Blackburn + Sweetzer Has Moved

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Last Wednesday, the West 3rd Street Business Association convened at the NCJW with Maya Zutler from Councilman Jack Weiss‘ office, Mott Smith of strategic planning, real estate development firm Civic Enterprise Associates (which focuses on emerging Southern California neighborhoods), Scott Baker of landscape architecture firm Melendrez, and anyone else who wanted to attend to learn more about the West 3rd Street beautification project, an endeavor aiming to create a lively walking district, maintain quality of life for residents, and deal with the crowded and sometimes confusing street parking.

All in all, it ended up to be about 20 of us in the room, I thought a surprisingly small number, left to eat as many delicious Kiss My Bundts as possible at the end of the night.

The full report, Mott Smith and Scott Baker’s presentations, the visuals and more this way…

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Mott Smith and Scott Baker both gave presentations with Smith giving a rundown of the project.

Regarding parking, Civic Enterprise studied the area and found that, in fact, West 3rd Street public parking is oversubscribed—83% full on weekdays and 90%-plus full on weekends. (This is a surprise, apparently, because often there’s a perception of oversubscripton that’s not quite as severe as people think.)

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They also found that, as few businesses have enough on-site parking, they lease parking from others, which results in this crazy parking schedule for valets shown above. Not surprisingly, valets don’t always park where they’re supposed to, and some disable parking meters.

After doing a parking inventory, Civic Enterprise found that there is some parking in the alleys that is not being properly allocated.

They also found the obvious: there are no benches, not many trees, there are lights for cars, but no lights for pedestrians.

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You’ll remember that there was a test run for a universal valet service over the holidays. What they gleaned: 90% of businesses wanted to continue it; 2/3 of customers said if it was $3 or less they’d use it all the time; and it reduced some traffic in the streets and neighborhood off West 3rd Street.

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Scott Baker of Melendrez then jumped in to discuss trees, lighting and street furniture. He said they looked to areas like 3rd Street Promenade, Birch Street in Brea, Green Street in Pasadena, Culver Boulevard in Culver City, State Street in Santa Barbara and others as examples of bike-friendly, pedestrian-friendly communities.

Right now, he described the tree situation on West 3rd as like “missing teeth,” with street lights every 120 feet (every 30 feet and at a lower level, he said would be optimum). They are looking to a low-water-use Palos Verde tree to create a canopy on the street, with small, lime green leaves, which you can see through, as not to block the business signage.

Smith said that the problematic trees, which pull up the sidewalk, in front of the Jewish School on West 3rd would probably be switched out.

Maya Zutler from Weiss’ office said that Villaraigosa’s Million Trees LA project will donate the trees, and they will do some community planting to save money. A motion has been put forth to plant the trees, which could be planted in 6-12 months.

There has also been a RFP (Request for Proposal) for the valet program, which Smith said would likely be a combination of the existing valet companies in the area.

Clockwise from top left: parking inventory; trees now shown at top of image, projected trees shown at bottom of image; Palos Verde trees and valet umbrellas; ideas for lighting, trashcans, bus shelters, benches, etc; click to expand

They also presented possible umbrellas to mark the valet stations and clean, modern street furniture, lighting, bus shelters, bicycle racks, benches and trashcans (which can have a separate receptacle for recycling).

What also came from the meeting is the thought that there would be some sort of maintenance commitment from the property owners, possibly could establish a BID—i.e., someone’s gotta pay to maintain the trashcans, the trees, etc.

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And what will this all cost? $1 1/2-$2 million. And where’s it going to come from? I couldn’t really add up all the numbers. There’s $75,000 coming from Weiss’ discretionary fund; there’s the donation of trees; there’s the $350,000 from the Wetherly Project (which, just to note, the $350,000 “will go to a city fund within CD5’s purview for the express use along Third Street for improvements, streetscape and the Community Valet program,” per Mindy Lake of the West 3rd Street Biz Assn); and, apparently, $100,000 from the Caruso 8500 Burton Way project (heard it was mentioned if you listen to the May 11 Planning Commission Meeting online). Also, it was said that the Beverly Connection will likely help “seed the program,” which I think meant specifically the valet.

Hopefully, I didn’t miss anything crucial here! Oh, and, just in case people were wondering about the horrible state of the alley behind West 3rd Street, that falls “out of the scope” of this project, so no luck there.

» Neighborhoods—West 3rd Street Business Association Community Meeting Tonight