Active members of West Hollywood West Residents Association. On the left and above is Dan Siegel and Richard Griesbert, with Lauren Meister and Steven Golightly seated. Photo by Ryan Gierach. |
Why do people live in West Hollywood? It used to be for the cheap housing, but with the average apartment going for $1600 a month and the average property costing well above a million dollars, that can no longer be said.
It is often said from the city council dais that “This is where everyone wants to live,” and housing prices prove it. The Wehoans making up the West Hollywood West Residents Association (WHWRA), made up of 1000 residences on the city’s South West side, know well the value of close proximity to the best living/shopping in the area, straddling West Hollywood’s Avenues of Arts and Design, abutting the City of Beverly Hills and nestled against Los Angeles’s Beverly Center.
“We love our neighborhood and our neighborhood businesses,” said Steven Golightly, president of the WHWRA. “We all grow closer every year, and we’re trying to protect our neighborhood and its quality of life.”
Indeed, a few minutes walk can deliver any WHWRA member (and all residents of the area comprised by the City’s original conservation overlay) to the Pacific Design Center, to Urth Café, to the Bodhi Tree Bookstore, Jerry’s Famous Deli or the Ivy Restaurant.
A map of West Hollywood with WHWRA highlighted in yellow. |
Their web site proclaims the area’s quality of living in glowing terms, as well. “We're living in one of the best and brightest neighborhoods in West Hollywood,” it says. “Where else can you walk from home... to cafe's and restaurants, malls and movie theatres, parks, libraries, galleries, design shops and the Pacific Design Center and still be in such a charming residential area?”
The official boundaries of the association are Doheny Drive on the west, Melrose Avenue on the north, La Cienega Boulevard on the east and Beverly Boulevard on the south. The east-west streets are: Rangely, Dorrington, Ashcroft and Rosewood Avenues, and Bonner Drive.
The north-south streets are: Almont Drive, Robertson Boulevard, Sherbourne Drive, San Vicente Boulevard and Norwich, Huntley, Westbourne, Westmount and West Knoll Drives.
The association takes protecting its neighborhood’s charms with deadly seriousness. They actively insert themselves into the planning process, gaining the trust and respect of the city’s planning staff. Most recently, at a January 18 Planning Commission hearing, their detailed and comprehensive input into planning of a huge development project gained kudos from the planning staff, developers and commission members alike.
One view of the north boundary of West Hollywood West Residents Association with the Pacific Design Center looming in the background. Photo by Ryan Gierach. |
“The Greenwich Place hearing was something of a love-fest, wasn’t it?” asked Mr. Golightly. “But the reason for that is we worked so closely with Regent Properties from the very beginning. They eagerly accepted our input, told us that we helped them to make it a better one.”
In fact, according to the group, WHWRA VP Richard Griesbert’s suggestion of using different fencing around different buildings, one borne out of his architect’s imagination, thrilled Regent. “They fell in love with the idea and implemented it no questions asked,” Ms. Meister said.
“Because of WHWRA’s respect and credibility on land use issues,” Dan Siegel, executive vice-president of the organization said, “the planning staff insists that developers come to us as a first step in the planning and design process. They know that we’re not against development, we’re against bad development.”
That reputation comes after years of getting hands dirty in the mundane, but vital, tasks of wreaking improvements in a neighborhood’s condition. Take, for example, the recently established city parking subcommittee that will help ameliorate the worst of the employee parking problems resulting from the city’s economic success.
The famed Urth Café on Melrose in the heart of the Avenues of Arts and Design. Photo by Ryan Gierach. |
“WHWRA was a leader in neighborhood associations on preferential permit parking,” said Lauren Meister, past president of WHWRA. “Because of our efforts the city created a committee on parking to address growth and preferential parking permits in nearby neighborhoods.” See our coverage of that issue in our March 9, 2006 issue - Neighbor Group Gets Parking Rules
The process, though, was no easy one, according to WHWRA vice-president Richard Giesbret, who said, “It was a painful process. It took at least four or five years,” to get businesses and residents on the same page. “But we worked it out with Dan (Siegel)’s and Terry Leftgoff’s (past WHWRA board officer) persistence.
