In its unstoppable quest to become the most officey city in all the world, El Segundo is now turning its attentions to the "aging Smoky Hollow industrial district," which it hopes to reinvent as "a fashionable enclave of offbeat office buildings and workshops." The area gets its name from literal smoke that used to pool there on its way out of the Standard Oil Company's refinery, now run by Chevron (yeah, it's still there, although "the area is no longer smoky"). Last week, the city council voted to start work on zoning upgrades that'll allow for a wider range of uses in the area, which has narrow streets and lots of red brick and concrete (plus a few Quonset huts!). [LAT]
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