McDonald’s Goes Hollywood in a Big Way With 20-Feet-Tall ‘Radical’ Golden Arches

Passers-by peer up at the yellow neon sign. It lists at an odd angle, as if in danger of toppling to the boulevard. This glowing advertisement, 20 feet tall and 20 feet wide, forms a great M .

“That tilted M . . .” says one woman. “Did they do that to make it look more, like, artsy?”

“It is only big, it is not beautiful,” comments a tourist from Luxembourg.

Tilted and big, if not beautiful to some eyes, the sign is Hollywood’s version of McDonald’s familiar golden arches. And, after months of bureaucratic red tape, it perches at last atop the fast-food chain’s new restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard near Highland Avenue.

“It’s the most radical McDonald’s sign in the world,” said Robert Goldfarb, co-owner of the restaurant. “Hollywood is the entertainment capital of the world, where people expect to see something glittery and glitzy and show business-y.”

Goldfarb boasts that this McDonald’s is the chain’s most lavish. It is $3-million worth of Moorish, Egyptian and Art Deco architecture, highlighted by a vaulted atrium and mirrored walls.

Crowning Touch

The restaurant reflects McDonald’s desire to contribute to the coming $922-million Hollywood redevelopment project, he said. The $30,000 golden arches, towering cockeyed over the sidewalk, were designed as a crowning touch.

“I used the traditional trademark and thought, ‘Let’s put it in a different perspective. Let’s put it on the roof,’ ” said Rodolfo Bocanegra, the architect who conceived the sign.

However, in January, the city Department of Building and Safety objected, ruling that the arches violated a variety of municipal ordinances. They simply were too large, too bright and too obtrusive, city officials said.

City Councilman Michael Woo and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce voiced their approval of the sign. Support also came from the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, which is entrusted with the Hollywood restoration effort. Agency planners had helped design the sign. It would, they said, evoke the glamour of Tinseltown’s past.

Faced with such enthusiasm, the city Building and Safety Commission in February approved the unorthodox sign. Last week, the arches were erected.

If nothing else, they are getting noticed. Public reaction on a Monday afternoon ranged from admiration to critique.

“Our golden arches don’t have any lights on them,” said Rick Garner, 30, who was visiting with his family from Oklahoma. “This is our first time to be in Hollywood. (The sign) makes McDonald’s fit right in.”

John Pochna was not as impressed. He operates the Zero One art gallery a few blocks down the boulevard.

“It’s a bit restrained,” Pochna said of the sign. “I like things that are grander and glitzier. I would have done something like a seven-headed monster coming out of the top and painted in Day-Glo colors . . . something that evokes Hollywood.”

There is more to come. In three weeks, a 18-foot marquee will be affixed to the front of the Hollywood McDonald’s. The marquee, with a Times Square-style message board, will offer news on current events in Hollywood as well as 30-second advertisements for the Universal Studio and Hollywood Fantasy tours, Goldfarb said.

“Hollywood is a very special place,” the restaurateur said. “We want to embellish the community as much as we can.”

Allen N. Ono, a redevelopment agency official who argued to have the sign approved, put matters in a different perspective.

“We don’t want Hollywood Boulevard to look like a suburban street,” Ono said. “If some guy from Iowa walks into the McDonald’s on Hollywood Boulevard, we want him to know he’s not in Iowa.”

“What’s bad taste somewhere else,” Ono said, “might be just right for Hollywood.”