The Airport Hyatt, it wasn’t. More of...
The Airport Hyatt, it wasn’t. More of a Layover Lodge.
But owner Norm Panish thought he was introducing a needed service for between-flight travelers when he opened Skytel at L.A. International Airport in 1985.
The mini-hotel’s rates ranged from $16 per half hour to $84 per half day for a room that measured 6-feet-by-13 feet and was equipped with a TV, desk, shower and bed. (There was no mint on the pillow.)
The business never really took off, though, and the airport has decided not to renew Panish’s lease.
Jeff Panish, Norm’s son and Skytel’s general manager, blamed the mini-hotel’s demise on its somewhat obscure location in the Bradley Terminal as well as advertising prohibitions and a mandatory single occupancy policy.
The GM said that “the (airport) commission wouldn’t let us have more than one adult in the room” (thus avoiding a No-Tell Skytel reputation).
“But, with that limitation, it just wasn’t worth it for a couple to rent out two rooms when they could go to a hotel.”
Checkout time for Skytel is Nov. 1.
This is one Big Mac attack that Downey officials are trying to avoid.
They fear that Pep Boys intends to dismantle the world’s oldest surviving McDonald’s stand, which sits on property owned by the auto parts store at the corner of Lakewood and Florence boulevards.
“This is our most renowned landmark,” Mayor Roy Paul declared (or should we say, admitted). “I believe that it has historical significance and don’t want to see it destroyed.”
After all, this McDonald’s, built by the McDonald brothers themselves in 1953, is so old that it features a pre-Ronald McDonald mascot, Speedee the Chef, on its 40-foot sign.
City officials fear that Pep Boys would like a bigger business that could pay bigger rents on the busy corner. So, the City Council is considering a historic buildings ordinance that would make it more difficult for Manny, Moe and Jack to evict Speedee.
The stand isn’t just a landmark for Downeyites. “It’s great to use for directions,” one resident said a while back.
“Like if someone asks, where’s the dialysis center, we say, it’s just down the street from Mac’s.”
In our Department of Redundant Names, which recently admitted La Rue Street in Pacoima, Harris Farber of L.A. nominates Palmdale’s Vista View Terrace.
D.R. Manning points out, meanwhile, that General Thaddeus Kosciuszko Way, the street with the longest name in L.A., is growing shorter in length.
Named for a Polish Revolutionary War hero, the street has been reduced by one block to make room for a building in the Bunker Hill area. It’s now one block long. But at least its name isn’t redundant.
Amelie Frank reports that she spotted an ice cream truck in North Hollywood that carried the faded, but still visible, letters of a previous business on one side: Acme Sperm Bank.
“All I could think of was parents looking out the window and seeing the wrong side of the truck while their kids are gathered out there,” said Frank.
But she figures the conversion wasn’t entirely illogical. “I guess it would have a refrigeration unit inside,” she said.
miscelLAny:
A versatile TV performer, L.A.’s City Hall has played the Vatican in “The Thornbirds,” the U.S. Capitol in “The Jimmy Hoffa Story,” the Texas office of Lyndon Johnson in “LBJ,” police headquarters in the “Dragnet” series and the Daily Planet newspaper in the “Superman” series (Superman preferred leaping out a fifth-floor window).
