Ballona Creek

The Hope Development School fire started about 9 p.m. on the evening of May 31, 1924 in Playa Del Rey, Los Angeles, California. The fire at the Hope Development School for Deficient Girls killed 24 people, primarily the mentally disabled or behaviorally challenged girls who were residents of the home, as well as the matron and her eight-year-old son.

Del Rey Lagoon Park is a 14-acre (57,000 m2) municipal park in the Playa Del Rey neighborhood of Los Angeles, United States, with a lagoon that is part of the greater Ballona Creek watershed.The park features lighted baseball fields, lighted basketball courts and a children’s playground. There is a dedicated parking lot just off Pacific Avenue. Del Rey Lagoon (sometimes called “the duck pond”) covers six acres (24,000 m2 and is 1,250 ft (380 m) long and approximately 350 ft (110 m) wide. The depth of the lagoon circa 1959 was four to six feet (1.2-1.8 m). The lagoon is a place where “wild ducks swim beside the domestic varieties that are cast-off Easter presents for city-dwellers’ children.” Among the wild waterfowl is a “large population of bufflehead ducks, great blue herons and coots.”

The Dickinson and Gillespie Building, is located at 200 Culver Boulevard in downtown Playa Del Rey, California, in the City of Los Angeles. This two-story commercial building, created in 1922, was an extensive remodel of the Hotel Playa, a hotel opened in 1906 on the same site. The building served at the headquarters of the Dickinson & Gillespie Real Estate Company, a Minneapolis, Minnesota based partnership which relocated here in 1922, and was directed by Fritz Bernard Burns, the General Manager. The company was responsible for the development of Palisades del Rey, Surfridge and the Del Rey Hills. Part of the Del Rey Hills, today a part of the town of Westchester, was developed as the campus of Loyola University, now Loyola Marymount University. The land for the campus was donated by Harry Culver, father of nearby Culver City, California, and the Blankenthorn Syndicate, controlled by Fritz Burns, and his partners at Dickinson and Gillespie. The building has been designated as Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 955. It was designed (re-designed) by architectural firm of Roth & Parker with a later interior renovation by Parkinson & Parkinson. The exterior is stucco with terra cotta. The Vista del Mar elevation is divided into five bays with a centered entrance consisting of large arched opening surrounded by a cast concrete frame with a lintel and swag decorative details. The opening is flanked by three arched storefronts with awnings on one section and three rectangular shaped storefronts on the adjacent section. Two of the upper floor bays are inset, creating two balconied sections topped by a sloping tile roof supported by bracketed wood columns and three tower-like bays flush with the ground floor elevation. Each tower-like bay contains paired narrow ogee-shaped windows with rounded apex surrounded by decorative terra-cotta detailing. The smaller Culver Boulevard elevation continues the same design decorative treatment, having three arched storefronts with awnings, centered balconied area, and two tower-like bays with decorative windows. Significant interiors include a vestibule space with decorative molding, and some storefronts with original interior elements. Dickinson and Gillespie suffered devastating losses as a result of the collapse of the United States economy in 1929, and shortly thereafter vacated the premises. Over the years, the building was occupied by doctors, dentists, a hardware store operation, a surf shop and a bicycle rental stand, just to name a few. Another notable owner and occupant was graphic designer Robert Miles Runyan who occupied the building in the 1970s-80s. Runyan is recognized for revolutionizing the format and design of corporate reports and designing the “Stars in Motion” logo for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.Today, Tanner's Coffee Company, and several other tenants, occupy the location.

The Ballona Lagoon is a soft-bottomed channel and 16-acre (65,000 m2) tidal marsh in the Marina Peninsula neighborhood of Los Angeles that feeds the Venice Canals with water from the Pacific Ocean via a tide gate.

The UCLA Marina Aquatic Center (or MAC) is a waterfront recreation facility located in Marina del Rey, California at the northeastern end of the Entrance Channel, which is owned and operated by the University of California, Los Angeles. The MAC, which is operated by UCLA Recreation, was opened in 1965 to house the Collegiate Rowing and Sailing programs. Since that time the MAC has expanded to offer recreational classes in small boat sailing, surfing, rowing, kayaking, windsurfing and stand-up paddle boarding to UCLA students. Construction on the facility began in 1965. A cinder block boathouse was built to replace a wooden boathouse structure on Ballona Creek. In 1967 a dock was added to the entrance channel. In 1984 the installation of new trailers (which were previously used for the Los Angeles Olympics) was added to the facility.

The Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors is responsible for 20 beaches and the Marina Del Rey small-craft harbor in Los Angeles County, California.

Fisherman's Village is a waterfront mall, commercial boat anchorage and tourist attraction located in the world's largest man-made small boat harbor in Los Angeles County at Marina del Rey, California. The Ballona Wetlands State Ecological Reserve is just east of Fisherman's Village and immediately to the south is the federally-owned riverine estuary of Ballona Creek. The historical Fisherman's Village, built in 1967, is nestled on the eastern bank of main harbor entrance channel between Whiskey Reds restaurant to the south and the Windward boatyard to the north. Fisherman's Village was developed and built by the Sheldon L. Pollack Corporation. The company also developed and/or built several other similar projects in Southern California including San Diego Seaport Village, Port Hueneme Fisherman's Village (now called Fisherman's Wharf Channel Islands Harbor) and Oceanside Harbor Village. Constructed in the style of a New England fishing village, Fisherman's Village consists of five brightly painted wooden buildings, a waterfront promenade, a lighthouse, a water fountain and commercial boat docks. Tourist attractions include live music concerts, restaurant and café dining, harbor and fishing cruises, boat and bicycle rentals, a Catalina Island ferry service, souvenir shops, a nightclub and a public water shuttle (harbor ferry) service. The waterfront promenade offers panoramic views of the harbor, where approximately 5,300 pleasure boats, yachts, and commercial vessels are berthed across 21 individual marinas, including yacht clubs. Various types of ocean-going vessels can be seen as they pass Fisherman's Village en route to, or returning from, voyages into Santa Monica Bay, Catalina Island, the Pacific Ocean and beyond. On Wednesday evenings during March to September from 5 pm to 7 pm, up to 100 sailboats from 22 to 70 feet in length can be seen, sails unfurled, racing toward the finishing line in California Yacht Club's (CYC) Sunset Series regatta. The address of Fisherman's Village is 13755 Fiji Way, Marina del Rey, California, 90292-6909. It is situated on Los Angeles County land (public land) and designated as parcel #56 by the DBH (Department of Beaches and Harbors). DBH lease the parcels on the public's behalf. The adjoining public parking lot #1 is managed by Parking Concepts International (PCI) on behalf of DBH. The lessee of Fisherman's Village is 'Gold Coast Village, LLC' who have appointed their property management company, 'Pacific Ocean Management'. The leasee also holds other parcels in Marina Del Rey such as Admiralty Apartments on Admiralty Way, Marina Beach strip mall on Washington Boulevard and Pier 44/Dock 77 marinas. Shoreline Village in Long Beach is another lease held. Other entities of note adjoining Fisherman's Village are: US Coast Guard station, MDR LA Sheriff's Department station, the LA County Department of Beaches and Harbors (DBH) executive offices, Whiskey Red's restaurant, Villa Venetia apartment complex, UCLA rowing sheds to the south and Loyola Marymount University (LMU) rowing sheds, The Boatyard and DBH trailer offices to the North-east. Since the late 1970s, Fisherman's Village has faced a decline of stores closing due to the leasing issues. A seal cage was emptied and various arcades for pinball machines and video games closed, including an eponymous arcade owned by actor Gary Coleman in the early 1990s. At times, the boat tours were shut down as well. There has been an effort to rebuild Fisherman's Village with a parking complex, however, due to the millions of dollars involved in order to add new shops and stores, as well as the influx of heavy traffic, it had to go through several environmental impact reports before any demolition could take place. No decision has been made at this time. The parking lot had to start charging fees in order to pay for the maintenance of Fisherman's Village.

