A century-old orange grove in Tarzana appears to be on its way to becoming the site of luxury homes, a transformation that would mark the end of commercial citrus farming in the San Fernando Valley, where the crop was once a mainstay.

At 14 acres, Bothwell Ranch represents less than one-thousandth of what once was, before the orchards and ranches of the Valley gave way to vast tracts of housing and commercial buildings to serve residents. Citrus production amid the multimillion-dollar homes is far from viable, and the parcel of land is now owned by a developer who intends to fill most of it with houses.

Los Angeles city planning officials held a public hearing Wednesday to collect comments before deciding whether to give the owners the green light to build 21 two-story homes while preserving a third of the site on Oakdale Avenue as a publicly owned orange grove managed by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority for educational purposes.

City officials are still gathering information about the planned development, but Henry Chu, the city zoning administrator for the project, said Wednesday that he is inclined to approve it within a few weeks.

While hard to imagine today, Los Angeles was the top agricultural county in the nation for most of the first half of the 20th century, according to Rachel Surls, co-author of “From Cows to Concrete: The Rise and Fall of Farming in Los Angeles.” Citrus crops were as integral to that success as they were to the branding and selling of Southern California as a bucolic, desirable place to live.

“The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, different citrus marketers and organizations such as Sunkist oranges were very much a part of basically making Los Angeles look like this golden, almost tropical, agricultural paradise where people could come and get a whole new start,” Surls explained. “That positioning of Los Angeles as a place where citrus grew was really, really key to the growth of Los Angeles.”

With history in mind, City Councilman Bob Blumenfield announced in 2022 that after years of negotiations a deal had been reached between the site’s new owners, Borstein Enterprises, and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority to preserve a third of it.

“While I wish there was a way to save the entire Bothwell Ranch, with this partnership we can save a large amount of it to be run by one of the best land preservation organizations in the country,” Blumenfield said.

The Bothwell Ranch gets its name from Lindley Bothwell, who purchased the farmland in 1926 after earning a degree in agriculture from Oregon State University, Blumenfield said. At the time, the citrus orchard was about 6 years old and totaled 100 acres. The Bothwell family sold off pieces of the land over the years but maintained a farming operation for decades until Ann Bothwell died in 2016. The ranch survived even as other ranches were driven out by rising land value during the housing boom after World War II.

It is now likely to be replaced by a development called Oakdale Estates. The owners have said they intend for the houses to include environmentally sustainable features such as “cool” roofs that reduce heat reflection into the atmosphere and a new street with a system that captures and filters rainwater before reusing it to irrigate landscaping that will include some citrus trees.

Two rows of citrus trees are expected to line Oakdale Avenue on the west side of the site as a homage to the land’s past, according to plans for the development. Designs for the residences call for modern farmhouses and Spanish architecture, meant to embrace the heritage of the San Fernando Valley.

A critic of the project, Jeff Bornstein, said at Wednesday’s city meeting that the development should be reduced in scope to preserve more of the orchard.

“We have very little that marks our heritage of the past in the west San Fernando Valley,” he said. “We need to save a lot more of these” trees.

The citrus trees planted in the 1980s are past their prime fruit-bearing years and suffer from the effects of under-watering, a representative for the developer said.

When seen in aerial photographs, the ranch looks like a lush green anachronism — plucked from the agrarian past and neatly but nonsensically deposited into a suburban jewel box of red roofs and turquoise pools and tennis courts.

“We’re overrun,” as the late Bothwell matriarch told a reporter in 1998 with a sigh. “But you can’t stand in the middle of Ventura Boulevard and say, ‘Stop!’”

Times staff writer Julia Wick contributed to this report.

If you left the U.S. for a summer vacation, you may have encountered a strange and refreshing custom: not tipping. Or at least not tipping everyone in sight.

Americans have long been among the world’s most profligate tippers. “We tip more occupations than any other country, and we tend to tip larger amounts than other countries,” says Michael Lynn, a professor of consumer behavior at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration whose research focuses on tipping. “We’re kind of the tip-happiest country out there.”

Just wait. American tipping culture is poised to get even more intense. In a rare case of bipartisan agreement, presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both advocate exempting tips from federal income taxes. It’s a popular stance with many potential voters, notably in Nevada, a swing state whose many casino, hotel and restaurant workers rely heavily on tips.

The idea would be bad news for customers — and perhaps even for tipped workers themselves.

Consumers are already weary of the way tip expectations have expanded since the pandemic. As people curbed their restaurant dining to avoid COVID-19, they increased the size of the tips they left, whether for dining in, takeout or delivery. Meanwhile businesses gravitated toward machines for cashless, no-contact transactions.

