Why is the Mayor afraid to debate Pico/Olympic?

Local business owners and residents from the Mid-City neighborhoods of Wilshire Vista, Picfair Village, South Carthay and Carthay Square gathered at CJ’s Café on Pico Boulevard to establish a united campaign against Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s three-phase “Olympic-West Pico-East” Initiative. “The mayor claims that he wants Los Angeles to be a green city of walkable ‘urban villages,’ so we chose this name to draw attention to the fact that the neighborhoods threatened by this plan are already walkable urban villages.” says Ashley Thompson, a Wilshire Vista resident and business owner. “Our neighborhood is also one of the most ethnically and economically diverse in the whole city. We are a model community in every sense, yet the mayor’s plan treats us like we’re nothing but an inconvenient speed hump for commuters.”

The first phase of the “Olympic-West Pico-East” Initiative will eliminate all metered parking along Pico and Olympic between the hours of 7-10 a.m. and 3-7 p.m. Small businesses owners along Pico’s burgeoning commercial corridor are adamant that their businesses will not survive.

“This is a historic area, so we don’t have dedicated parking lots like newer shopping developments,” said John Wilson, owner of the Home Grown Store. “By taking away the few parking spaces we do have, this plan will discourage people from visiting our businesses. We’re all small, mom-and-pop shops here, and frankly we can’t afford to loose a single customer.”

Hugo Arce, of the Peterson Arce Design Group, says the metered parking is also essential to preserving the neighborhood’s pedestrian-friendly environment. “Who wants to window shop or sit down at a sidewalk café with a freeway a few feet away?” Arce asks. “For several years, we’ve been working to revitalize a neglected part of Pico, and now that the area is really taking off, the mayor wants to undo all of it in one fell swoop,” he says.

For neighborhood residents, the loss of businesses will mean having to drive more. “Right now, this is one of the few truly walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods in L.A., ” says Jela Ellefson. “My husband and I moved here from Santa Monica specifically because we didn’t want to get a second car. Here, almost everything we need is within walking distance, including our daughter’s daycare, great restaurants and shops, which will all suffer if this plan goes forward.”

Ellefson, a graduate student in urban planning with a focus on transportation at USC, also noted that by encouraging more people to drive, the Olympic-West Pico-East Initiative goes against the city’s General Plan Framework, as well as the basic principles of sustainable urban planning. “Neighborhoods like this are not the cause of L.A.’s gridlock, we are the solution,” she says.

Many participants at the gathering expressed their outrage at the mayor’s attempt to circumvent public debate about the proposal. Others questioned the legality of implementing the Olympic-West Pico-East Initiative without an environmental impact report.

“He announces the plan the Monday after Thanksgiving and wants to start it in January? This makes a mockery of public process, and it should be a scandal,” said Daniel Woodford, a neighborhood resident and attorney. “The timeline is clearly designed to avoid public input, which begs the question – if the mayor really thinks this is such a great idea, why is he afraid to debate it?”

Woodford questions the mayor’s true motives. “We all know this won’t solve the city’s traffic problems. The only way this plan makes any sense is if it’s a scheme to create blight,” he says.

The Pico-Olympic Village People is a coalition of residents and local businesses dedicated, they say, to preserving the vitality, walkability and long-term sustainability of the community, a model urban village. (Alaine Azcona is spokesperson for the coalition, Pico-Olympic Village People. She can be reached at alaine@groundswellplanning.com.This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ) _