West Hollywood Street Work Tears Up Businesses

The road to their financial ruin is paved with good intentions.

That’s what dozens of West Hollywood merchants are saying as a $35-million project to turn their city’s main street into “the Champs-Elysees of the West” plows along.

Some businessmen say they are on the verge of closing because shoppers are scared off by torn-up pavement and sidewalks along a three-mile stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard that is midway through a two-year beautification effort.

City leaders contend they are doing everything possible to speed up the project, and are urging business owners to hang on because the pain they’re suffering now will be worth it in the end.

Work crews are adding wider, tree-shaded sidewalks, bicycle lanes and a series of pocket parks and landscaped bus stops along the boulevard’s entire length in West Hollywood--between the Beverly Hills and Los Angeles borders.

Merchants, however, are clamoring for compensation for lost income like that received by businesses hurt by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Los Angeles subway construction project.

“This could easily kill us. We’re teetering,” said Michael d’Addio, owner of Stonewall Gourmet Coffee Co. as he gazed Thursday out the front of his nearly empty coffeehouse on the boulevard near the city’s west end.

An open trench has replaced the old sidewalk area where d’Addio’s 16 outdoor dining tables used to stand. Next to that is a 30-foot dirt area separating the cafe from motorists creeping through a construction-zone traffic jam.

D’Addio said he has lost $150,000 in revenue since December, when he says workmen dug up the street and began parking bulldozers in front of his cafe at night.

“It’s not pleasant to be sitting here when a huge cloud of dirt flies into your coffee latte,” he said of the trench work done a few steps from his shop’s open French doors.

Up and down the street, similar sentiments were being voiced Thursday.

Robert Claure, manager of Sports Nutrition Depot, near Westbourne Drive, said his health food store is losing $1,000 a day because of the construction.

Jack Gray, who with his wife, Itana Dorea, owns the nearby Itana Bahia restaurant, said his business is down 30% from last year. He said the city has offered to waive the $100 cost of his annual business license to defray his losses.

“But I lose $100 every hour because of this. The city people say, ‘Oh, gee, we feel sorry for you,’ but there’s no compensation for what we are going through.”

West Hollywood Mayor Jeffrey Prang said concern for business owners is genuine. But he said there is no money to reimburse the estimated 1,000 businesses along the street.

“It is a hardship. We’ll do everything we can to help them survive this,” Prang pledged Thursday. He said officials have loosened sign restrictions along the boulevard so merchants can let customers know they are open, and the city has arranged for the use of several temporary parking lots by shoppers.

He said the real payoff will come in July or August 2001--when the work is done.

“We’ll have a clean, new, shiny street that will work better for motorists and for pedestrians”--a showpiece that experts feel will attract old customers and newcomers alike, Prang said.

City workers helping to coordinate the project say they periodically mail brochures and fliers to businesses and residences updating them on the progress. Weekly updates are faxed to business owners who request them.

They’ve erected signs along each block advising boulevard motorists that businesses are still open, said Joan English, the city’s director of transportation. And officials are in the process of hiring an advertising firm to create a promotional campaign for boulevard merchants.

In the meantime, a storefront office a few doors east of City Hall is being used as an information center for those looking for timetables for sidewalk concrete-pouring and street closures, said David Logan, who was manning the information counter Thursday.

Across the street from City Hall, landscape designer Kirk Wilson stepped gingerly around fresh sidewalk concrete that was drying a few inches from the counter of Irv’s hamburger stand, a 50-year-old West Hollywood landmark.

“I left West Hollywood and moved to Topanga last fall because of all this construction. It was driving me nuts,” Wilson said as he ordered a burger and fries during a break from work.

“I hope they get this work done before the Gay Pride parade. All the drag queens marching in high heels--it will be a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

Farther down the boulevard, yogurt shop owner Steve Garfield described his store as “lonely” because of a 60% drop in patronage.

“The street is going to be beautiful when it’s done,” Garfield said. “I just hope I’m around to see it.”