Rendering of Colorado Boulevard
Eagle Rock -- The Beautiful Boulevard proposal, as lovely as it may sound, is causing a rift among some Eagle Rock residents and business owners.
A neighborhood group composed of volunteers from the area created the plan to preserve the small town character of the community in light of Metro’s Bus Rapid Transit project, spanning 18 miles from North Hollywood to Pasadena — and going right through Eagle Rock.
According to Michael Sweeney, an architect who volunteered his professional skills to the development of the proposal, the goal of the Eagle Rock volunteers was to refine the design and conceptual approach of Metro’s project. They analyzed what Metro had proposed, then modified it in a way that would preserve the feel of the town while also prioritizing safety along the boulevard.
The plan focuses on the stretch of Colorado Boulevard that runs from Glendale to the 134 Freeway entrance in eastern Eagle Rock. The proposal — which is supported by the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council along with hundreds of residents and small businesses — would create a more walkable Colorado Boulevard by adding raised crosswalks at residential side streets while providing physical barriers for bike lanes in several areas.
Supporters say it is a way to maintain the charm of Eagle Rock while allowing Metro to move forward with its proposed bus routes, a project that would reduce traffic and pollution in the area.
“Maintaining and improving the planted medians, plus adding even more, is one huge benefit to the cosmetic aspect of the boulevard as well as to the environmental health of the area,” said neighborhood resident Michael Blanchard.
Some in Eagle Rock are skeptical about Beautiful Boulevard plans
The proposal aims to add native plants and trees to the medians to create a more pleasant atmosphere for pedestrians and shoppers. However, some critics are skeptical as to how this will affect local businesses along the boulevard.
“The trees that are illustrated in the photos may be great for shade, but they also block signage so people from the road will not be able to see what shops are where from the street level,” said resident and business owner Cherryl Weaver.
The proposal is centered around dividing the boulevard into three zones, each with a different plan to maintain medians, sidewalks, and bike lanes on the street. In some instances, this includes reallocating one car lane in each direction as a dedicated bus lane.
Before & After: Beautiful Boulevard Eagle Rock
A before and after look at Colorado Boulevard under a proposal by Beautiful Boulevard
A recent photo of Colorado Boulevard looking east near Live Oak Avenue.
A rendering from Beautiful Boulevard shows a narrow landscaped median proposed for the same section of Colorado Boulevard.
“Squeezing that much traffic into one lane will create gridlock and frustrate neighbors who use the road to drop kids off at school, as well as those that go shopping along Colorado Boulevard,” added Weaver.
Slowing traffic down on Colorado is a key component of the proposal. Colorado Boulevard has historically been used as a convenient way to bypass gridlock on the 134, creating safety concerns.
“My children both cross Colorado Boulevard when they go to school,” Blanchard said. “This plan will increase the number of crosswalks and reduce the number of car lanes, both of which I believe will enhance the safety of residents along the boulevard.”
Support for a safer and more beautiful Colorado Boulevard
David Greene, a former Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council president, agrees: “In the long-term, it’s a huge win, since it will remake Colorado into the beautiful neighborhood-serving main street it was intended to be versus the ersatz freeway it is today.”
While Metro almost certainly plans to move forward with its rapid transit project through Eagle Rock in some shape or form, there are residents who would like to see money invested in the community in other ways.
“Please don’t try to sell a walkable boulevard to us,” said resident Suzanne Spear. “We’ve already given way to unused bicycle lanes. Take care of the homeless; That would beautify the neighborhood.”
Longtime resident Daren Blankenship shares a similar sentiment. “We need to figure out how to build this community and clean it up with the money this will cost the taxpayers,” he said.
The proposal has gained steam recently with several notable people joining its long list of supporters. Supervisor Hilda Solis, who is on the Metro Board of Directors, has put her weight behind the plan. Jackie Goldberg from Board District 5 has also publicly announced her support.
For now, Beautiful Boulevard proponents are asking Eagle Rock residents to sign the petition to have the Metro Board of Directors consider their idea.
Metro’s proposed project is funded by Measure M and Senate Bill 1, making it highly likely that the plan will be completed by 2024. Whether it will include the Beautiful Boulevard proposal is still up in the air.
UT Community News, produced by Cal State L.A. journalism students, covers public issues on the Eastside and South L.A.
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(7) comments
The landscaping is beautiful it will give you something nice to look at while your going 5 mph down the street during rush hour. Enjoy paying for it with your gas taxes and DMV fees because the state always knows where to get money from, there favorite cash cows the car driver. they certainly gst nothing from the bicyclists who whine and cry to get more of our car lanes turned into bike lanes, Oh and don't are to get too close to one of there precious bikes or prepare to get a ticket for being closer than 3 feet from them... ding another dollar for the anti car crusade.
