A No-No in NoHo

All they wanted to do, really, was to brighten up those drab gray sidewalks in front of their storefronts a bit. And who better to do it than creative-minded members of a city-designated arts district, they say.

So the handful of business owners in the NoHo Arts District got out the paint, knelt down with brushes in hand and slathered the concrete with colors, shapes and inspiration.

“Hollywood has the Walk of Fame. NoHo should have a Walk of Art,” said David Dion, who, over the summer, painted yellow leopard spots on the sidewalk in front of VAVOOM!, his funky women’s clothing boutique on Lankershim Boulevard.

But now, the city is telling Dion and others that the painted sidewalks, their artwork, must go. Over the past few weeks, city inspectors have issued citations and told others to remove the paint, or else.

“The thing we find so weird about it is, here we are in the arts district and we can’t even be artsy,” said David Cox, president emeritus and founder of the Valley Theater League.

The city, he said, has been pressuring him to remove the painted red and gray squares from the sidewalk in front of the American Renegade Theater Company, of which he is president.

“It’s really ridiculous because the sidewalks were awful,” Cox added.

In some areas near the corner of Lankershim and Magnolia boulevards, the heart of the arts district, the sidewalks were covered with grime and cracks because of the city’s neglect, business owners said.

So they’re simply rolling up their sleeves and doing the improvements themselves.

“It’s art, and it’s a protest--that the city is not taking care of sidewalks,” Dion said.

Lillian Burkenheim, project manager for the Community Redevelopment Agency, said the business owners have a good point.

The painted sidewalks “are nicely done. They’re not like graffiti at all,” Burkenheim said. “They bring personality of the store out to the street.

“But the sidewalk is public property, not private property. What they have done is gone out and painted the sidewalk without permission to do so.”

The city prohibits painting on sidewalks to protect it from possible lawsuits, said Henry Ong, a spokesman for the Department of Public Works, whose Bureau of Street Services issued the citations.

“In case of rain, [painted sidewalks] could become slippery or hazardous,” Ong said, and if people slip and hurt themselves, “the city could be liable.”

That doesn’t sound plausible to Danny Gibson, who inscribed the Chinese characters “he-chi dao”--”the way of harmony”--in black paint on the sidewalk in front of his martial arts studio, Jun Chongs Tae Kwan-Do.

“It’s floor paint. It’s concrete paint. It’s not slippery, it’s no more slippery than concrete itself,” Gibson said. “If they’re worried about people slipping and tripping, they should do something about the cracks in the sidewalks. They’re picking on us,” Gibson said.

Dion, who received a citation last month for his leopard spots and has appeared at an administrative hearing, said he was ordered to remove the latex with nontoxic paint remover, which he doesn’t want to do.

“They didn’t tell me what the ramifications of not doing that would be,” he said.

According to Ong, a violation of the ordinance, considered a misdemeanor, is punishable by up to six months in county jail and/or a $1,000 fine.

In the meantime, the CRA has hired a consultant to look into ways “the merchants can provide artistic treatment to their sidewalks,” Burkenheim said. The consultant is expected to issue recommendations early next year.