Silicon Beach is the Westside region of the Los Angeles metropolitan area that is home to more than 500 technology companies, including startups. It is particularly applied to the coastal strip from Los Angeles International Airport north to the Santa Monica Mountains, but the term may be applied loosely or colloquially to most anywhere in the Los Angeles Basin. Startups seeded here include Snapchat and Tinder. Major technology companies that opened offices in the region including Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, BuzzFeed, Facebook, Salesforce, AOL, Electronic Arts, Sony, EdgeCast Networks, MySpace, Amazon.com, Apple, Inc., and Netflix. By some 2012 metrics, the region was the second or third-most prominent technology hub in the world. In the first six months of 2013, 94 new start-ups in Silicon Beach raised over $500 million in funding, and there were nine acquisitions.The area offers relatively easy access to LAX (Los Angeles International Airport), the biggest and most connected airport in western North America.As in the San Francisco Bay Area, the influx of technology companies has boosted home and office rents and real estate prices in Playa Vista, Playa Del Rey, Westchester, Santa Monica, and Venice, already high previously due to beachfront location. The effects are also spilling over into Marina del Rey and Hermosa Beach.Start-up pockets have also emerged in nearby Culver City, West L.A., and El Segundo. Other pockets include Downtown Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Glendale, and the San Fernando Valley, which were pricey areas even before the influx. The tendency of companies to congregate in these centrally-located, high income areas has raised concerns about the feasibility of racial minorities joining the workforce, as they tend to live in further outlying areas.Silicon Beach is also home to start-up incubators and accelerators, such as Amplify.LA, Science, Disney Accelerator, and TechStars Cedars Sinai.The Los Angeles metro area was home to 88,000 engineers in 2021, the highest number of any metro area in the United States. Higher education institutions in Los Angeles County graduate 6,600 engineering majors a year, the highest of any county in the United States.Higher education institutions headquartered in Silicon Beach include Loyola Marymount University and Otis College of Art and Design. Other higher education institutions in the nearby Southern California region or with satellite campuses in/nearby Silicon Beach include: Pepperdine University, Santa Monica College, Art Center College of Design, California Institute of Technology, University of California Los Angeles, University of Southern California, Occidental College, CalState LA, CalState Northridge, CalState Long Beach, CalState Dominguez Hills, CalPoly Pomona, and the Claremont Colleges.

Holton is a former settlement in Los Angeles County, California. It lay at an elevation of 49 feet (15 m). Holton still appeared on USGS maps as of 1924. It was located on the Pacific Ocean south-southeast of Playa del Rey and west of the Los Angeles International Airport. It had a stop on the Redondo Beach via Playa del Rey Line of the Pacific Electric Railway. The settlement has been given over to dunes restoration and flight approaches.

Venice Fishing Pier is a pier in Venice, Los Angeles, in the U.S. state of California. The current concrete structure was completed c. 1963. According to Paste, the pier extends approximately 1,300 feet into the Pacific Ocean.In 2018 the Venice Oceanarium proposed a new exhibited space for the pier.

Marina del Rey (Spanish for "Marina of the King") is an unincorporated seaside community in Los Angeles County, California, with an eponymous harbor that is a major boating and water recreation destination of the greater Los Angeles area. The port is North America's largest man-made small-craft harbor and is home to approximately 5,000 boats. The area is a popular tourism destination for both land and water activities such as paddle board and kayak rentals, dining cruises, and yacht charters. Land activities include bicycling on several bicycle paths, walking paths along the waterfront, and birdwatching (birding). Wildlife watching opportunities include California sea lions and harbor seals. Dolphins and whales occasionally visit the deeper waters of harbor. This Westside locale is approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) south of Santa Monica, 4 miles (6.4 km) north of Los Angeles International Airport, and 12.5 miles (20.1 km) west-southwest of Downtown Los Angeles. The harbor is owned by Los Angeles County and managed by the Department of Beaches and Harbors (DBH), but the waters are environmentally regulated by state government and federal government through their many agencies and departments with overlapping oversight. The Los Angeles Times said in a 1997 editorial that the harbor is "perhaps the county's most valuable resource". The population was 11,373 at the 2020 census. For statistical purposes, the United States Census Bureau has defined Marina del Rey as a census-designated place (CDP). The census definition of the area may not precisely correspond to local understanding of the area with the same name; for example, the 90292 ZIP code includes all of Marina del Rey and portions of neighboring Los Angeles, such as Del Rey, and has a population of 21,576, more than double that of the CDP. Many residents of the 90292 ZIP code consider themselves to live in Marina del Rey even if they in fact live outside the official boundaries of the CDP.

Port Ballona is an archaic place name for an area near the center of Santa Monica Bay in coastal Los Angeles County, where Playa Del Rey and Del Rey Lagoon are located today. Port Ballona was a planned harbor and town site from circa 1859 to 1903. The name comes from the Rancho La Ballona Mexican land grant. Port Ballona consisted of the current Del Rey Lagoon Park but conceptually also included the current Ballona Wetlands State Ecological Reserve alongside the estuarine river Ballona Creek, which flowed into and alongside the marsh within earthen levees built of soft-bottomed wetland soil. While these plans never came to fruition, and the area remains a primarily residential neighborhood, the wetlands immediately to the north were eventually developed into Marina del Rey, North America's largest man-made small-craft harbor.