Urged for Years : Mulholland Drive Median Due Face-Lift

After complaining of weeds and trash on their front street for 25 years, Woodland Hills homeowners may soon benefit from a two-mile-long landscape project.

Los Angeles officials plan to plant shrubs and trees that will thrive in parched adobe soil along an unusual strip, up to 100 feet wide, that runs down the center of Mulholland Drive in the community.

“It’s about time. This is an eyesore,” homeowner Harry Anderson said as he surveyed the divider strip Monday afternoon. The roughly graded stretch was covered by weeds as it curved down a hill, separating Mulholland’s traffic lanes. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Brad Rosenheim, an aide to City Councilman Marvin Braude, whose district includes the area, said Anderson and his neighbors could start seeing oleander bushes and pepper trees next year on part of the median--the area between Canoga Avenue and Topanga Canyon Boulevard--if an estimated $100,000 can be raised for the project.

To the west, the Mulholland median between San Feliciano Drive and Valley Circle Boulevard is to receive new cobblestone and gravel beneath scattered deodar trees.

It is the Canoga-to-Topanga stretch, however, that is the most worrisome to city officials and irksome to residents. Two petroleum pipelines are buried beneath it and a ditchlike storm channel lies along its surface.

At a meeting of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization last week, one resident said the community has been complaining about the situation for 25 years.

“Eight years ago, the city had a plan to turn this into a scenic highway but I guess that went into the garbage,” Anderson said. “Now, we have gophers out there. Three years ago, the weeds over there caught fire and burned.”

Neighbor David Greenwald said the appearance of the strip encourages trash dumping. Parked cars sporting “for sale” signs and mobile vendors have taken over the strip next to Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Rosenheim, the aide to Braude, said the city plans to ask the Union and Shell oil companies to help finance the landscaping.