News Digest News Digest (March 23, 2005)

Stanford plans luxury hotel

Stanford University was expected to announce Wednesday that it is working with Rosewood Hotels & Resorts to build a 120-room luxury hotel on a 21-acre parcel of Stanford-owned land on Sand Hill Road adjacent to I-280 in Menlo Park. The plans also call for an office complex on the same property. The development must be approved by the city of Menlo Park.

Rosewood is a Dallas-based company founded in 1979 that operates 12 luxury resorts and hotels around the world. Its flagship hotel is Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas. Other hotels include the Carlyle in New York City and hotels and resorts in Japan, Saudi Arabia, the Virgin Islands, Antigua, Mexico and Canada.

"Stanford and Rosewood are excited about the opportunity to work with the city to jointly produce a world-class luxury lodging facility that will reflect the business ethos, landscape and historical importance of the Sand Hill Road corridor," said Bill Phillips, a spokesman for the Stanford Management Co. --Don Kazak

Kim Cranston to speak tonight on his father, Alan

Kim Cranston, son of longtime Palo Altan and U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston, will speak tonight (Wednesday, March 23) in Palo Alto on his new book about his late father: "Celebrating the Legacy of Alan Cranston: The Sovereignty Revolution." His talk will be at the Cubberley Community Center Main Theater, 4000 Middlefield Road, with registration beginning at 6 p.m. and the program at 6:30 p.m.

The program is a Commonwealth Club presentation, and will be taped for rebroadcast on KQED.

Kim Cranston, chair of the Global Security Institute, will speak about Alan Cranston's last publication, "The Sovereignty Revolution," completed just days before his death in 2000. The work proposed that conceptions of sovereignty in world affairs must change before humanity can effectively address world problems such as global warming, poverty, terrorism and proliferation of nuclear weapons. -- Jay Thorwaldson
Dogwood thieves strike again

Four large branches of a flowering white dogwood tree -- possibly worth up to $35 a branch -- were whacked off a 12-foot high tree in a nighttime Palo Alto theft last week.

The thefts seriously disfigured one of two of the slow-growing trees in the front yard of a home in the 500 block of Center Drive in north Palo Alto -- just across the street from where thieves stole pink dogwood branches almost precisely a year ago, and not far from a similar theft in 2000.

"What appears to happen is they take them to the San Francisco Flower Mart," resident Dave Mitchell said of the thefts. The flowers and spring leaves come out about the same time, and pre-Easter demand is high, he surmised. "The flowers don't last for long. People at the mart get as much as $35 a branch for them, which is shocking to me.

"But it's not an economic thing for us," he added, noting that the disfiguring of the tree is the main damage. "In the grand scheme of things, we realize it's not a huge thing, but "the blooms on the second tree -- about two inches in diameter -- had not come out yet," he said.

"You really feel like you've been personally violated," resident Sue Hoyt said last year when thieves struck her pink dogwoods across the street from Mitchell's home.

In 2000, John and Barbara Hanna offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of persons responsible for stealing dogwood blooms from their home on Hamilton Avenue.

"I fully believe that someone who gardens could not have done this thing," John Hanna said in 2000. - Jay Thorwaldson

E-mail a friend a link to this story.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]