Also, cutfoot, you should know that I’m a West Sider and West Side lover, and joined Los Angeles Metblogs specifically to add a West Side beat to the blog. If you read my posts, you’ll see that they mostly cover West Side activities and issues. Finally, I agree with your earlier mention distinguishing blogging from “reporting” (which, based on your context, appears to mean completely objective news reporting). That subject has undergone extensive discussion here. In my view, blogs generally, including Metblogs, are not primarily designed for objective news reporting. If you simply wanted to read facts about the Beach House, you could just read the Annenberg’s website that I linked to. Anyway, I appreciate the differing views, that’s what hopefully makes this blog interesting.

This project was funded years ago, and really, $7 million dollars of public money is not a lot in light of the public benefit received. That amount would only fund a transit study, if that. And “giving it back to taxpayers” would be an insignificant, one-time amount.

Rather I argue that building this facility gives back to the public by improving the quality of life to the beach users. (Disclosure: I’m one of them– I frequent that area since I have friends who live nearby. I know they’re pretty happy about it too.)

Near to where I live, in Silver Lake, the city has built a new dirt track around the perimeter of the reservoir, and a new public library and new park are also being built in the area. Not too long ago as I was running along the new track, (something I would never do in the past due to sharing the pavement with cars zipping by) I reflected on how nice it was having tax-payer money being used for projects like these.

Most of the Silver Lake community supports these projects, except for a few homeowners who are worried about their property values plummeting because of the new park’s proximity. Fortunately, they now can blame a different set of circumstances for that happening.