West Hollywood City Councilmembers and public commenters were enthusiastic about extending the popular Rainbow District lighting scheme — strings of multicolored lanterns criss-crossing above traffic — onto stretches of Santa Monica Blvd. on the city’s Eastside.
Item 5e on the agenda passed unanimously at Monday night’s meeting.
The item directs city staff members to begin requesting design proposals for the project, which they estimate will cost around $423,000 to cover stretches of the road from N. Vista Street to N. Poinsettia Place and from Formosa Avenue to La Brea Avenue.
“I want to thank Councilmember (John) Erickson for asking me to co-sponsor,” said Councilmember Lauren Meister. “I think it’ll be a great way to market the Eastside. It’s a long time coming.”
She suggested staff members reach out to the Gateway Project about a partnership, in hopes that it would allow more of east Santa Monica Blvd. to be illuminated with globes.
WeHo resident Stephanie Harker called in to express her excitement about the project.
“We’re just thrilled,” she said “Let there be light on the Eastside. Let there be beautiful colored lights on the Eastside. We’re really looking forward to it. I think it’ll improve the whole morale of this end of the city.”
What a great first impression this would be for our city on both sides! Bravo!
Here’s the latest example of people complaining about everything. Put up the pretty lights on the east side! Yes!
If you want to add lights, extend the current lights to La Cienega and Doheny. The lights work where they are, because this is the area of town with bars, clubs, restaurants, tourists, hotels, etc.
Compare the businesses and their hours in the proposed zone to the businesses in the zone currently with the lanterns.
Adding lights to the eastside won’t add foot traffic unless they have the businesses the west side has. (insert eye roll)
If the city is going to do this light globe project,there should be a stipulation that the lights be on for certain hours of the night.The globes could be on from sunset to 1 AM.This will reduce the light pollution overall on the street and save electricity.
Perhaps they could be on all night on the weekends,an exception I could go with.They also need to be near a large commercial district such as the Target complex where they could be appreciated by the shoppers there.
So the glow of neon lights from the Dylan and the bulbs on the street and next is the billboards.
With so many drug addicts and mentally ill wandering the streets, we’re wasting city resources on string lights over the road. Total and utter waste.
Like the idea very well, but how is the maintenance handled
I like the idea of the programmable string lights but in reality they don’t manage the lights on the west side. They are always broken. Strands are out for months at a time. They are never all working at the same time. Who is in charge or programming and maintenance? Does anyone else notice?