A BID for Help

First approved almost 1 1/2 years ago, help for North Hollywood merchants who lost business because of Metro Red Line subway construction has been a long time coming. But it’s coming at last, and the best news is that the merchants themselves will control what form it takes.

The Los Angeles City Council agreed in November 1998 to set aside $2 million to help the merchants, but the proposal got lost in the bureaucracy--something you hear a lot when you talk about North Hollywood redevelopment.

At issue was not where the money would come from but who would decide how it would be spent.

All along, everyone agreed that it was fair to use $2 million in transit taxes to help out the merchants. After all, while the subway was being built, they endured more than five years of dirt, noise and street closures that hurt sales and nearly put them out of business. It’s not fair for a few shopkeepers to bear a public burden without some public help.

Yes, the subway, scheduled to open in June, promises big rewards. But so far any reward is just that, a promise. A transportation hub alone doesn’t guarantee a business boom, particularly in neighborhoods that have only barely survived the hub’s construction.

But what path should assistance take?

The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency has met with only limited success in its 20-year, $117-million effort to fight blight in North Hollywood, and it’s made enemies along the way. Similarly, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Red Line construction hasn’t exactly endeared that agency to local merchants.

So the council’s Transportation Committee recommended that the $2 million in transit taxes go to the development of a business improvement district for a stretch of Lankershim Boulevard between Burbank Boulevard and Riverside Drive and a few cross streets along that stretch.

A business improvement district--Los Angeles has 25--is a formal alliance of merchants who agree to tax themselves to pay for additional street improvements as well as for cleaning sidewalks, landscaping or hiring extra security. BIDs are governed by a board made up of local businesspeople who oversee the use of the funds.

With a $2-million infusion, North Hollywood merchants, already taxed by years of adverse conditions, could set assessments below what other commercial districts pay. They could use the money to spruce up storefronts or launch advertising campaigns to lure back customers.

Such improvements would tie in well with city efforts to restore a Lankershim Boulevard landmark, the old Pacific Electric Big Red streetcar station that now stands, empty and rundown, across from the soon-to-open Red Line subway station.

The single-story wooden depot is the Valley’s oldest train station. There is no shortage of ideas for what to do with it: Make it into a train-themed restaurant, move Phil’s Diner--another North Hollywood landmark, built to resemble a dining car--next door, make it a railway museum or put in a model railroad, add a park. Any of these ideas would present a more appealing greeting to passengers arriving at the new Red Line station than the current boarded-up building.

Whatever is done has to be done soon before the structure collapses altogether. The good news is that the building is already owned by the MTA, and the CRA has obtained about $1 million, largely from an MTA grant, to rehabilitate it. That is also the bad news, given the lack of confidence the community has in both agencies.

The CRA and the MTA should look at the old depot as a small opportunity to redeem themselves and, at the same time, improve a stretch of Lankershim Boulevard that is vital if the Red Line is to have, at last, a positive effect on North Hollywood.