Jan Perry Wants Downtown Street Widths Examined

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — I was just reading through Council referals and noticed an interesting motion from Jan Perry. It deals with street and sidewalks widths Downtown, and seems to reflect a desire to allow wider sidewalks and activate more pedestrian life on the streets. Consider this text from the description that comes along with the motion.

Many of these new projects include valuable pedestrian-oriented amenities, such as ground floor retail uses, live/work unts at the street level, storefront windows, and streetscape improvements, which will provide an atmosphere of pedestrian scale, visual interest, market opportunity and activity, and help to energize the streets while providing needed servces to residents, and contrbute to the unique 24-hour urban setting envisioned in the Downtown Strategic Plan and the Central City Community Plan. … Such street widening discourages or disallows the widening of sidewalk, which is preferred by the Downtown community, as wider sidewalks would enable the creation of an energized pedestran orientation.

In particular the motion mentions taking a look at streets around new development to see whether they should receive a pedestrian oriented designation. The streets around Elleven are mentioned specifically.

The motion also notes that the Council is “also considering the adoption of Design and Streetscape Guidelines, being prepared by the Community Redevelopment Agency, which addresses concerns that new residential strctures and the supporting streetscape are consistent with the desired character of the Central City.” I would assume these to be the streetscape guidelines we last heard about in November.

The motion now goes to three Council committees: Public Works, Transportation, and Planning & Land Use Management. I’ll keep an eye out for any new documents that get filed.