Hollywood Business Leaders Continue Campaign to Revive Boulevard : Fines Sought in Bid to Clean Sites for Sore Eyes

Hollywood Cleanup Committee leaders, who have tried and largely failed to shame their business colleagues into cleaning up shoddy and unsightly storefronts along Hollywood Boulevard, are urging the city to impose fines on the worst offenders.

Robert Goldfarb and Michael Kellerman, co-chairmen of the committee, said that in the past five years they have exhausted non-punitive methods of persuading owners of Hollywood Boulevard property to spruce up their businesses, and only a few have cooperated.

“We have tried everything else,” said Goldfarb, operator of several fast-food franchises. “We have published a list of the 10 best-dressed buildings and the 10 worst. We have cajoled owners, we have pleaded with them. Nothing has worked. The degree of blight along the boulevard is, with a few notable exceptions, as bad as ever.”

Tourists Find Boulevard Unattractive

Kellerman, who runs a tour business, said that tourists coming to visit Mann’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard find the surrounding business district so unattractive that they rarely venture beyond the theater that is famous for the celebrity hand- and foot-prints in its sidewalk.

“They look around and think they have been taken to 6th and Main (in downtown’s Skid Row area), not the home of the movie stars,” Kellerman said. “They get out of the bus, look at the imprints and get right back into the bus. It’s depressing.”

Four years ago, Kellerman, then a market researcher, interviewed 500 people at the theater. More than 86% of them said they found Hollywood unsightly, dirty and disgusting. “They said that the property owners and business people in the area should be ashamed of themselves,” Kellerman said.

He and Goldfarb have been trying to convince new Los Angeles City Councilman Michael Woo and the city Building and Safety Department to begin active enforcement of city laws against neglect of private buildings.

There are about 500 buildings on Hollywood Boulevard and abutting side streets between Gower Street and Sycamore Avenue forming the basic Hollywood commercial district.

$500 Fines

They argue that the city has the power to levy $500 fines against property owners unwilling to properly maintain their buildings, particularly torn awnings, weathered paint and otherwise dilapidated facades.

Bill Welch, president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, said that his organization backs the efforts of the two men. He added that it may take something as drastic as fines to “get the attention” of some of the worst offenders along the boulevard.

Welch said major factors contributing to the problem on Hollywood Boulevard include absentee ownership and the inability of tenants to obtain long-term leases to operate their businesses.

“For many of the property owners,” Welch said, “their only connection to their buildings is in the rent checks they receive. That is OK, but they should also be willing to put something back into Hollywood.”

He said that the Chamber of Commerce has been disappointed in trying to get merchants to improve their properties or even sweep the sidewalks in front of their stores.

“We sponsored a campaign a while back to get merchants to sign pledge cards to keep the sidewalks clean,” Welch said. “It did not do much good.”

Patrick J. Michell, legislative deputy to Woo, said that the councilman’s office is studying Kellerman’s and Goldfarb’s request to fine Hollywood Boulevard store owners.

Incentive Program

But, he added, the councilman is more interested in encouraging property owners to clean up their properties through an incentive program in which the city will pick up a substantial portion of the costs of refurbishing the stores.

“That does not mean we would not fall back on more forceful means to get the storefronts cleaned up in the future,” Michell said. “Right now, we want to try other ways to do the job, because coercion has not always been successful. We want to be very judicious in the way we use city power.”

One program the councilman is backing is CARE (Commercial Area Revitalization Effort), sponsored by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency.

Under the program, selected Hollywood businesses are being given $5,000 each to improve their storefronts, according to Darrell George, a city planner working in Hollywood.

Removing Junk

“Basically,” George said, “we are encouraging property owners to take down a lot of junk from in front of their stores, replace the awnings, limit the size of their signs and develop some consistency between their store and the others near it.”

He said one such project, a building at 6509-21 Hollywood Blvd., is near completion. The city hopes to start work early next year on 46 stores on the boulevard between Highland and Las Palmas avenues. The project, at a cost of more than $200,000, will include not only improvement of store facades, but also the installation of new trash receptacles, tree planters and benches, George said.

“Obviously,” George said, “we will be cleaning up several stores, but we are also hoping that the project will spur on other property owners to do something about the garishness of their own buildings.”

James L. Carney, chief inspector of the conservation bureau of the city Building and Safety Department, said that his department could get involved with storefront cleanup only if buildings were in obvious disrepair.

“There is no law I am aware of that involves the aesthetics of the building,” Carney said. “Our concern is making buildings safe, not pretty.”

Goldfarb, who plans to open a McDonald’s on Hollywood Boulevard sometime next year, said that city officials will come to realize that the vast majority of merchants with unsightly storefronts will not improve them unless they are forced to do it.

Variety of Tactics

“The city will find out, as we have over the past five years, that sweet reason does not move many of the businessmen here,” Goldfarb said.

Goldfarb and Kellerman have tried several tactics to encourage a renaissance along the boulevard. Their best-known ploy was the instigation of the “10 Worst-Dressed Buildings” list, patterned after the “10 Worst-Dressed Women” list devised by designer Mr. Blackwell.

They even got Blackwell to announce the list, but with only marginal results. “Some of the store owners would be embarrassed and slop on some cheap paint,” Goldfarb said, “but the buildings would soon look just as awful as before.”

He said the city, through its various departments, is also partially at fault for the community’s seedy look. He noted that he and Kellerman have been pushing the city to put decent-looking trash receptacles on the boulevard and to routinely remove placards that have been posted on light standards.

“All you have to do is walk down the boulevard and you will see that we have not had much cooperation, from either the merchants or the city,” Goldfarb said. “We must change our approach if the boulevard is ever going to again reflect the rich heritage and glamour of Hollywood.