Department of Building and Safety

Will Mayoral Candidate Wendy Greuel Turn Back Clock on Slum Housing Prevention?

Read more about Wendy Greuel's housing record: "Rent Activists Hit Greuel and Garcetti." Update, 1:05 p.m.: City Controller Wendy Greuel's office releases a statement, after the jump. Los Angeles City Controller Wendy Greuel, who's running for mayor, is stirring up outrage with a recommendation th ... More >>

Chinatown Walmart OK'd For March Opening

Walmart's Chinatown dreams seem to have come true. Labor, a powerful force in L.A. politics, couldn't overcome the stumbling, bumbling suits at City Hall who decided to outlaw just such a Walmart a day after it got its initial approval from city planning officials. (Of course, it seems possible tha ... More >>

#FortHernandez #CouchRaid: LAPD Hauls Off Sofas And Signs From Anti-Foreclosure Encampment

The LAPD showed up in force before dawn this morning at #FortHernandez, the foreclosed Van Nuys house where Occupiers have been camped out since late August.Turns out, the cops didn't come to evict anybody. Instead, they confiscated five couches, impounded a car and took protest signs, desks and oth ... More >>

Beverly Hills Enforcing Ban on Lost-Dog Flyers

So apparently Beverly Hills has this super OCD ban on putting up any "notice, placard, bill, card, poster, sticker, banner, sign, [or] ad" in a public place. But it's not like Department of Building and Safety officials constantly go around hunting down every last piece of paperstuff, reports the ... More >>

Los Angeles' War on Street Artists

The art world sees a vibrant movement. Metro's cops see jail fodder.

Marijuana Dispensary Police Unit Considered to Enforce L.A. Pot Shop Ban

It's hard to figure out how serious the L.A. City Council is about closing down all of the city's dispensaries. While the body's vote last week was a nail in the coffin of our town's nationally prominent cannabis culture, you have to consider the history: The City Council has been trying to regulat ... More >>

VIDEO: Laurel Canyon Residents 'Mad as Hell' at Hillside House-Flipper, Department of Building and Safety

The fuming neighbors along Grand View Drive should really give the rest of L.A.'s neighborhood activists a lesson in how to sway the city to your cause. They just put together this super-impressive YouTube saga, titled "We're Mad As Hell," to demonstrate what they consider to be an egregious lack o ... More >>

Plan Check: How is This Restaurant not Like the Others?

Scattered around Los Angeles are restaurants that could be used as examples for teaching kids how to differentiate among objects. "One of these things is not like the others" lessons. Petrillo's on Valley Boulevard in San Gabriel, a solo Italian neighborhood restaurant bobbing up and down in a sea o ... More >>

Corruption at Los Angeles Building and Safety

FBI probes whether a Koreatown inspector did business via cash-stuffed envelopes

Wendy Greuel L.A. Mayoral Election 2013 Antics: Why is She Acting Like a Blond Version of Schwarzenegger on 'Waste, Fraud, Abuse'?

ladailyblog.blogspot.comWendy Greuel's image is getting fuzzy. ​Is Wendy Greuel running for Los Angeles mayor by acting like a blond version of the failed Arnold Schwarzenegger, decrying waste, fraud and abuse? She's fired off an election-aimed press release asking the City Council's inept Au ... More >>

40 Pets Have Vanished From L.A.'s North Central Animal Shelter: 'They Were the Young, Cute Ones'

Where have all the puppies gone?​No, this is not a Disney movie about a herd of adorable animals who scheme up a shelter-break and roam the adorable streets of Silver Lake. Nope. This is some fishy corrupt-city-worker business, according to today's Los Angeles Times, which compares the myster ... More >>

L.A. Building Inspectors Arrested by FBI For Allegedly Approving Home Projects For Cash

Dirty money in the L.A. Dept. of Building and Safety?​Two L.A. city building inspectors were arrested this morning for allegedly taking thousands of dollars worth of bribes to approve houses and improvements they had not properly checked out, the U.S. Attorney's Office here says. Forty-nine-y ... More >>

L.A. City Hall Cell Phone Bill at Nearly $5 Million: City Controller Wants That Cut by More Than Half

hotgirlswithiphones.comIf only City Hall were this discriminating with its mobile phone use.​Jerry Brown's not the only Debbie Downer at the all-you-can-eat buffet known as California public employment. Wendy Greuel stepped forward Tuesday to call for L.A. City Hall's cell phone use to be cut ... More >>

L.A. Building and Safety vs. Oaksterdam U.

Ham-handed City Hall cracks down on pot class, putting Alzheimer's center in fiscal crisis

Movies, Not Condos: Save the Fairfax Theatre

​ The Fairfax Theatre, on Beverly at Fairfax kitty-corner to the CBS Television City, has been closed since January, when the roof partially collapsed due to long-term neglect and heavy rains. A sign posted in front of the theater promised that the three-screen, 80 year-old mini movie palace w ... More >>

The Mad Men of Los Angeles

Living the good life, thanks to the big profits from illegal outdoor advertising

Anschutz Entertainment Group Gets Signs; City Attorney Shut Down

After a contentious three-hour hearing, Los Angeles City Council members voted to allow Anschutz Entertainment Group the right to put up a half-dozen new signs at L.A. Live's movie theater despite objections from City Attorney Carmen Trutanich. "A deal is a deal is a deal," said Councilman Herb We ... More >>

