Dozens and dozens of West Hollywood residents seeking answers about the loss of parking on Gardner, Willoughby and Vista avenues arrived to find only pizza, posterboards and a few City Hall staffers at an open house Tuesday evening at Plummer Park.
Not one City Councilmember was in attendance, nor was City Manager David Wilson.
The open house was held in response to the lack of outreach regarding the road project, which aims to install protected bike lanes at the cost of street parking spots, which are few and far between on this side of town. As recently as Monday night, City Hall admitted its efforts in informing the neighborhood of the impending upheaval had been insufficient at best.
Community Development Director Nick Maricich and Long Range Planning Associate Planner Paige Portwood attempted to provide information but could not offer residents the simple solutions many were hoping for.
In the absence of direction from the city, former City Councilmembers John Duran and Steve Martin initiated an impromptu group discussion led by neighborhood advocates Cathy Blaivas and Stephanie Harker.
“We’re mad as hell!” shouted Duran to applause.
“As much as this is nice information, we feel like we’ve been gaslighted because we didn’t get the opportunity to hear each other interact,” said Martin, who is head of the East Side Neighborhood Watch, which requested the open house. “We invite staff at any time to come to Gardner and meet with us, and we will walk with you hand in hand as friends and show you. Yes, we’re getting rid of 22 angle parking spaces and replacing them with 17 parking spaces, but we’re also going to be losing about 30 tandem parking spaces.”
“We created the angled parking back in the early 2000s because there wasn’t enough parking on Gardener. Now, we’ve got a different situation, and we understand the need. It’s not like we’re oblivious, but there are people who are not going to be able to stay in the neighborhood because they have to have a place to park.”
“There’s a lot of people who’ve changed, moved in and out, especially off of Gardner, all around the neighborhood,” said Harker, who along with Blaivas led a successful effort to fend off redevelopment of Plummer Park. “You know, people left the town, so there’s a whole new group of people who are uninformed about what’s actually going on.”
Last month Harker and Blavais walked up and down Gardner Avenue asking strangers, “‘Do you live here? Do you know about this?'” and discovered almost no one had any knowledge of the proejct.
“This is the discussion that we need to have that hasn’t happened,” Harker said. “Safety for cyclists is important, but people using their cars to get to their jobs, to go to doctor’s offices, to drop the kids off at school, need a car. And this is in a residential area. I can understand wanting to try and figure out how to do them down Santa Monica Boulevard — great, but to take away the parking with no mitigation for it, there’s no place else to park.”
Harker referenced a postcard mailed to residents announcing the open house which failed to highlight the controversial part of the plan: the loss of parking spots. She is pushing for Council to leave Gardner Avenue alone from Santa Monica Boulevard to Fountain Avenue and to paint sharrows on the road.
While some in the crowd were supportive of the bike lanes, the majority felt blindsided by the plans and wanted to be given more input.
“Community comment was deliberately dismissed and those that went along with it should resign,” resident Noel Busby wrote to WEHOonline. “Not one councilmember showed up to this meeting. Shameful. WeHo’s biggest problem is City Council not addressing the obvious and now they think gaslighting the public is acceptable.”
Martin struck a diplomatic tone as the huddle wound to a close.
“We really don’t want people to be demonized, and we really want to be able to engage each other because there’s always going to be something that we can agree on, and we are neighbors, and we can try to find consensus,” Martin said. “We may not make everybody happy, but at least we have to be in the conversation. I think the problem is that most of us feel we weren’t part of the conversation.”
Gardner is wide af and has very slow traffic. A protected bike lane is NOT needed.
I nominate Cathy Blavis & Stephanie Harker for WeHo City Council !!
I think the city should fund one of its famous gazillion dollar feasibility studies to determine how to wall off the city and operate as a bubble of naive utopia as roughly 1200 acres in the middle of a major metropolis. The current thinking is the result of forces that have their heads stuck up their entrails and have zero concept of the real world. Happy to have John Duran’s ferocious and authentically passionate bark in the game. Steve Martin, Cathy Blaivas and Stephanie Harker are dedicated, caring, and celebrated long-time residents whose voices of reason, intellect, and caring are… Read more »
If this project was on the other side of town, the Council members would have attended the Open House. I’m sure of it. They also would NOT have approved of this imbecilic idea. Parking in this area is a premium as it is. Taking away any spots is ridiculous. Especially for the very, very few cyclists who will use the bike lane (and ignore the stop sign).
Was the West Hollywood Bicycle and Scooter Coalition guy there?
yep
Instead of removing parking for dedicated bike lanes, why not just do what Beverly Hills does?
Stick those signs in the middle of the road “This is a Slows Street, Road Closed. Local Traffic Only”
Get the Apps (Waze, Google, Apple) updated so they don’t direct traffic down them.
Now traffic is reduced to make it safer for the 2 cyclists in town, parking is preserved, everyone is happy.
The fact that you think there are only 2 bicyclsts in West Hollywood shows how of out of touch with reality you are.
You’re right, there’s 4.
Take your life in your hands and bicycle – even with protected bike lanes. It just doesn’t work – even in Beverly Hills.
Maybe there’s 3.
if it hadn’t been were John Duran, Steve Martin, Stephanie Harker and Cathy Blavis, that meeting would’ve been a complete waste of time! The city manager did not bother to attend nor did any city council members. They had some staffers there with some poster boards, and that was about it. The staffers wanted to talk to people one on one,..while the residents just, really wanted to be heard by everybody. So led by John Duran, these four people took over! And I’m so glad they did! They also took everyone’s email address so that we can all be kept… Read more »
I looked at the neighborhood in question on Google Maps and find the proposed streets where the project is to be done goes through residential streets.The streets are somewhat narrow,so I understand why the informed residents are not happy.
Bike lanes are for heavily traffic streets,not residential streets.Unless there is a plan to widen those residential streets,those streets should be left alone.
Big streets, little streets…There is no large demand for bike lanes. Unless it is what the public is demanding…it shouldn’t be pushed upon residents.
But opponents say bikes don’t belong on high speed throughfares and are safer on low speed residential streets. So what is it?
Having sufficient parking for residents is infinitely more important than bike lanes for the few people who will use them.
Really bad idea from our incompetent council members. Are they trying to hurt residents? If so, well done!!
Cars destroy the environment while biking promotes sustainability and public health. Shame people want West Hollywood to be like an Texas suburb.
Walking promotes public health. In a city that’s three miles at it’s widest we should concentrate on making it safe for people who walk.
Hahaha. So if I live in West Hollywood, but work in downtown or Culver City, I should be riding my bike to work? I sure hope you don’t have a car, since you don’t want others to have them .
City Manager Wilson is to blame for encouraging dishonesty. First the city did not inform residents of the loss of parking spaces, the city apologized and sent a general letter informing residents of an upcoming meeting but failed to explain the reason for the meeting (purposely not mentioned anything about the loss of parking spaces), only for Wilson to be upset when questioned why the notices were not clear. City Manager Wilson has proven over and over how incompetent he is and how disastrous his decisions have been.