Palm Springs to pay downtown restaurant $500,000 to settle dispute over Plaza Theatre
The city of Palm Springs and a restaurant with a patio next to the entrance of the Plaza Theatre have agreed to settle a dispute that threatened to delay the renovated venue's opening.
Kalura Trattoria, an Italian restaurant with an outdoor patio on a walkway leading into the theatre, will receive $500,000 from the city "for loss of goodwill" resulting from the necessary relocation of the patio. The city will also provide a new patio to the restaurant at the front of the property.
'I am very pleased the City has reached an agreement with Kalura and have long been confident that we would find a positive solution," J.R. Roberts, president of the Palm Springs Plaza Theatre Foundation, said in a news release. "It has always been our goal that the theatre will continue to have a positive impact on the community and businesses that surround it."
In November, the city revealed that the entrance to the Plaza Theatre did not contain enough space to comply with California law. The state building code requires the theatre to have 20 feet of space for entering and exiting in case of fire or another emergency like an earthquake. At the time, the city only had a 10-foot easement into the property.
The patio for the Kalura Trattoria stood within the additional 10 feet required by the state. The city then took steps to proceed with eminent domain, a legal process by which private property owners are forced to sell land to the government for public benefit.
The owners of Kalura, Ignazio Battaglia and Joseph Amodeo, had previously said moving the patio would harm their business. But on Thursday, they commended the city for the agreement they had reached.
'The new patio area, made possible through this agreement, will provide customers with a beautiful andinviting space to enjoy Kalura Trattoria's signature Italian cuisine," the owners said in a joint statement. "Furthermore, we are delighted to see the renovated Plaza Theatre take shape. This iconic landmark will undoubtedly become a vibrant hub of cultural and artistic activity, and we are honored to be a part of the downtown Palm Springs community.'
The new patio will have seating for 60 people, a slight reduction from the capacity of 70 at the current patio. The city will also improve the courtyard area in front of the Plaza Theatre. Kalura will not be charged by the city to use the area in front of the restaurant.
'The City of Palm Springs is incredibly excited to add yet another cultural venue that will create more jobs and economic growth in our downtown while bringing our community an array of new and exciting entertainment programs,' Mayor Ron deHarte said in the statement. 'Our City continues to be a leader in promoting arts and culture in Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley. A big thank you to City Staff, the Palm Springs Plaza Theatre Foundation, and our community stakeholders for working together to find the best possible solution for all concerned."
The Plaza Theatre first opened in 1936 and has been vacant since 2014, after the closure of the Fabulous Palm Springs Follies.
A $26.3 million restoration is underway for a planned revival of the theatre, which will be operated by the Plaza Theatre Foundation. Oak View Group, the company behind Acrisure Arena, will be responsible for booking shows. The company plans to offer tickets at discounted prices subsidized by the foundation.
A grand opening is planned for December of this year.
Sam Morgen covers the city of Palm Springs for The Desert Sun. Reach him at smorgen@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Palm Springs pays restaurant $500,000 to settle Plaza Theatre dispute
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
37 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Liev Schreiber's Daughter Kai Opens Up About Being Trans And Chasing Supermodel Stardom
Just months after making her Paris Fashion Week debut, Kai Schreiber is speaking candidly about her aspirations as a young transgender woman in the fashion industry. The 16-year-old daughter of actors Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts told Interview magazine in a Q&A published this week that her dream early on was to be 'a beautiful, glamorous, influential woman, like Marilyn [Monroe].' 'I want to be a supermodel. Period,' she told the outlet. 'I've been practicing my walks in the kitchen for years; my mom can show you all the videos I forced her to film. Struggling with gender identity from a young age most likely had something to do with it.' When asked about her role models, Kai Schreiber said she's 'always going to look up to the older generation of transgender people, especially in fashion,' naming actors Hari Nef ('Transparent') and Hunter Schafer ('Euphoria') as two of her current inspirations. 'It's so great that there's a strong community of us in the fashion world; it's really a doll takeover,' she explained. 