CIM Group: Hollywood's Richest Slumlord

Two fed up YouTubians embarrass a City Hall insider into demolishing a shocking hovel

Andrew Adelman's Building & Safety Mess

Lurid rape claim aside, there's no mystery about his failed oversight

Andrew Adelman's Sick Sex Scandal

Rape and kidnapping claim hits a long-criticized Los Angeles City Hall bureaucrat

Villaraigosa Finally Speaks Out on Billboards -- Kind Of

Until last week Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had remained mum about L.A'.s billboard fiasco. At a town hall meeting hosted by the Westside Regional Alliance of Councils, Villaraigosa pretty much proved that he was completely out of touch with the hot button issue that has rankled residents from Boyle ... More >>

Why L.A.'s Latest Billboard Fix Won't Work

There are signs that the Los Angeles City Council's just-adopted billboard moratorium, purportedly designed to give officials time to crack down on the forest of 10,000 billboards. One possible result is that pro-billboard factions in City Hall now see an opening to wipe out a billboard ban current ... More >>

Billboards Gone Wild, L.A. City Council Defiled

Citizens take matters into their own hands

Digital Billboards Become a Bohemian Blasphemy

Silver Lake, Hollywood, the Valley and Westside take on City Hall's anti-green transformation of LA

Silver Lake Residents Protest Against Digital Billboard Blight

Dozens of Silver Lake residents gathered yesterday at City Hall to protest against a pulsating digital billboard that recently popped up along Silver Lake Boulevard throwing lights into neighborhood homes. “Silver Lake is one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Los Angeles,” said Suzanne Fe ... More >>

KCET Investigates Billboard Blight in Los Angeles

Billboard blight was the subject of a segment on "SoCal Connected" on KCET last night. "Billboard Confidential" looked at LA's billboard boondoggle and the reasons why LA is "ground zero" for a $7 billion dollar billboard industry. The show - the result of a two-month investigation - was a recap ... More >>

Mega-Billboard for Billionaire Anschutz: What's Next, Preparation H Pavilion?

City Council rolls over for tycoon, ignoring its own anti-billboard law

City Council Will Consider Selling Rights for Electronic Billboards

The Los Angeles City Council will consider a proposal today to allow massive electronic signs along the 10 and 110 freeways next to the Los Angeles Convention Center. The proposal by Anschutz Entertainment Group reportedly calls for 50,000 square feet of advertising signs. Last week, the Trade, Co ... More >>

Los Angeles City Committee Will Consider Motion to Rewrite Billboard Ordinance

The City’s Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee will consider a motion today that would address and fix the colossal problems that have been raised in court cases challenging the city's sign ordinance. The motion, introduced by Los Angeles city councilmember Jack Weiss on July 29, ca ... More >>

Los Angeles City Councilmember Calls for Tougher Billboard Ban

Los Angeles City Councilmember Jack Weiss introduced a motion yesterday that would address and fix the colossal problems that have been raised in court cases challenging the city's sign ordinance. The motion calls for the city's planning department, Department of Building and Safety and City Attorne ... More >>

Mural Capital of the World or the City of Blights?

Billboard Inspection Program Still a Bust

“It is the Los Angeles dodge and delay program,” said a frustrated Marilyn Cohon, the Vice President of Westwood South of Santa Monica Homeowners Association about City Hall’s long-awaited billboard fee inspection program. “We find it appalling that the city is dragging its feet.” Even C ... More >>

Billboard Crackdown? Not Likely!

Will the long-overdue billboard fee inspection program start at long last? Don’t count on it. On May 27, Los Angeles’ Department of Building and Safety is expected to update the Planning & Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee on the status of the city’s billboard inspection program. That sou ... More >>

Billboards Gone Wild: 4,000 Illegal Billboards Choke L.A.'s Neighborhoods

Is City Hall corrupt, or just inept?

L.A. residents slam Special Order 40, Clear Channel shakedown

Correction below: Alleged murderer Espinoza was released from jail by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, not the LAPD. Update: The LA City Council has approved the giant electronic billboard on the 10 Freeway by a vote of 13-1 with only Jack Weiss opposing. It will go before the council a ... More >>

CBS and Clear Channel Lose Billboard Secrecy Bid

The judge says L.A.'s thousands of billboards are hardly a “trade secret”

Bad Gas

Is city playing fast and loose with potential Playa disaster?

A Methane-charged Lawsuit

Playa foes urge a judge to rule permits invalid for massive development

The Human Teardown

Audit levels Andrew Adelman and his chaotic reign at L.A.�s building department

the Cracked Foundation

Critics take on L.A.’s top building official and his savage regime

Demolition Justice

The case of Meruelo�s industrial tear-down gets a hearing

Slapped Around

Downtown landowner faces inquiries over demolition pulled off without permits

CitySweep: Naked Truths

Adult entertainment industry lands in City Council�s lap

CitySweep

It Ain't Pretty

Art and commerce clash in the NoHo Arts District about auto-body shops

Bonding at the Urinal

The high-stakes game of no-flush vs. flush

Fresh Produce and Streets of Fire

Making sense of the methane explosion in Fairfax

Digs of Doom

The story of life and death inside the Echo Park apartment house

Turning Up the Heat

Hopes, dreams � and trouble � for historic bakery

Cracked!

The Disaster Waiting To Happen Inside L.A.'s Steel-Frame Towers