Around Amherst: Craig’s Doors keeping shelter spots available longer.
By SCOTT MERZBACH
AMHERST Unlike many years when the emergency overnight homeless shelter closes for the season on May 1, Craig’s Doors will be able to keep its sites open for at least several more weeks.
Executive Director Kevin Noonan said due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the congregate shelter with 14 beds operating at the Unitarian Meetinghouse will remain in service until July 31. The town recently completed an inspection to allow the extended operations.
The shelter is supplemented by the Econo Lodge motel in Hadley, where 19 rooms will remain open through at least mid-June; and the University Lodge, with 20 rooms available until June 30, 2022.
Laguna Beach Local News
Is Village Laguna (VL) fooling everyone with a simple shell game in their lawsuit against the city and the Kirby family? Everyone keeps pointing to VL’s lawsuit division (same people, different name), the Laguna Beach Historic Preservation Coalition. But who is filing the lawsuit with them? The Historic Architecture Alliance (HAA). Who’s that?
No one seems to have noticed it’s a single-person organization consisting of the one neighbor who opposes the Kirby project the same neighbor who appealed the project to city council after the Design Review Board approved it. Then council approved it 5-0. Even long-time Village friend Toni Iseman voted in favor of the Kirby home.
Opinion | Sign or no sign, Memphis still has a whole lot of soul | Otis Sanford
Local 24 News political analyst and commentator Otis Sanford shares his point of view on the debate over a sign in downtown Memphis. Author: Otis Sanford (Local 24) Published: 1:50 PM CDT May 6, 2021 Updated: 5:30 PM CDT May 6, 2021
MEMPHIS, Tenn. If you haven’t been to downtown Memphis lately, you’d be pleasantly surprised by all the new construction that has broken out all over. From South Main to the Pinch District, new development and renovations to existing structures have remade the look of the Bluff City’s front door. Where there was once vacant land or blighted buildings, new hotels now stand on Beale Street and Union Avenue.
Laguna Beach Local News
A lone guest keeps a light on at Hotel Laguna in the last weeks of operation by the Andersen family. Photo by Mitch Ridder.
The pending remodel of Hotel Laguna will be reviewed by the California Coastal Commission on May 12 after the agency’s staffers found substantial errors with Laguna Beach’s approval process.
The hearing will turn on an appeal filed in March by Laguna Beach residents, Mark and Sharon Fudge, who challenged a local coastal development permit received by the hotel’s ground-lease owner, Mohammad Honarkar. Among the couple’s claims is that city officials failed to properly study bluff-top construction, unlawful improvements on the beach sand, and major alterations to the historic building’s ground floor, according to a staff report.