In a city of pop-up restaurants and stores, the Sunset Triangle Plaza may set the new standard.
With the help of federal and city agencies, the project has reclaimed a stretch of Griffith Park Boulevard in Silver Lake for pedestrians and cyclists.
The stretch between Maltman Avenue and Edgecliffe Drive is now closed to traffic.
It will be dressed with green paint and polka dots, bike racks and planters for the next year.
The so-called "Polka Dot Plaza" had its formal opening Sunday.
LA City Council president Eric Garcetti; Bill Roschen, chair of the LA City Planning Commission; Jaime de la Vega, LADOT General Manager; and Dr. Paul Simon of the LA County Department of Public Health.
Also attending were Silver Lake Improvement Association President Genelle Le Vin, Silver Lake Neighborhood Council members and representatives from Streets for People.
It was a morning full of celebration and focus on the plaza's unique status as the first greening of a public roadway in LA.
“By reclaiming small, unused and underutilized spaces and transforming them into welcoming public places that benefit business owners, residents, pedestrians and bikers, this project shows that ‘place’ is very important to the health of a community,” said Dr. Simon, of the Public Health Department.
Speakers also emphasized the collaboration involved and the role community groups like the Silver Lake Improvement Association and local merchants were playing.
But not everyone on the plaza Sunday was pleased. Silver Lake resident Cliff Lecuyer repeatedly booed from the sidelines in what became kind of call-and-response with those at the podium.
Crowd members broke in after a while answering Lecuyer's boos with their own "Yeahs."
Councilmember Garcetti responded indirectly to heckling at one point, asking everyone to settle down.
He also ended his remarks with a reminder that the project is temporary and its impact on the neighborhood will be periodically revisited.
That didn't seem to soothe Lecuyer, who told Echo Park Patch afterwards, "There's no more free parking in this neighborhood because of the delight. It's aesthetically hideous."
Lucuyer also expressed concern that Silver Lake Farmer's Market vendors were not consulted. The Sunset Junction Alliance still manages the twice-weekly market there,
Others have commented on the additional traffic the closing of Griffith Park Boulevard has sent up Maltman Avenue.
But for the most part, community reaction has been positive.
Read some of that here:
Kudos to LeCuyer for speaking out! He definitely had a lot of support from the real community at the ceremony; the only people in favor in attendance seemed to be those who worked on it.
Frankly, all it is is an effort to thwart traffic, as if it will just disappear. No, the cars will not disappear, they will have to find a route around and might jam up on some other street. This was a smooth transition to Griffith Park Boulevard from those Westbound of Sunset. Now, it requires multiple stops and turns to get onto Griffith Park. All that is going to do is make more pollution and fumes from the stopping and going. There is a small but vocal and aggressive group that has coalesced in Silver Lake that wants to do anything and everything possible to thwart traffic. Gee, traffic is already jammed, we need to make it flow, but try to jam it up more. This group might be well intentioned, but it is wrong and it is living inn Fantasyland. People are not all going to drop their cars and start riding bikes! That is ridiculous. And meanwhile, all we have done is give free land to the business there -- like you say, Anthea, to give them a free shopping mall at taxpayer expense. No one is going out and using that area. Not since it was closed. I walk by daily,and have never seen more than two people there ever since it was closed. Yesterday, Monday, there were three, two of them sleeping on the grass -- I don't know if they were homeless or not. But even they were not using the now-closed street, were eon the grass.
Your proposals amount to this: Turn residents into Urban Serfs while transferring billions of tax dollars to the 1%