Inner Gardens Showroom Opening Soon on Montana Ave

Montana Ave seems to be slowly recovering from the early 2009 tsunami of store closures. The newest addition is an Inner Gardens showroom that is set to open next year. I walked past the store today and it looked like they were about ready to open but a big sign in the window just says "2010," so who knows when exactly they'll open. If you're not familiar with Inner Gardens, here's a description from their website:
INNER GARDENS offers a complete range of products and services for creating beautiful environments by bringing together nature and the art of ornament into your home, garden or workplace.

This will be the company's third showroom.

Quonset Court Groundbreaking Early Next Year?

Any project on or near Lincoln Blvd should get some sort of priority funding because, for the most part, that street is a real eye-sore. Imagine my delight when I recently walked past the corner of Broadway and Lincoln to discover that two old structures are slated to come down. I'd heard of those two mixed-use buildings that will eventually rise in the place of an old car shop and a mattress store but I just assumed that they were on hold indefinitely like every other housing project in California right now.
After doing some research, it seems that this workforce housing project has seen quite a bit of back and force with the city as preservationists fought to save the last remaining Quonset hut in Santa Monica. Ultimately, NMS and Killefer Flammang agreed to redesign the building to preserve the hut which will be slightly moved to the corner of 9th and Broadway.
Since this is an affordable housing project, NMS will rely on public funding to finance the project. According to these documents, it seems that they were granted funding for this project, along with the neighboring "Lincoln Walk"project, late last summer. This hopefully means that this project is ready to break ground very soon. Not only would it be nice to see an upgrade of yet another corner in the city but this might also be the first major project to break ground in quite a while.

Photo Credit: Killefer Flemming Architects

SMDP has more on TJ Maxx

We actually broke the story a couple of days ago that TJ Maxx is moving into the former Circuit City space on 4th St but didn't have any more details available. The Santa Monica Daily Press, however, was able to dig a little deeper. Apparently, the store will be around 32,000 square feet and the chain is hoping for a May 2010 opening. Read the article at smpd.com

New Project: 1802 Santa Monica Blvd

There finally seems to be some activity along this particularly ugly stretch of Santa Monica Blvd right at the corner of 18th St. According to city documents filed last week there are now plans to build a 32 unit three-story mixed-use building with ground floor commercial space. This is very close to St. Johns Hospital and might attract lots of hospital workers looking for a shorter commute. While currently used as a Christmas tree lot, this property has been vacant for some time. No renderings have surfaced so far.

TJ Maxx Coming to 4th St

Good news for everyone who thinks there's a lack of affordable clothing stores in Santa Monica: Discount fashion retailer TJ Maxx will be moving into the former Circuit City space at the corner of 4th and Arizona. No opening date has been announced.

Decluttering Santa Moncia - Few Remaining Billboards To Be Removed

Thanks to strict sign regulations passed in the 1980s, most of Santa Monica is free of those ugly off-site billboards. Yet, there are a few signs scattered across the city that were erected prior to the billboard ban. Finally, it seems that many of these will be coming down as several properties are being redeveloped.

-Two of the most visible billboards set to disappear are at the northeast corner of 4th and Broadway. This lot will soon (?) be developed into a nice commercial structure with a ground floor restaurant.

-The billboards along Olympic Blvd near the Cloverfield exit are also slated to come down within the next couple of years as Metro is expanding the Expo line into Santa Monica. Groundbreaking and utility relocation (which hopefully includes billboard removal) is expected early next year.

-Two more billboards along 17th St right next to Crossroads are also part of the right of way mentioned above. However, they are slightly south of the planned route so we'll see if those will be removed as well.

Yes, a couple of billboards still remain, along on Lincoln, Santa Monica and Pico Boulevards but with land being so valuable in Santa Monica I'm sure it won't be long until those disappear as well.