Oceanwide Plaza, the unfinished downtown Los Angeles skyscraper known informally as Graffiti Towers, is on its way to being sold out of bankruptcy for $517 million to a partnership led by KPC Development Co.
KPC is, wait for it, based in Corona.
KPC’s head is Kali P. Chaudhuri, a Hemet orthopedic surgeon and businessman who owns and builds commercial properties in California and India.
Oceanwide Plaza, whose owners went bankrupt in 2019 in mid-construction, became a worldwide spectacle when its three towers, 42 to 54 stories high, became a blank canvas for taggers who rappelled down the sides.
KPC says it will spend $850 million to complete the project as designed: 504 residences, a luxury hotel and a shopping center. Graffiti cleanup is already underway.
The cleanup may take nearly three months, unless complications ensue. For instance, they might find that spray paint is the only thing holding the buildings together.
Routine catch
My July 24 column about attending an Angels game included my account of how my friend Madison grabbed a foul ball that caromed into our row. That reminded John Evans of Oak Hills of his wife’s amazing catch this summer of a foul ball.
“Karen caught one that landed in her open purse,” Evans reports.
Say what?
Karen Evans was in Houston at an Astros game with the couple’s daughter in June. The foul ball in question bounced off a few hands before landing in Karen’s lap, where her small purse was ready to make the catch.
“Yes, she gloated!” admits her husband, who has attended hundreds of games to Karen’s 10 and has never come close to catching a foul.
If Mike Trout takes a day off, maybe Karen Evans’ purse can substitute in the outfield.
Let the chips fall
Also in that column, I said my friend Wesley, an Angels fan, retrieved a plastic Angels helmet nearly filled with nachos from an adjacent row after the game, wiped it out and toted the helmet home proudly.
Similarly, Mary Sue Berkley of Riverside happened to be at an Angels game a few years ago when she saw a man about to toss a nacho-filled helmet into the trash.
“He apparently noticed the look on my face and asked if I wanted the helmet,” Berkley says. “He even dumped the nachos and wiped it out.” Even as a Dodgers fan, she couldn’t resist a baseball souvenir.
Sometime later, she found a worthier recipient.
“My friend’s 90-year-old dad had just moved into assisted living and was a huge Angel fan. I filled it with snacks she told me he liked,” Berkley says. “He was thrilled. So was I.”
My hat is off to her.
The emcee is me
As a reminder, I’ll be emceeing the Pomona Concert Band concerts at 7:30 p.m. the next two Thursdays, Aug. 6 and 13, indoors at the Palomares Park Community Center, 499 E. Arrow Highway, Pomona. Admission is free. When you hear my introductions, you’ll know why they don’t charge.
Feeling the squeeze
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I’d written an item on citrus labels but had had to bump it twice for space or flow reasons. A week ago I had to bump it a third time. In case you’ve been keeping track at home, finally, the citrus item is below.
A citrus trove
All power to the family in Hemet that is digitizing citrus crate labels, about which my colleague Allyson Vergara wrote last month. The Kelley family’s 250 labels, though, is a small fraction of the collection of the Pomona Public Library.
Some 3,500 labels make up the Citrus Label Collection, most of them from the West Coast but also including examples from other states and nations, from the 1880s through the 1950s.
The collection began in the early 1960s as the brainchild of Raymond Holt, then the library director. As a 1968 Pomona Progress-Bulletin story explained it: “Because the citrus packing houses, which played an important part in Southern California’s early economy, are dwindling in number, Holt felt their records, including the gaudy, illustrated crate labels, should be preserved.”
Burt Cohoon, the special collections librarian of that era, contacted citrus firms, packing houses or, if they were defunct, their last officers.
“He tracked down citrus records and labels in attics and garages, in dusty vaults of packing houses, in antique shops and book stores,” the Prog’s Joe Firman wrote. “When word of the library collection got around, many people sent in labels they had saved.”
The labels were photographed in the early 2000s and uploaded to a Pomona Library website, https://content.pomonaca.gov/digital/collection/Labels, in alphabetical order.
The collection begins with “39” — Jack Benny’s favorite? — and continues with four from the A-1 brand, one specifying it’s from Corona and one from Upland. Some 369 pages later, the collection ends with the letter Z: Zeneda (from Florida), Zenith (from East Whittier) and Zenta (from Argentina).
The photos are not high resolution due to improvements in technology in subsequent years, said Allan Lagumbay, the library assistant who oversees Special Collections.
“But we’ve had them online for probably over 20 years now,” Lagumbay said.
Sweet.
Due to lack of improvements in technology, David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook or Instagram, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky.