Our Old Hollywood:

Abatements of tenant/landlord problems, /peace/criminal suppressions, the 18th St. Gang injunction, Street Video Cameras, etc.

Its perceived mode of operation, i.e.

• an attraction of great numbers to the premises, 
• the selection of a few to enter,
• the profitable ‘entertainment’ of the uncouth masses in adjacent parking lots  by pushcart vendors operating out of the licensed premises, noisily and at late hours, and liquor’d up  from nearby off-sale licensees;
• the criminal bedlam of attracting and serving such consequent, 
• the consequences to neighboring residents, unimaginable to typical city residents, of traffic congestion, 
• the horrific consequences by crazed & drunken devotees  to their quiet admonishments adds to street blockings, and disturbances has brought the community together in outrage.

Our bottom line problems have arisen from:

• Historic zoning entitlements and the abuses of such now as not contemplated long ago.
• Massively irresponsible State licensings of liquor purveyors beginning in l965.

Street Video Cameras:

In this vortex of public behaviour,  we will soon see the deployment of  16 video cameras to observe our streets in that vicinity bounded by Selma Ave & Yucca St and La Brea Ave & Vine St.  This is a significant achievement by our LAPD forces headed by MIKE DOWNING, Commander, Hollywood Division. His calm, quiet competence has continued that highest standard of community service long enjoyed by Hollywood Division residents.

LAPD/Community Service Center Activities

Since  our opening  in late l995, our LAPD/Community Service Center has devoted its attentions to the needs  of residents, tourists, & our LAPD officers.   Uniquely and without subsidy, a wide range of services to those looking for employment, counseling, interventions in housing and civility disputes have been quiet successes in creating a community within a vicinity.  From ‘doggy do’ problems to emergency housing for domestic violence, we have been there. From assisting Hollywood Blvd. events as a LAPD center for lost children to a respite for tourists and officers   Every corner on Yucca Street tween Cahuenga to Highland Ave. has a waste disposal container for all needs and is serviced without cost to the residents and the city. 

‘Coffee with a Cop’ 

Early in ‘03,‘ Robin Moreno, suggested that a weekly session twixt residents and SLO’s be most useful .S.L.O. Maria Gholizaeh, enthusiastically concurred. Thus, an unprecedentedly productive interchange of specific public need with appropriate civic servants began. It has evolved responding to residents needs. Beyond criminal mischief, City Attorneys, Housing inspectors, etc., have made themselves available to counsel and report on their work. ROBIN’S idea and follow thru  has led to a proliferation of such in other vicinities.

HHWNC Neighborhood Council Activities

Our Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council is actually alive, where real problems (issues) exist.

Our Area #3 Committee encompasses the turf bounded by Hollywood Blvd. on the South, La Brea Ave on the West. Cahuenga Blvd on the East and Barham Blvd on the North. But one of 6 such, its size, in other successful civic entities would entitle it to a cityhood or, at least a council district of its own. But, we must ‘make do’ with what structure exists to advance our needs, however uncomfortable. By nature, none of us ventures uncomfortably out at night to attend public discussions of problems not really dire to our needs. 

Our traditional civic participation in all issues to date; depends on a very precarious discipline dependent on:

• our perception of an issue i.e., its importance to us;
• our ability to effectively participate within an influential body.

Kids:  this structure, provides an effective avenue to public policy from  voiced  concerns, sensibly evaluated.  It’s up to us now, to validate this concept of community.  It’s not easy, but it will never be less so.  We must gather: as publicly noticed and proscribed, reveal our problems, then consider, consult, recommend positions, and present such to our issue committees and thence to Council directors for official mandates.

But: Kids,  that’s what’s so doggone inspiring. So far, it’s been ’optimal’: Neighbors have repeatedly met to contemplate and to suggest terrific solutions to local problems.  In concert with other area committees, long festering problems however trivial to others, are on the mend. 

Problems (issues) abound in our neighborhood, (Area #3), thus we meet on the 2nd Tuesday  evening (6:30 pm) of each month, @  our Yucca Community Center 6671 Yucca St. Paul Woolsey is our elected chair and devoted to his neighborhood, as a resident and enthusiastic proponent of our ethos; i.e., our neighborhood as a pleasant place to live, to work, and to host visitors from all the world.

Problemed businesses are confronted with complaints of neighbors.  Typically, where late  hour entertainment clubs are licensed, closely adjacent to  hi-density residential neighborhoods, elemental conflicts inevitably arise and fester, i.e., where people are licensed to sleep, are aroused by those licensed to carouse. Both complain about the conflicting property rights.

Applicants for restaurant & niteclub licenses are reviewed by the Area #3 committee  as to the propriety of the application. Their view is forwarded to  Issue committees & the Board. If endorsed by all  & later supported by specific conditions, as needed, the  L.A. City Planning Dept. is so advised of community  perceptions.

Problemed niteclubs on Las Palmas Ave & Cahuenga Blvd, have been presented to 
to civic regulatory folk, and actions are ‘ongoing’. 

Ongoing problems.......Spring ‘04 

• The vital factor: the absence of minimum property situated auto  parking.  Either for the convenience of  boulevard customers or residents adjacent in the Cahuenga Blvd/ Wilcox area bodes ill for any promising future. The great lack of such  is consequent to past mismanagements of the Redevelopment Project. We now have a great mass of unused parking capability far remote from where it’s needed. We’re told that these structures have totally drained the coffers for parking needs and that the City Council is extremely soured on Hollywood, and totally uninterested in needed augmentations.   In desperation, some of us have suggested a special bus service for residents to encourage them to park so far from their residences. Implausible...but.
• We have a new CRA Hollywood Project Manager to contemplate the past follies now prominently in place and in our face.
• The L.A. COUNTY Administrator’s office adopted stinging indictment of the misdeeds of various CRA projects and outlined the true courses they are to pursue when abating ‘blight.’ Prominently among the criteria is the elimination of conflicting uses vicinities such as our Yucca/ Wilcox /Cahuenga.  Where late hour noise and drunkenness just adjacent to a hi-density residential district has caused the crime, ruination and blight we have so long experienced...Long past time to address such cancers rather than fecklessing partnering public funds with private commercial speculative developments. 

The Pla-Boy Complex has that terrible lure, and it seems that they cannot come to deny sales to the obviously incompetent.

Our Old Hollywood Blvd:

The old  ‘Studio Cafe’ location (6633 Hollywood Blvd) is still under reconstruction, hopefully to emerge as a mid-American restaurant venue attractive to residents and tourists (fingers crossed.)

The property adjacent ( 6623) has been approved and as of 4-1-04 under construction as a nightclub fronting on Hollywood Blvd.. 

CIM is the ’lessor entity’ and these two ventures are the eventuation of their  ‘engagement’ since ‘95 siting, as it yet does a solitary remainder of what was once a major blvd attraction: i.e., new and vintage book stores; and much money  put forth by our CRA to relocate one in the new Highland Ave. complex to allow CIM’s weird project (since abandoned). Greatly fatigued, we all hope for sanity,  and a civil life to return...a renaissance of that we once enjoyed, however, is not on the horizon.

Ivar Avenue: South of the Blvd.,  currently host to the Sunday Farmer’s Market scene and already constricted by the Vine Street Marketplace & residential complex’s needs for parking access south of Selma Ave, & with the approved massive residential complex opposite the Library,  change of the Farmer’s market location seems likely.

McCadden Place:   North of Hollywood Blvd.  Perhaps the future site of a relocated Farmer’s Market.  Plenty of parking and  street access. 

Our Hollywood & Vine St. Scene:

• the Arclight Center both a fiscal and visual blight..inflicted upon us by tyrannic incompetents;
• the retail and residential complex opened @ the Northwest corner of Sunset Blvd & Vine, to greatly subdued expectations,... to say the least;
• proposed subsidised housings for frontages on Vine street, in addition to those extant, and in process on Ivar Ave.;
• the Doolittle Theatre removed from the commercial venue to the ideologic and again reduced to its original street view, from it’s highest  evocation by virtue of the forgotten efforts of the magnate heir, and, the last and lowest: the UCLA ‘deconstructionist’ perception.
• Loft housing proposed for the relic: Broadway Store site & Taft Bldg.
• Housing  for the Sunset Vine Towers.
• Housing proposed for the failed Equitable Bldg. commercial revival and the flight of the famed downtown preceptor: Tom Gilmore;
• CRA/Council driven Hotel and residential projects for the area opposite the now very  lonely Pantages Theatre, in what was once a vicinity embracing 4 of such.
• The question is: Is dere eny dere to what dey proposes?  And who be dey? 
• i.e., is this, yet again, but another bureaucratic vision, a politically correct vision?  One totally devoid of any regional entertainment rationale?  In which case: 
• Why  a Hollywood Redevelopment Project? 
• Why a Hollywood entertainment District? 

To us, it seems sadly so.

Yours, still, for a nicer Old Hollywood.
 

 John Ehretz
co-Chair, Steering Committee
ph  323  465-3505
fax  323  465-3525
email  ehretz@pacbell.net
postal  1811 Wilcox Avenue
            Hollywood, CA 90028