Altadena Junction: The million-dollar blanket, more on Walmart

Walmart, which is opening a Neighborhood Market grocery store on Lincoln Avenue next year, made a presentation to the Altadena Town Council Tuesday night. More than 100 people crowded into the Altadena Community Center to hear the retailer’s pitch. Judging by the public comments they made and the T-shirts they wore, some residents are not welcoming Walmart with open arms.

Walmart’s presentation included video of a company initiative for healthier food choices (including an endorsement by First Lady Michelle Obama), information on the retailer’s $2 billion commitment through 2015 to help end hunger in America, and testimony from Walmart employees and managers who attended the meeting. However, critics took issue with the retailer’s pay scale and benefits, as well as the secretiveness of the move into a derelict local building — a deal revealed to the public several months after it was completed.

Town Councilman Tecumseh Shackelford, who just stepped down from representing the Neighborhood Market’s census tract, said that “it was a disrespect to us in this community not to let us know” about Walmart’s plans.

The anti-Walmart group Save Altadena asked the council to endorse a requirement that any new retail store of 15,000 square feet or more go through hearings for a conditional use permit. The Walmart store, estimated to be 28,000 square feet, will be located in a building with an existing permit and will not require a hearing.

The council agreed to ask the county for a traffic analysis of the neighborhood to see how it will handle the increased traffic load.

Walmart, Take Two: Altadena resident Terry Moore is urging residents to fight Walmart by sending “cash mobs” to local businesses. A cash mob operates by picking a day to inundate a local business with sales. Moore said a new cash mob will be announced every week “so that Altadena residents have a way show our support of Altadena small businesses and … further the discussion of how we can all work together to make our community the best it can be.”

The first target is Webster’s Fine Stationers, 2450 N. Lake Avenue, which was to be cash-mobbed Saturday. Will the plan work? We’ll see.

Blanket of fortune: Loren Krytzer of Antelope Valley was watching “Antiques Roadshow” one day and saw a man’s Navajo blanket appraised at $500,000. Since it resembled one that had that had been passed down in his family, he went to John Moran Auctioneers in Altadena this spring to have his family’s blanket appraised.

Moran recognized it as a rare First Phase Navajo blanket with lac-dyed red stripes. According to a release from the auction firm, fewer than 100 First Phase blankets are known to exist, including only four outside of private collections. “This design variant of the 19th-century artifacts is considered the holy grail of Navajo textile collectors,” Moran wrote. One example nearly identical to Krytzer’s is “a star exhibit of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.”

Now dubbed the “Chantland Blanket” (after first-known owner John Chantland, a Norwegian immigrant turned tradesman who acquired it in the 1870s), the blanket went up for auction at the Pasadena Convention Center on June 19. According to Moran’s release, “After a pitched battle between phone and floor bidders from across the country, the well-known dealer Donald Ellis of Donald Ellis Gallery in New York and Ontario, bidding from the floor, emerged the victor as the stunned consignor looked on.” The total price, including 20% buyer’s premium, was $1.8 million.

Moran’s release goes on to state, “This sale price eclipses the previous record for a Navajo blanket when a similar example sold for $522,500 to a buyer at Sotheby’s New York in 1989. It is the second-highest price ever realized at auction for a Native American artifact of any type.”

That’s good news for Krytzer, who has been living on disability payments since a leg amputation. You can read the full story about the new millionaire and see a video at www.johnmoran.com. Do you have something in the closet or the corner that could change your life? Try out your luck at Moran’s next “What’s It Worth” valuation day on Aug. 22. John Moran Auctioneers is at 735 West Woodbury Road, Altadena, (626) 793-1833, info@johnmoran.com.

TIMOTHY RUTT is the publisher and editor of Altadenablog, at www.altadenablog.com.