The Culver City Centennial Committee took one of its most important actions to date as it gears up to prepare for the commemoration of the city’s 100th birthday.
The 11-member board was selected in mid-July and met for the first time on July 31, said City Councilman Jim Clarke. Clarke, who is behind the movement to commemorate Culver City’s centennial anniversary with a host of civic activities, was named board president.
The board consists of Clarke, Laura Stuart, Mike Cohen, Goran Eriksson, Paul Jacobs, Darrel Menthe, Terry Robins, Judy Scott, Jozelle Smith, Phillip Tangalakis and Scott Wyant. Stuart was named the board’s secretary.
“I originally wanted to have a smaller board, but because there was so much interest we decided to go with a larger board,” Clarke explained.
In June, the City Council approved the creation of a committee that will oversee the planning and coordination of all of the events and activities leading up to Sept. 17, 2017.
Clarke said because the amount of work required to pull together a citywide celebration and how time-consuming the task will be, the board will have several subcommittees that will be responsible for different functions.
“We’ve already had 40-50 good ideas about different activities that have been submitted to us, so that’s a good start,” Clarke said.
One of the ideas is to involve students from all Culver City schools in art projects, logo designs and poster contests. Culver City Unified School District Superintendent David LaRose said the school district is on board regarding its participation in the centennial festivities.
“We are very excited about engaging our schools, students, staff and families in the city celebrations,” LaRose said. “We are looking forward to exploring ideas and developing more concrete plans in the coming months.”
Clarke said he plans to meet with the incoming Culver City High School student body leaders when school reopens in order to solicit ideas from them regarding what ideas they might have for the citywide celebration.
Planning for a celebration of this magnitude, scheduling the events, securing permits and raising funds are all part of putting on an event like a centennial, Clarke said. He has been in contact with municipal leaders from other cities in order to learn about the time that it took to organize their celebrations and what types of events they put on.
“I’ve spoken to other elected officials from cities like Torrance and Beverly Hills and what they’ve told me is ‘the best thing that you can do is to plan early,’” the councilman said. “So now we’re really trying to promote as much civic involvement as possible.”
Beverly Hills is selling merchandise with the city’s emblem emblazoned on cups, men’s and women’s apparel, water bottles and baseball caps throughout the year for its 2014 centennial anniversary. The costs of these civic extravaganzas can vary city-to-city.
“An official in Beverly Hills to me that they’ve raised about $1.3 million for theirs and Torrance spent $2000, 000,” Clarke said.
There is a small Culver City connection to the Beverly Hills centennial: an April 14 post in the Huffington Post by film producer and restaurant critic Jay Weston said executive pastry chef Donald Wressell designed a cake that was supposed to feed 15,000 people for an April 27 centennial event in Beverly Hills.
“I asked [Wressell] where he was preparing the monster cake and he told me it was going to be prepared at his Culver City commissary with a raft of fellow chefs,” Weston wrote.
The board is hoping that Culver City organizations, businesses and groups of individual residents will not only present them with ideas but also do some of the heavy lifting on bringing the events together.
“They’ll have to come up with their own budgets and fundraising,” Clarke said.
Those interested in participating in the city’s centennial ceremony can write to the Culver City Centennial Committee at P.O. Box 4521, Culver City 90231-4521 or visit culvercity100@gmail.com.
