With Christmas 2024 in the bag, WEHOonline shares a wish list for the coming year.
The French Market
We would love to see the French Market’s long-awaited retour à la vie actually start happening. The Crescent Heights-Laurel-Fairfax stretch on Santa Monica Blvd. is one of the most blighted sections of the city, and the neighborhood needs a shiny new shopping development to elevate it into something like a mini-Beverly Grove.
Bike locks
The bike giveaway was a great but overambitious idea — the city later realized they bit off more than they could chew. So how about a bike lock giveaway? In reality it’s the constant threat of theft — not lack of bike lanes — that keeps ridership in WeHo so low. (I’ve had two bikes stolen in under two years) For less than $1,000, City Hall could give out at least 100 locks.
Minor Medical Care
The city contracts special agencies to provide on-call, on-location medical care and checkups to homeless people living in WeHo. Why can’t they do something similar for uninsured or underinsured residents who aren’t living on the streets, so they don’t have to depend on the price gougers at Urgent Care, who charge $400 to squirt hydrogen peroxide in your ear to remove earwax.
Fountain Ave streets and sidewalks
While we aren’t really feeling the bike lanes the city has planned on Fountain Avenue, we’ve been calling out the city’s shittiest sidewalks since 2022. We literally can’t wait to walk them. And sorry, Bette Davis: Even more urgent is the need to reduce rampant speeding on the street, which Councilmember John Erickson correctly labeled a “death trap.” Bring on the speed bumps and four way stops.
Flashing pedestrian lights
How many near-death experiences have you had on WeHo’s fancy illuminated crosswalks, which force pedestrians to walk directly into oblivious oncoming traffic? Most drivers don’t even notice the twinkling yellow lights embedded in high-traffic crossings along Santa Monica, Fairfax, Fountain, Melrose and San Vicente, and the rest just ignore them. Go back to classic red light crossings if you can’t do better.
Cheap big box stores
Not all of us will be able to shop at Erewhon (and many won’t want to). With prices at Gelson’s and Pavilions climbing ever higher and the extinction of local 99 Cents or Less stores underway, WeHo desperately lacks affordable grocery stores. City Hall should be actively courting Costco, Walmart Express and other popular big box retailers to fill this massive gap and force WeHo’s high-end markets to price more competitively. And how about an IKEA for the newly populist Pacific Design Center to get new customers in the doors of our red, blue and green ivory towers. Behold the (spending) power of the people!
Costco is way too big for us. If you shop at Costco you most likely have a car to load everything in. If you have a car, you can make a weekend trip to Burbank or Culver to fill up on toilet paper.
I wish the City would terminate the contract with the LA County Sheriff Department and open bidding to third party/private criminal law enforcement vendors and third party/private civil law enforcement vendors. The “police services vendor” and “sheriff department vendor” would be awarded, say an 8- year contract to provide services subject to no conflict of interest via “married to the mob” I mean city elected officials and department heads . Also, vendors’ employees cannot live in West Hollywood. Nothing worse than a hybrid constituent/officer citizen. Maybe this could be the start of cleaning up the extension of the Biden Crime… Read more »
Oh please law enforcement expert, tell me more about these “police service vendors.”
I am not a law enforcement expert. I am a victim of the Sheriff Department’s organized crime and a firsthand witness to their brutality and theft. That makes me qualified to write this. Read my comment again. You’ll see you are wrong. Are you a city or sheriff department employee? Nobody sans these affiliations has anything good to say about this criminal enterprise. By the saw, Washingyon DC has one of these vendors: Metro Special Police. These are more but I figure you must know how to use “Google”. Girl, give it up. The city and the sheriff are going… Read more »
Who wants a Walmart? Want to make Weho more ghetto?!? What’s wrong with you?
I can get things like Tiptree jam for MUCH less than what they sell it for anywhere in WeHo. Walmart isn’t “ghetto” (horrible term to use btw), it’s for smart people who want quality products at lower prices.
Its bad enough with Target lately..oh lets not forget they already did away with self checkouts. Makes me think Pavilions will next HOWEVER I’ve also noticed LESS cashiers at Pavilions due to the upcoming min wage increase so maybe they’ll keep their self checkouts in place.
This may be the best chance I get to ask if CVS can be required to clean their entrance. The sidewalk and stairs are filthy and that tree needs to be trimmed so we don’t have to duck under it to get to the stairs.
That whole corner is a dump.
just wait till the homeless facility I mean transition housing opens..that corner should all just be fenced in. Bets on how long Weho Bistro stays?
I wish Vasaline Alley was declared a historic local landmark and that it was as awesomely fun as it was back in the day. Make Vasaline Alley great again in 2025!
Costco?!! Have you been to a Costco? The store footprint is minimum 160,000 sq. feet. That’s like two football fields. And the traffic that Costco creates is not something the small streets of WeHo could handle. And where are you going to store those 64 rolls of toilet paper, 32 oz of ketchup, and 104 Tide pods? Go to Culver City if you want to shop a Costco.
I don’t know that the bike program was “overambitious.” My understanding was that D’Amico lined up 50 free schwinn bikes and they went like hotcakes. I think the reporting stuff afterwards was a little silly but glad he used his connections to benefit the residents of weho.
Would love to see the city implement an actual subsidy program for bike purchases, similar to the CARB program that the state is slowly implementing.
In the late 1990s we had a chance to get a Costco at the Gateway project at La Brea and Santa Monica Blvd. but unfortunately the city didn’t allow it.
Our local WeHo Target offers a large grocery section.
None of these lower priced stores like Walmart, etc are going to open in WeHo. They cannot afford to operate with the high labor costs and high costs of doing business. There is a reason why groceries, food, drinks, etc., are so expensive and it’s because WeHo will have the highest minimum wage in California and one of the highest in the entire country. It’s almost $3 an hour higher than the California minimum wage. This is great for some workers but it also increases the price of everything we buy or consume.
Great list, Brandon. I’m glad you brought up the whole blinking light/crosswalk debacle. Several years ago, there were a series of pedestrian injuries and there was a lobby to make crosswalks safer. While they did indeed put in blinking red lights between La Cienega and Robertson, they have neglected doing that for the other crosswalks, including those on Fountain. The City Council has always neglected this issue, with deadly consequences and there is zero excuse for it. Drivers respond to red lights. Period. Anything else is Russian Roulette for pedestrians.
A Costco in West Hollywood would be so wonderful for so many people! I don’t think it’ll happen, and I don’t have many fingers, but I’ve got them crossed anyway!
It could happen. Just need huge delivery robots and scooters with trailers careening down the sidewalk with all that Costco stuff.
Oh, look another cowardly anonymous sarcastic commentator who thinks he’s being clever…yawn!
Not sarcastic at all. You misinterpreted.