How WeHo ended up with a $900K veterans memorial

The fountain by the IHOP in West Hollywood is mainly a haunt for the homeless these days, but its origin story is an interesting chapter in the history of West Hollywood. The path to the construction of the Sal Guarriello Veterans Memorial — the only thing in WeHo named after a city official — was paved with insider politics and blank checks from taxpayers. This archive story by Bob Bishop, updated with current developments, tells the fascinating tale. 

Sal Guarriello was a City Council member for 19 years, a former U.S. Army medic and Purple Heart recipient. He got the idea for a veterans memorial after a friend took a group of high school students to France in the mid-1990s and discovered that the teenagers knew little about World War II. After convincing his City Council colleagues to approve the concept of a memorial in 1997, Guarriello set about raising money.

The memorial was a long time coming – 14 years to be exact. It came together during a period when the city wasn’t waist deep in cash like it is today. The memorial’s contemplative nature about sacrifice, created by landscape architects Douglas and Regula Campbell, belies the funding battles waged over time to finally complete the project in 2011.

Almost anyone who attended a City Council meeting during that period isn’t likely to forget a pledge made by the popular Guarriello. He told audiences several times over that “not one cent of taxpayer money was being spent on the funding” of the memorial, according to City Council minutes. The commitment proved to be too bold, too soon.

All totaled, the memorial wound up costing about $900,000, with public funds paying for nearly all of it. Taxpayers’ share of the tab included a $220,000 grant from the California Bond Resources Act of 2002, while private and business donations accounted for at least $100,000. The rest came from city coffers.

How It Happened

In April 2000, the Los Angeles Times noted, “The memorial has come this far with the city’s blessing and lots of community involvement, but a budget was never established. When the price tag of $1.2 million was recently disclosed, “there was a bit of sticker shock,’” former WeHo Mayor Jeffrey Prang said. “In the early talking stages of the project, he had envisioned a budget of no more than $250,000.”

Nearly all aspects were up for grabs at that point – a site hadn’t even been chosen and higher priorities loomed. That’s when the City Council sent everything back to staff, ordering “a definite plan for how the money will be raised.”

A private fundraising drive fell short of its $200,000 goal by half in 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported. And that was with the help of a lobbying firm, the Afriat Consulting Group of Burbank, retained the year before “for veterans memorial fundraising,” according to City Council minutes.

Headed by Steve Afriat, the firm was plugged into the city’s political establishment. Afriat worked as a campaign consultant or fundraiser at various times for current and former council members including John Heilman, John Duran, Abbe Land, Steve Martin, Prang and Guarriello. Afriat died in 2020.

The memorial, unfortunately, even got tangled up in heated local politics over the Sunset Millennium project, as it was called at the time, now a high-end hotel and residential building straddling La Cienega.

Mark Siffin, managing partner of the developer, Apollo Real Estate Advisors, donated $21,000 to the memorial’s construction fund just hours before the City Council voted in August 2001 on whether he could install lucrative, high-rise billboards on top of the project.

Guarriello cast the deciding vote that approved Siffin’s billboards. Opponents cried foul, but Guarriello contended that the developer’s donation did not influence how he voted. Guarriello claimed he had been in favor of the billboards all along, a position opponents took issue with while calling for a stronger code of conduct for elected officials. His cohorts on the City Council supported Guarriello.

The kerfuffle over Siffin’s memorial donation slowly fizzled out over next few months – mainly because the City Council rescinded its vote approving the billboards in early 2002. Members said they lost confidence in Siffin for several reasons spelled out in embarrassing newspaper stories. Unsavory activities by Siffin included his allegedly buying the support of Sunset Millennium’s neighbors with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Siffin called the transactions “mutual support and benefits agreements.”

Siffin also moved to replace Sunset Millennium’s 350-room hotel with housing without telling the city, council members said at the time. By April 2002, Apollo had replaced Siffin as managing director and others in the firm took control of the development.

The Final Countdown

Construction finally began in 2003 on the first phase of the Holloway Park and Veterans Memorial, as it was called originally, when the city awarded a construction contract for $423,470 (plus $40,000 in contingencies), which didn’t include a much desired water feature or large fountain.

The last significant component put in place was the water feature, which was built in 2011, eight years after the first phase was dedicated. That’s when the city awarded a construction contract for $246,000 (plus $37,000 in contingencies). The estimated cost of the large cup-like fountain varied considerably over the years, beginning with $80,000 allocated for it in the FY 2006-07 city budget.

That estimate didn’t hold water very long, as the FY 2008-09 city budget set aside more than three times that amount, or $250,000. By the time the FY 2010-11 budget rolled around, the cost dropped slightly to $220,000. No explanation was given for why the water feature rose in price to that extent.

With several redesigns and change orders along the way as council members altered the scope and nature of the memorial, architect fees rose accordingly. The firm of Campbell and Campbell was paid about $190,000 for its work on the project, which began no later than 2000 and continued until project completion in 2011, according to budget documents and City Council minutes.

The City Council renamed the memorial in Guarriello’s honor five months after he died in April 2009. The decision flew in the face of the council’s own “memorial naming policy” that had been in place at least since 2000. At that time, it required a two-year waiting period after a person’s death to name anything in his or her honor. The policy was amended in 2004 to specify a more stringent five-year waiting period.

“Memorials in honor of deceased persons shall not take place until five years after their deaths,” states the resolution (No. 04-3135) adopted in 2004, further expanding the policy. “It is felt appropriate to establish such a waiting period to ensure the test of time and that decisions shall not be made on an emotional basis following a person’s death.”

City Council minutes note that elected officials were acting on the recommendation of the Public Facilities Commission, but don’t provide any insight about why the council abrogated its own memorial naming policy nonetheless.

Steve Martin, a former city councilman through at least the first six years of the memorial’s development, waxed philosophical in 2010 about the time and money the project absorbed when he wrote: “Our award-winning memorial is without a doubt the most impressive monument to veterans built west of the Mississippi in the last 50 years. Scores of cities our size and larger have built veteran’s memorials since the end of the Civil War but West Hollywood’s certainly outshines any modern monument in Southern California. We have every reason to be proud of its design and what it celebrates.”

John Duran

Abbe Land in foreground, John Heilman at podium

Jeffrey Prang, John D’Amico, John Duran, John Heilman