'It's important to all of us to have a sense of community, especially when we're under such hostile attack.' The Interview chat appears to be the first time Kai Schreiber has addressed her gender identity on the record. She has, however, been stepping into the spotlight regularly in recent months. After walking the runway for Valentino as part of her Paris Fashion Week debut in March, she appeared in an ad campaign for the Italian fashion house. Speaking to Variety last month, Liev Schreiber recalled the 'profound' moment Kai asked him and Watts to change her pronouns. 'Kai is such a fighter. It's important that she goes, 'Hey, I am trans,' and, 'Look at me,' and, 'Fuck you. Fuck off,'' he said. When asked for his advice to parents of children who may be coming to terms with the trans identity, Liev Schreiber offered a measured response. 'I don't know the answer for your kid,' he told the outlet. 'I don't know what it's like for you to be a trans dad. I don't know how you were brought up. I don't know what religion you encountered or what your spirituality is. And for me to tell you what I think about my kid feels like an overstep.' In addition to Kai, Liev Schreiber also shares son Sasha, 17, with Watts. He and the 'Mulholland Drive' actor were in a relationship from 2005 to 2016. In 2023, he married Taylor Neisen, with whom he shares a 1-year-old daughter, Hazel Bee. One Of Robert De Niro's Twins Discloses She Is Transitioning Tommy Dorfman Reclaims Her Voice By Playing A Trans Rabbi In 'Becoming Eve' 'Real Housewives' Star Opens Up About Transgender Son After Mario Lopez Debacle
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Self-Proclaimed 'Best Friend' Of Barron Trump Brags About Calling ICE On Popular TikToker
MAGA Gen-Z influencer Bo Loudon says he was responsible for TikTok's most-followed creator, Khaby Lame, getting detained by Immigration and Customs enforcement, and he's threatening to go after other immigrants. 'We don't want celebrities using their status to abuse our system and take advantage of the things that we don't have access to,' Loudon, 18, said on Fox News. 'I can't say I'm done with Khaby; if there's other celebrities that are not in this country legally, I will investigate it and I will happily go after them as well. So it's not going to stop here, I don't think.' Lame, whose full name is Serigne Khabane Lame, 25, is an Italian citizen who was born in Senegal. He was placed in detention on June 6 at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas for immigration violations, an ICE spokesperson told HuffPost. ICE said Lame had overstayed the terms of his visa and voluntarily departed from the U.S. The agency did not confirm whether Loudon had played any part in Lame's detention, but the MAGA influencer went on X last week to tell his millions of followers that he had 'reported' the influencer as an 'illegal alien.' 'I want to look out for the little guys, the people that follow our laws, respect our country, appreciate it and its values and don't abuse the system,' Loudon told Dylan Page, known on TikTok as 'News Daddy,' on Wednesday's episode of Page's podcast. Lame, who once lived in a modest apartment in a small industrial town in Italy, rose to fame in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic when he turned to content-creating after losing his factory job, The New York Times reported in 2021. 'It's my face and my expressions which make people laugh,' Lame said. Lame, who had lived in Italy since age 1, said at the time that he was having trouble obtaining Italian citizenship due to the country's laws, and that his Senegalese passport made it tough to obtain a U.S. visa. 'I'm not a mayor, I'm no one. I can't change the laws,' Lame told the Times. 'Maybe I can change it with the popularity. With my influence,' he added with a smile. Lame became an Italian citizen in 2022. This year, he attended the Met Gala in New York City. Loudon is the son of former Missouri state Sen. John Loudon and former Women for Trump co-chair Dr. Gina Loudon, The Independent reports. He, much like other pro-Trump influencers, has gained a huge following of young conservative men. On Instagram, Loudon pinned a photo of himself with President Donald Trump and his son Barron, captioning it, 'Best Friend, Best President.' On Page's podcast, the MAGA influencer said he first discovered Lame had overstayed his visa through mutual friends and business partners and said he 'called some buddies in the administration' to quickly have the TikToker detained. 'I wish him the best of luck. I hope he's able to come back as a law-abiding citizen,' Loudon said. World's Most Popular TikTok Star Leaves The U.S. After Being Detained By ICE 'What The F**k...': Watch Joe Rogan And Trump's FBI Director React To Musk's Post Influencer Sues To Keep 3-Year-Old Son's Death Details Private After TikTok 'Frenzy'
Eater
an hour ago
- Eater
How Maddy DeVita Pulls Off the Perfect Dinner Party
