Episode 1:

Kathy McGarrigle, going on her 35th year as a public school educator, has also spent the last 25 years growing ice hockey for girls in Southern California, helping to develop hundreds of athletes and give more than 200 young women the opportunity to play college ice hockey throughout the US and Canada. Having recently retired from that dual career project she is now focused on community-based climate-conscious projects.

A native Southern Californian and USC graduate she spent the 1990s teaching in South and East LA, in socio-economically challenged communities, working to revitalize her school communities with academic rigor and student confidence. Her experiences in the innercity built her sense of urgency that successful and sustainable urban communities needed to be nurtured and thrive.

A motivated and active environmentalist, Kathy personally took the big step of going solar in 2006, purchasing her TESLA X in 2016 to move away from fossil fuels in a major way; and, taking her suburban home’s greenscape from lawn to drought—friendly landscape 10 years ago.

She plans to focus her efforts going forward by assisting various existing organizations in climate conscious projects with the goal of reducing the region’s carbon footprint.

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Hal Bastian Bio:

Hal Bastian is a 40-year commercial real estate professional, who has been a leader in the Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) Renaissance since 1994.

Fondly called “Mr Downtown” and”Mayor of Downtown” by many, he has helped recruit over 100 restaurants, bars, nightclubs and retailers, including Ralphs, Bottega Louie and Whole Foods, and has facilitated billions of dollars worth of residential and commercial development.

Hal has been at the forefront of the DTLA residential resurgence, starting with his leasing of the Old Bank District, DTLA’s first Adaptive Reuse project, where he pioneered a dog-friendly community. He has been instrumental in the construction of over 20,000 residential units and has helped recruit thousands of new DTLA residents.

Today, he is a consultant, commercial & residential real estate broker, professional fundraiser, gives specialty DTLA tours, and produces videos which can be seen at halbastian.com and on YouTube.

In addition to these endeavors, Hal does community outreach and fundraising for The Midnight Mission (TMM) in Skid Row, which serves almost a million meals a year to people experiencing homelessness and food insecurity, and shelters over 300 people a night.

Hal and his faithful dog, Lucky, live on Spring Street, two blocks south of City Hall.