This plan is just another pretend effort geared primarlity to get people out of their cars, supposedly to fight global warming.
But the planners wear blinders, can "think" nothing but the long obsolete party line. The impact of cars on global warming is already being addressed fully by the conversion to non-polluting (hydrogen and electric) cars. Cars will no longer be a source of carbon pollution, and we are already in the midst of that transition.
These people are following an obsolete plan from the 1990s before electeic cars, and just cannot think! As such, they are only lowering living standards of all but the rich -- get the lesser income people out of the way and off the streets, the rich are coming through.
Alternately, they are using the idea of global warming as a false smoke screen to justify drastic overdelopment, dense development, which the pandemic has shown to be a danger unto itself. A lower lifestyle of no car in trade for drastic overdevelopment.
The leaders of this are either blind, or they are manipulative. Either way, they are very wrong and misguided.
Yes! Did this go through PLUM by chance? Is it possible that this is residual Jose Huizar planning? he WAS responsible for parts of the rock...
it warrants further investigation.
No, this isn't Huizar, at least not alone. This has been made city policy across the board by the elected politicians (all of them getting huge amounts o money from developers, most especially Mayor Garcetti), and Metro policy (Garcetti dominates the Metro board).
Garceti has pushed this plan since early in his first term on the City Council, piecemeal, never letting the public know what he was doing of the overall plan. He has been a leader of elminating car lanes from way back, an obsolete idea that he continues to push, because he can't think, he can only regurgitate other people's ideas and plans even if they are obsolete.
As for the overdelopment, Garcetti is the one who pushed through the small lot subdivision ordinance that is running a lot of tenants in rent controlled apartments out of their homes, many of them landing on the street homeless for inability to pay drastically overpriced rents in a new place. Coalition for Economic Survival has been keeping a tally of all the rent controlled units lost to this plan and approach, and it comes to nearly 30,000 so far -- but they have not included the loss in morerecent years of lots of rent controlled apartment (and everyone in them evicted) to conversion to Tenant in Common units for sale. The city is eliminating rent control but eliminating all the units covered by the Rent Stabilization ordinance. And the ranks of the homeless just keep soaring.
I was hoping the improved version would have leveled that burn- orange monstrosity of a building on the north side of the street...
I know! That building is a huge eyesore. I cringe every time I drive pass it.
That is just a fake artists rendering to make everything look like Heaven. Perfect colors and lighting, everything cleaner than clean and all in perfect condition, even the trees and plants looking far better than real. If they took a real buiding out, it would only be even more fake.
What does or does not happen to that building is not done under this level of planning.
In fact, that building is small compared to the dense overdevelopment the city is orchestrating everywhere, and absolutely will be coming to Colorado Blvd. too. Think of that orange building being 6-8 stories, not what it is now. And lots of buidlings that height along the road over time. It is not going to be zoned for no more than two stories.
Meanwhile, huge numbers of renters in rent cotrolled housing will continue to be evicted and unable to afford the astronomical rents out there, so land more and more of them on the street with the homeless. And the homeless ranks will only continue to soar. Entire rent controlled apartment buildings are being evicted and torn down to build ever bigger. And the city not only has done nothing about it, it has not only encouraged it, it has bent over backward to make sure that gets done, and then done everything possible to make the already harsh life of the homeless so unbearable that hopefully they will just go somewhere else. They clearly have done as absolutely little as possible for the homeless, yet stave off a court or as being recalcitrant. The federal judge has now made it clear he is not going to stand for more of that, and is weighing the next step, possibly fine the city and county, possibly have matters of the homeless put under other authority.
Yet, the city just continues with these kind of development policies that are a big part of the cause of the problem, the bike and bus-only lanes to lie about to justifiy the massive number of evictions of tenants to make way for housing for the rich -- because everyone knows thet peoole just want to get rid of their cars, just look at the throngs and throngs of them using the bike lanes everywhere. Everything being built is for the rich only.
That overdevelopment again is being done supposedly so no one will want to drive a car, they will all live close to where they work, ride bikes and buses and trolley cars. Life will be a Norman Rockwell one (just ask Garcetti, he loves to describe Norman Rockwell scenarios), but with massive development in proximity around the big business districts and everywhere else, which under the plan, can become even bigger, because there is small, crammed but extremely high priced housing stuffed in everywhere nearby. And no one wants a car, everyone obviously wants to ride a bicycle or the bus -- if you would only get rid of car lanes.
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