It's the Friday morning rush at Paisanos in Boerum Hill. There's a constant ding of the doorbell as people shuffle in and out of the neighborhood butcher shop. Private chef Maddy DeVita steps inside. Her eyes drift up to the 65-pound stravecchio provolone wheels hanging from the ceiling as she makes her way over to the butcher counter. She's here to pick up the centerpiece for tonight's dinner party: a spiraled Italian sausage. Paisanos is just the first stop on a full itinerary of dinner party prep. It's days like this, when she's busy running around the city planning elaborate meals, that brought DeVita out of the kitchen and into the public eye. Her journey started in 2020 on Instagram and TikTok, where DeVita documented her internship at a small agritourism farm in Italy, all the way through her enrollment at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York. But it wasn't until 2023, when she began posting her 'days in the life' as a private chef, and her platform grew exponentially. 'That was some of my highest performing content on social media, of just the wild things I was making, all of the courses, and how I was pulling it off narrowly,' she says. Now, with nearly a million followers across both platforms and more than 11,000 followers on Substack, DeVita has expanded her reach. She continues to cook for clients, share weekly recipes through her newsletter, and post daily videos online — while still finding time to bring her friends and family together over food. As a self-proclaimed control freak with a Virgo mentality, DeVita loves to put her touch on every portion of the evening. This means her apartment is typically the home base for gatherings. In March, she hosted her 12 cousins and their partners in honor of using her grandma's beloved sauce pot for the first time. 'We're just now undergoing this switch of the family gatherings,' she says. 'It's almost turning over to the new generation, we're able to host ourselves now.' Tonight's dinner though isn't a big affair, it's just a casual hang with her sister and cousin. So naturally, she decides on a snackable, mix-and-match spread — fresh baguettes from L'Appartement 4F, a tomato and white bean dip, the sausage ring from Paisanos dressed up with mustard and a giardiniera salsa — served alongside bottles of Sparkling Natural Mineral Water. Whether she's cooking a 20-person private dinner or at home with her fiance, DeVita's approach to the menu is the same: She lets the ingredients do the heavy lifting. To find the highest-quality products, she never buys groceries online or orders delivery, even though it saves time. She's a people-person and these ingredient-sourcing days are the best part of her job. 'Being a private chef is isolating in a lot of ways because you don't have any other colleagues,' DeVita says. 'Connecting with the butcher behind the counter in the middle of my workday, picking up groceries, or whatever it might be, those are my colleagues in a way.' These interactions aren't transactional — she relies on the vendors' expertise to spark inspiration for her meals. 'People are always curious about how I'm using ingredients and share how they've used them in the past,' she says. For tonight's dinner, the butcher at Paisanos recommended parboiling the sausage, before finishing it off in the broiler to get a nice, grill-like char without setting off the smoke alarm. Sometimes, these relationships can lead to exclusive perks. Today, for example, L'Appartement 4F set aside those aforementioned baguettes for DeVita, just in case they sold out. When DeVita returns home from running errands, she's back in her element, moving gracefully around her European country-style kitchen. She arranges a simple charcuterie platter with Piave vecchio, mortadella, and Castelvetrano olives on a vintage hand-painted plate she found in Puglia, Italy. Even as a private chef, she doesn't feel pressured to show off her skills and overwhelm her guests with an over-the-top spread. 'The whole point is bringing people together and connecting with friends, and it doesn't need to be this complicated thing,' she says. It's her attention to detail that makes these dinners feel special, not a lengthy prep list. 'There are certain things that get forgotten about when you're hosting in your own apartment that are just assumed when you go out to dinner,' she says. As she sets the table, DeVita uses linen napkins from Six Bells instead of paper and places in a wine cooler for easy refills. 'It's not crazy for [a restaurant] to put a bottle of chilled on the table and pour it for you,' she says. 'It's about finding those little ways to elevate the meal in a way that's kind of obvious, but you forget when it comes to being in your own home.' Her cousin Giulia is a few minutes late, but DeVita enjoys a 10 to 15 minute grace period to put the finishing touches on the table. When it comes to those big-event dinners, she also appreciates the occasional bouquet of flowers, bottle of wine, or even for those who don't drink (though, she doesn't expect gifts from tonight's guests who visit often). As she pulls the sausage out of the oven, her sister and cousin sit around the table, and they dive into the spread. DeVita smears mustard on the baguette, adds a piece of sausage, and sprinkles the giardiniera on top. 'Simple but so yummy,' she says. 'That's honestly what people want when they come over, a delicious meal.' Photo Credits: Photographer: Meghan Marin Art Director: Sarah Rose Greenberg Photo Assistant: Serena Nappa Hair and Makeup Artist: Lauren Bridges Food Stylist: Fatima Khamise Production Designer: Katie Quinlisk Art Assistant: Madison Bartlett Producer: Andreana Kraft
