By Dave Eisenstadt (Updated: Thursday, November 16, 2006 11:02 AM PST)
Already home to one of the country's finest car collections, El Segundo soon will have another automobile museum - but when this one opens its doors you can actually get behind the wheel of some of the classics.
The question is when the Automobile Driving Museum can open its doors.
The vehicles that are the museum's substance will hit town Nov. 19. The cars are caravanning from their former home in West Los Angeles to their new home.
The train of vehicles is expected to be 75 cars long - and studded with Phaetons, Packards and vintage Plymouths.
Problem is the city lacks a classification for museums in its law books. It needs such a provision to operate legally in California.
Neither drafting the provision nor the City Council approving it is complex. The process, however, isn't as easy as a finger snap.
The Planning Commission has to draft the measure and pass it - and then forward it to the council. The panel is expected to vote on the provision in December.
In the meantime, residents and visitors can contemplate one of the more compelling museum tours this side of Amsterdam.
When its doors finally spread for the public, car enthusiasts of all shapes, ages, sizes and affluence will have a Model “T” they can drive and call their own - for a few minutes anyway.
Or a 1932 Packard or, rarer still, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt's chauffeur-driven Plymouth. The former first lady's car is one of a kind.
Actually, Roosevelt's car and some others won't be available to the public for anything other than gazing. It and the really valuable and rare classics the museum owns are kept in a climate-controlled mock showroom.
Attendants will man the museum to ensure that little hands and wandering feet don't find their way on to cars not slated for anything other than a room like a giant humidor.
The museum is the brainchild of Stanley Zimmerman, also its main sponsor. He came up with the idea for a museum of drivable classics after he restored a Packard.
Navigating to trade shows all over the country, Zimmerman noticed that children - and dads and moms, too - liked to crawl around inside the Packard. It didn't take him long to notice that hands, feet and touching of any kind was off-limits on every car but his.
The museum opened in West Los Angeles four years ago. It's become so popular and its collections of everything from parts to manuals so extensive that it needed a roomier locale.
That's where El Segundo, the Planning Commission and the City Council come in.
The museum will be located at 610 Lairport St. Already home to one of the country's finest car collections, El Segundo soon will have another automobile museum - but when this one opens its doors you can actually get behind the wheel of some of the classics.
The question is when the Automobile Driving Museum can open its doors.
The vehicles that are the museum's substance will hit town Nov. 19. The cars are caravanning from their former home in West Los Angeles to their new home.
The train of vehicles is expected to be 75 cars long - and studded with Phaetons, Packards and vintage Plymouths.
Problem is the city lacks a classification for museums in its law books. It needs such a provision to operate legally in California.
Neither drafting the provision nor the City Council approving it is complex. The process, however, isn't as easy as a finger snap.
The Planning Commission has to draft the measure and pass it - and then forward it to the council. The panel is expected to vote on the provision in December.
In the meantime, residents and visitors can contemplate one of the more compelling museum tours this side of Amsterdam.
When its doors finally spread for the public, car enthusiasts of all shapes, ages, sizes and affluence will have a Model “T” they can drive and call their own - for a few minutes anyway.
Or a 1932 Packard or, rarer still, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt's chauffeur-driven Plymouth. The former first lady's car is one of a kind.
Actually, Roosevelt's car and some others won't be available to the public for anything other than gazing. It and the really valuable and rare classics the museum owns are kept in a climate-controlled mock showroom.
Attendants will man the museum to ensure that little hands and wandering feet don't find their way on to cars not slated for anything other than a room like a giant humidor. The museum is the brainchild of Stanley Zimmerman, also its main sponsor. He came up with the idea for a museum of drivable classics after he restored a Packard.
Navigating to trade shows all over the country, Zimmerman noticed that children - and dads and moms, too - liked to crawl around inside the Packard. It didn't take him long to notice that hands, feet and touching of any kind was off-limits on every car but his.
The museum opened in West Los Angeles four years ago. It's become so popular and its collections of everything from parts to manuals so extensive that it needed a roomier locale.
That's where El Segundo, the Planning Commission and the City Council come in.
Question: The city of Redondo Beach will become the third of the beach cities to approve a franchise agreement with Verizon to provide residents with television service. Through its fiber-optic cables, the company will compete with Time Warner Cable and satellite services to bring residents their television service. * Is it a good idea to have a new television service provider in the area?
* What are some of the advantages to having Verizon enter this marketplace?
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