Mr. Siegel added, “It was the cooperation between residents and the business community that was important – it modeled for other areas how it can be done.” That extended battle, however, pales in comparison with the one they now face.
An academy of learning straddling the West Hollywood/Los Angeles border, Maimodines Academy, plans a major expansion, mostly on the LA side of the border. “Although the impacts on our neighborhood will be severe,” said Ms. Meister. “They’ll mean putting pedestrian bridges over cul de sacs and changing traffic patterns.”
A look down San Vicente Boulevard from West Hollywood Park reveals Cedars-Sinai Hospital rearing up above West Hollywood West Residents Association. Photo by Ryan Gierach. |
But that’s not the worst of it, in the group’s view. WHWRA has been effectively stripped of any voice in the development, as has the City of West Hollywood, by virtue of a State decision making the City of Los Angeles “lead” agency in the redevelopment.
LA made it possible for the development to move forward without a complete Environmental impact Review.
“The State emasculated WHWRA, as well as the City of West Hollywood, when they gave LA lead agency status,” Mr. Siegel said. Mr. Golightly, noting that the association was putting its money where its interests lie, told WeHoNews, “We don’t think that our quality of life issues are adequately addressed by these moves, so we're fighting to change lead agency status.”
The City of West Hollywood also brought an appeal. A hearing on the matter scheduled for January 30 was postponed by a zoning administrator. The fundraising for their attorney continues. “It’s expensive,” said Mr. Gollightly. On the other hand, said Mr. Siegel, the association had little choice. “The reality of this is that it will likely one day affect the value of our property, creating a negative effect on our quality of life.”
The WHWRA and the City seek the Zoning Variance and Mitigated Negative Declaration be overturned and that the City of LA require a full Environmental Impact Report on the project.
It is the kind of issue that brought these neighbors together in the first, a threat to their quality of life and to their ability direct their own destiny. The association is easily the best organized of any in the city; they have a block captain on every block who hand-delivers the bi-monthly newsletter to each and every resident on the street.
The Pacific Design Center makes up the northern boundary of the association. Photo by Ryan Gierach. |
Their annual “National Night Out” block party is said to be the best-attended and best-larded of a storied lot. They involve themselves deeply in civic participation by making the organization’s thoughts known at commission and council meetings.
This year, as in election years past, the WHWRA will co-sponsor, along with West Hollywood North, a candidates’ forum at the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station. That forum, taking place on February 27, 2007 at 7:00 p.m. will focus on issues of concern to the two neighborhoods.
Additionally, WHWRA and West Hollywood North have joined the West Hollywood Chamber of Council to co-sponsor that televised Candidates’ Forum on February 21, 2007. That forum will look at candidates’ positions on a wide range of issues of concern to the entire city.
Steven Golightly said, "West Hollywood West Residents Association is pleased to be a co-sponsor of the Chamber of Commerce's Candidates Forum. This collaboration between our neighborhood association and the Chamber is a reflection of the positive working relationship between residents and the business community in West Hollywood.
The area’s central “business district” is the decidedly high-end Avenues of Arts and Design, where the world shops for high design. Photo by Ryan Gierach. |
“Electing appropriate City Council members is a civic responsibility that everyone in the city has. The forum is a viable means of hearing first-hand what the candidate's positions are on issues affecting all of us in our community."
Civic responsibility is really just the natural extension of personal responsibility that people come to understand when they realize that we are all in this together, that only through our neighbors’ support can we battle the larger forces that threaten our quality of life.
West Hollywood West Residents Association, they say, strives to represent the very best of that ideal, manifesting good citizenship with every other neighbors’ every step.
There are worse aspirations than being a good neighbor.
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