Playa Vista Protester Ends Hunger Strike

A 25-year-old man staging a hunger strike to protest the development of Playa Vista broke his 15-day fast Monday, then delivered a written plea to city officials to halt construction on the site, supporters said.

Paul King, a former petition canvasser for the Sierra Club, began a water-only fast Aug. 31 at the corner of Jefferson and Lincoln boulevards to protest what he said was the destruction of wildlife habitat in a wetlands area.

Officials of Playa Vista, which may eventually include up to 13,000 residential units, maintain that their development plan will restore and improve wetland habitats that were diminished when previous landowners piled fill dirt in the area and farmed the land, among other activities.

On the advice of doctors, King decided Monday to stop fasting, said Bruce Robertson of the Ballona Valley Preservation League, a group opposed to development on the 1,087-acre Playa Vista site south of Marina del Rey.

Robertson said others opposed to the development plan to continue the fast at the same location on a “round robin” basis.

“Apparently this really captured the imagination of a lot of people, residents of the area,” said Robertson, who helped King publicize a news conference Monday. “For so long Playa Vista has been an idea that’s been written about. A lot of people thought [construction] would never happen.”

After the press conference, King delivered a personal letter to the Westchester office of City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, said her spokeswoman, Niki Tennant. Galanter was out of town Monday and the letter remained unopened, Tennant said.