Soon tip jars that once collected loose change at cash registers morphed into touch screens suggesting significantly larger tip amounts, even for small purchases. Restaurants without waiter service — and takeout coffee places — now come with pressure to tip.

A Pew Research Center survey last November found that 72% of U.S. adults believe tipping is expected at more places than five years ago. You have to wonder how often the other 28% get out of the house.

It’s all a bit much. In a February WalletHub survey, three out of four respondents said tipping has gotten out of control. Tipping isn’t just a financial burden. It creates psychological stress. Is a tip optional or expected? How much is enough? Am I a bad person if I say no?

Excluding tips from federal income tax might simplify employer paperwork and erase the difference between easily tracked credit card charges and cash gratuities, which often go unreported. The exemption could also allow employers to pay lower (taxed) wages, because workers would have the hope of keeping more (untaxed) tips.

All of those factors would encourage even more transactions to come with real or virtual tip jars. If your barista, tattoo artist and massage therapist get tips, why not the supermarket cashier, dental hygienist and plumber? Tipping in those situations might seem odd, even unseemly today, but tax-free income is hard to resist.

Vice President Harris has specified that the exemption would apply to “service and hospitality workers,” but they aren’t the only people who currently receive tips. It’s hard to imagine those limits surviving the political pressure to include at least all tipped workers below a given income threshold.

Either way, however, the proposal picks winners. To help all workers in low-paid jobs, presidential candidates might propose increasing the standard deduction or the earned income tax credit. That would be fairer. But the tip loophole isn’t about a general increase in take-home pay; it’s about winning votes in Nevada.

Like the tax credits that oil companies get for blending ethanol with gasoline, thereby subsidizing demand for Iowa corn, making tips tax free offers big benefits to a concentrated group while spreading the costs over the general public. Nobody’s likely to vote against a candidate because they dread proliferating tip jars, but workers who make a lot of tips might vote for them.

If either proposal came to pass, the revenue forgone by the Treasury would have to come from somewhere else. But that would be a “next year” problem, an unpleasant reality not destined to get much attention this fall or sway many votes in November.

That’s why we see two fiercely opposed candidates rushing to agree on this harebrained scheme. We can only hope that they cancel each other out and that whoever is elected drops the idea.

Virginia Postrel is a contributing editor for WorksinProgress.co and writes a newsletter at vpostrel.substack.com. Her most recent book is “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.”

A South Los Angeles woman is suing Starbucks for negligence, alleging she was scalded at a drive-through window in Lynwood.

Muriel Evans filed a complaint Wednesday with the Los Angeles County Superior Court in Compton. She alleges that a faulty coffee cup lid and the excessive heat from her beverage led to severe burns after a barista spilled coffee into her lap.

Evans is asking for general and special damages, including her medical, hospital and incidental expenses, and punitive damages to “set an example” of Starbucks. She alleges the corporation is indifferent “to the obviously dangerous mixture of excessively hot temperatures combined with defective lids.”

“Starbucks has shown a reckless disregard for the safety of its customers, continuing to serve scalding hot coffee in defective cups despite countless reports and warnings,” Evans’ attorney Nick Rowley said in a statement.

A Starbucks representative responded briefly: “We take pride in ensuring our beverages are crafted with care and delivered to customers safely. We take all claims seriously, but we will not be commenting on pending litigation.”

Evans pulled into the Starbucks drive-through on Aug. 25, 2022, and ordered a coffee, according to the lawsuit.

A Starbucks employee then “mishandled” the coffee and spilled it onto Evans’ lap, with the hot liquid rolling down her left leg, according to the lawsuit.

Evans said she suffered severe burns to her body along with nerve damage and disfigurement.

Evans’ legal team believes the coffee’s temperature was 190 degrees, just a little less than boiling.

Previous Starbucks guides have listed most hot beverages at between 150 and 170 degrees.

Water heated to 120 degrees takes five to 10 minutes to cause a third-degree burn; at 131 degrees, it’s 10 to 30 seconds; and at 140 degrees, it’s two to five seconds, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

As for the lids, there have been various media articles and threads and videos complaining about Starbucks’ lids and their ease in falling off, including on Reddit and TikTok.

Starbucks is facing similar lid lawsuits.

A San Fernando Valley teen filed a suit in June against the company, alleging she was burned by hot tea. The teen’s drink was double-cupped, but the lid popped off, the lawsuit alleges.

“Muriel Evans suffered severe burns because Starbucks prioritized cost-cutting over basic customer safety,” Rowley said. “We intend to hold Starbucks fully accountable for their blatant disregard and gross negligence.”