Can Street Art Pave Way for Comeback? : Redevelopment: CRA will pay $175,00 for temporary artworks on Hollywood Boulevard. Critics say asphalt aesthetics are a waste of money.

The Community Redevelopment Agency, reigniting a debate over priorities in Hollywood redevelopment, will pay $175,000 for three paintings on Hollywood Boulevard that could be wiped out by street traffic within two years.

The designer of the asphalt artworks said they will provide a “subconscious, subliminal, almost spiritual” balm for a downtrodden community.

But a leading opponent calls the street paintings a “screw-up” and a “weird idea” for spending taxpayers’ money.

“Painting Hollywood and Vine so the pigeons can look at it,” snorted redevelopment critic Robert Nudelman. “We have all these problems in this city and they are out doing a project that will disappear.”

The artworks are part of a $2.5-million project on Hollywood Boulevard. Several blocks will be repaved, sidewalks improved and trees planted as a prototype for later redevelopment along the Hollywood Boulevard corridor.

“In a city that had the threat of cuts in police and fire (service), the idea that these things should be a priority reflects the failure of redevelopment,” said another critic, Norton Halper, director of the Hollywood Homeowners and Tenants Assn. “I wonder how the people in South-Central Los Angeles would feel about spending $2 million for trees and painting the road right now.”

The agency hired artist Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend to oversee the design of six artworks for the project. On Thursday, the agency’s board allocated $175,000 for the first three works, all of which will use specially mixed paint to create designs on Hollywood streets.

One design is a Fred Astaire movie tableau, re-creating the dance floor from the 1935 film “Top Hat” at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine Street. Another will paint the word INTERMISSION on a crosswalk connecting the Ivar Theater and Hollywood Library to a parking lot across the street. The third will be a painted filmstrip down the middle of Ivar Street where it intersects Hollywood Boulevard, depicting the area’s history.

Critics called the artworks--which will be erased in two to five years by vehicle traffic--a waste of taxpayer money. They said the funds would be better spent fixing streets, hiring security officers or building housing.

City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky--who last month led a fight to use redevelopment agency funds to sustain police and fire service--called the spending “frivolous activity, and in Hollywood, where the social problems are as great as they are anywhere in the city.”

The CRA had irritated some Hollywood activists a week earlier when it won approval for another part of the boulevard project--the uprooting of 24 mature ficus trees that will be replaced by jacaranda and palm trees.

Defenders of the Hollywood redevelopment, led by Councilman Michael Woo, said opponents lack a larger vision of the community’s future.

“Hollywood Boulevard will die unless we find bold, creative ways to make it more like the famous streets of San Francisco and Paris,” Woo said. “Thirty years ago, naysayers would have criticized the Hollywood Walk of Fame as a waste of money.”

Redevelopment backers pointed to Santa Monica’s 3rd Street Promenade as a successful shopping district where improved facilities and public art created a welcoming ambience. They said the artworks and other improvements in Hollywood will attract more visitors and pay for themselves by increasing tax revenues.

Supervising artist Stinsmuehlen-Amend said the power of art to humanize the gritty streets of Hollywood should not be underestimated.

“People forget that aesthetics have some subliminal, subconscious, almost spiritual thing that . . . makes you feel better,” she said. “It brings a humanizing factor, beyond just standard urban design.”

Lillian Burkenheim, the CRA’s manager for the Hollywood Boulevard project, said officials are not concerned about the artworks’ relatively short life span. New artists can be commissioned to paint over the old designs when they fade, she said.

A more immediate concern was raised by Bureau of Street Maintenance officials, who had to be persuaded that the designs would not cause drivers to stop in curiosity or collide because of inattention.

“We want it to be interesting,” Burkenheim said, “but not so interesting that someone will stop driving to figure out what it is.”