Development in West Hollywood
Your article of April 25, “Developers Wanted on Sunset Strip,” does a disservice to residents who border or access their homes via the Strip. This article could serve as a PR release for the West Hollywood City Council, which wants to increase its tax base by encouraging building, no matter what.
Your article gives a cursory mention of residents’ resistance to projects that will dramatically worsen an already intolerable traffic situation, but does not discuss the issues. In fact, over two years ago, residents of West Hollywood formed a group to mount a successful legal challenge to the Raleigh mall, and they were joined by groups of hillside homeowners to the north, residents of Los Angeles. Our collective grievances have been so irrefutable that the West Hollywood Council is simply rewriting its laws!
A key issue is that those of us in L.A. would suffer impossible traffic, commercial parking spilling up our streets, impassable exit from the hills during years of construction (one lane of Sunset would have to be closed, and it’s already bumper-to-bumper much of the day) and forever after. All effectively trapping us in our homes and lowering property values, just to allow West Hollywood to increase its tax base for its expensive programs. One city should not benefit to the complete detriment of its neighbor.
Meanwhile, your article admits that the Strip generates 20% of West Hollywood’s sales taxes and two-thirds of its hotel taxes, so the issue is clearly not one of need (for building) but greed! (The Council adroitly put off “tackling the parking problem.”)
Another red herring is the attempt to present this as an issue of “entertainment” jobs. In reality, the projects stalled so far--the 125,000-square-foot Raleigh mall and a 60,000-square-foot project--are not entertainment-oriented. The article refers to concerns about preserving old facades (and hence character), but since this is impossible with massive projects, this issue too--like the parking problem--was conveniently just sidestepped.
JUDITH SZARKA-CANTOR
Los Angeles
