South Bay : Landmark to Get a Taste of Modernity

With its spider legs and Jetsons-style restaurant, the Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport opened in 1961 as a monument to the future, a harbinger of a new day in air travel in which jet planes would replace their propeller-driven predecessors.

But now the building--especially, as one observer put it, its “antiquated” interior--is seen as something of an old twin-prop DC-3.

That’s about to change. CA-1 Services Inc., which won a contract from the airport in January to operate the restaurant, plans to modernize the interior and introduce a new menu featuring “signature” dishes from some of L.A.’s most famous restaurants, company general manager Randy Brashier said.

The restaurant closed late last month and is expected to reopen next summer.

“We intend to make this an icon for Los Angeles,” Brashier said.

In other airport news, the Board of Airport Commissioners asked the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday to ban all solicitations in the terminals, parking lots and sidewalks at LAX.

The ban would include everyone from panhandlers to youngsters selling candy bars. Passengers have been complaining for years about being harassed at the airport, said Diane Scully, an airport spokeswoman. . . .

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PUBLIC SERVICE AWARD: Just weeks before he is scheduled to retire, an engineer at TRW Space and Electronics Group will be honored by NASA for more than 30 years of working on NASA-related spacecraft and missions. R. Gordon Williams, vice president and deputy general manager of the Redondo Beach-based group, will receive the NASA Public Service Medal today during a ceremony on the TRW campus.

Williams, a 64-year-old Manhattan Beach resident, was head of a team that completed major projects for NASA--including satellites and a space observatory--that have been sent into orbit on space shuttles. Under his leadership, TRW has won several awards for NASA programs.