And a Street Name Change Has Been Proposed
(Left to right) Joan Graves, Anthony Marguleas, Arnie Wishnick and Bill Bruns on the Village Green. Wishnick was active on the Village Green board (nonprofit).
Arnie Wishnick, the 25-year executive director of the Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce, was also a long-time member of the Village Green Board, the triangular park located between Sunset, Swarthmore and Antioch.
In honor of Wishnick, who died this spring, a brass plaque will be dedicated on the Village Green next Tuesday, September 24, at 1:30 p.m. The public is invited to attend the ceremony.
Meanwhile, at the Palisades Business Improvement District meeting on September 4, Councilman Mike Bonin’s field deputy Lisa Cahill said that an honorary name change for Antioch Street to commemorate Wishnick has being proposed.
“It’ll be an honorary name change, but won’t actually change the name of the street,” she said. “We hope to do it soon and coordinate with the Chamber of Commerce and businesses.”
Arnie Wishnick
Circling the News received emails from several people questioning the name change after they read a September 7 Palisades News story headlined “Arnie Wishnick Way?” which reported that “Councilmember Mike Bonin has proposed renaming a segment of Antioch Street in Pacific Palisades after Arnie Wishnick, the beloved community leader who passed away earlier this year on April 28.
“Bonin’s motion, which passed out of Los Angeles City Council’s Public Works and Gang Reduction Committee on September 4, would change the name of Antioch Street from Via De La Paz to Swarthmore Avenue to ‘Arnie Wishnick Way’ if passed by Council as a whole.”
The people who questioned the name change said that while Wishnick was indeed a memorable presence in the community, he didn’t live here, and they thought the historical significance of Antioch–named by the town’s founders–outweighed a name change. President Ronald Reagan lived in Pacific Palisades for decades before moving to the White House, and a street was never renamed for him.
Ronald Reagan was not Arnie Wishnick. That is why a street in the Palisades was never named in his honor.