Re “Renovations begin at Supreme store on Sunset,” Feb. 17 issue

Just a few weeks ago, consultant and lobbyist Aaron Green, from Afriat Consulting, had a neighborhood meeting on Zoom for our Weho Heights neighborhood. We were told it would be an hour-long meeting, [but it] turned out to be a 23-minute meeting where we were all muted and all of our construction questions were never addressed or answered and now we know why.

In this Zoom meeting, we were told mere things about the upcoming “renovation” where Supreme would be “just raising the roof a little and adding skylights” and then “just moving the window facing Sunset Boulevard a little bit over.”

But now, we see that the building has been totally gutted where all the walls have been removed. This was definitely not at all what Supreme discussed regarding the renovations with the neighborhood residents.

This way, Supreme cleverly knew without razing the building completely, they could just do an “over the counter” permit at the planning department at West Hollywood City Hall. Thus, bypassing the more formal longer process of going in front of the planning commission and City Council. Supreme knew this and made sure to avoid the risk of both city meetings, where they would have to face residents speaking for two minutes about the construction plans and impact of this scandalous sneaker drop event business. So now, Supreme has turned the Tower Records building into a mere shell of a metal frame.

Sadly, the original bricks of the store were taken away in dump trucks. I am sure many of the Tower Records fans would have loved to have one of those bricks as a memory of decades of the most amazing music store in the world.

Jerome Cleary

West Hollywood