never been found, is still considered a suspect. However, the strangulation death of Lenander, along with the foliage in her hair and white rock material found near her body’the same as that of the property across from the Lenander residence’have suggested that her murderer was someone who knew her. Marcia also said there is reason to believe Lenander’s killer knew her because ‘she may have been being stalked at the time.’ The detectives have spoken to one individual who is still considered a suspect, since ‘he was never totally cleared of the homicide.’ Lenander’s best friend, Toni Garfield, did not know anything about the individual in question. While the DNA evidence found on Lenander’s dress the night of the murder has not been matched, Marcia said, ‘Lenander’s death appears to be a sexual assault/murder, [and these] have a high potential to be committed by a repeat offender, so the individual could be identified with DNA.’ Marcia believes the May 16 KCBS program, produced by Mandeville Canyon resident Tom Murray of Kurz/Murray Productions, may help bring forward a witness. ‘Sometimes we just need help finding that witness,’ he said. ‘As time goes by and allegiances change, a person who may not have come forward then may come forward now.’ The detectives are looking for any information, and ‘nothing should be overlooked,’ said Marcia, a graduate of University High School and a contemporary of Kari’s. If the killer was someone who knew her, ‘we’ll have to interview everyone she knew.’ Contact: (213) 847-0970.