In Hollywood, Nothing Exceeds Like Success

Australian tourist Trena Janczyk thought a visit to Los Angeles would not be complete without a tour of celebrities’ homes. So she walked into L.A. City Tours on Hollywood Boulevard last Thursday to book a trip for her family.

“I give you a discount because of the street closure,” said L.A. City Tours owner Monique Chu, who has been in business for 26 years. Janczyk snapped up four tickets at a 10% discount.

Good for Janczyk, but not so good for Chu.

With a section of Hollywood Boulevard closed to traffic in preparation for the Academy Awards on Sunday night, fewer tourists were on the famed street last week.

“We lost about 50% of business this week, at least,” Chu said.

A few doors down, at Hollywood Tourist Gifts, Saeid Askari said he was having the same problem: Sales were down about 60%.

“It’s not only for the Oscars,” Askari, the manager, said. “If El Capitan has a premiere, they kill our business.”

For years, Hollywood leaders have been working to strengthen business along the boulevard, home to a slew of chic bars, clubs and restaurants as well as the El Capitan and Kodak theaters.

Now the scene is attracting promoters who want to organize major events. Early last month, Verizon Wireless sponsored a hip-hop performance by the Fugees at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that drew 8,500 people.

But because such large-scale productions require full or partial street closures, some business owners and residents want fewer closures. Chu, Askari and other merchants say the closures cause business to slow. Residents and commuters complain that they increase traffic in an already congested part of town. And real estate agents say some entrepreneurs are hesitant to set up shop in the area.

So the Hollywood Entertainment District -- the business improvement group that oversees an 18-block section of Hollywood Boulevard -- is working to cut down the number. And it is focusing on one key element: cost.

“We are looking for empirical reasons for why the city’s street closure policy should be amended,” said Kerry Morrison, executive director of the district.

If an event is sponsored by a nonprofit organization or is free to the public, the city will usually waive the fee for the street closure, according to Josh Kamensky, a spokesman for City Council President Eric Garcetti, whose district includes much of Hollywood.

The fee depends on the size of the event; a large one that involves many government agencies and employees will be more costly than a smaller affair.

Morrison said she has been asked by her organization’s board of directors to study the costs of street closures because some members wondered if the city was losing money by waiving those fees.

The city waived the estimated $10,000 fee for the Fugees performance because the event was free and because its sponsor donated $45,000 to four Hollywood charities: the Los Angeles Police Activities League, the Hollywood-Wilshire YMCA, the Los Angeles Fire Department Memorial Fund and the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust.

Kamensky said the event required services from municipal departments that included the Los Angeles Police Department, the Metropolitan Transit Authority and the Department of Transportation.

At the Hollywood Entertainment District’s board of directors meeting on Feb. 16, Capt. Ron Sanchez of the LAPD’s Hollywood station said the preliminary cost for deploying about 250 police officers to the Fugees concert was about $170,000, according to Morrison. Sanchez did not return calls this week to confirm the figure.

The MTA that night rerouted nine bus lines, most of which missed one or two scheduled stops. Spokesperson Jose Ubaldo said the costs involved were “minimal”; the department spent about $900 to plan and execute the detours. The inconvenience to commuters, Morrison said, may have been immeasurable but significant.

For the Academy Awards, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit, did not have to pay $75,000 in fees for closing streets around the Kodak Theatre.

According to John Fisher, assistant general manager for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, the department deployed about 114 people over the weekend, including engineers to study traffic flow in and around the Kodak Theatre and officers to direct traffic.

“We don’t have a final cost for Sunday night,” Fisher said. “What I can tell you is that based on previous efforts for the Academy Awards, the cost is probably somewhere around $90,000” for the Department of Transportation alone.

The MTA rerouted five bus lines in total and closed the Hollywood/Highland station on the Red Line on the day of the Academy Awards. The department spent about $1,200 to plan for the detours and $3,240 to pay overtime for six on-site supervisors who monitored the detours.

“We would have to look at the numbers and see if we need to revise our assumptions and make our judgments from there,” said Kamensky, Garcetti’s aide. “By and large, the waivers are given to the kind of events that make the city hum.”

In 2003, what Morrison calls the “apex year,” there were 20 events that caused full closures of Hollywood Boulevard, 17 that caused partial closures and 20 that caused curb closures. (In a partial closure, traffic is allowed in only one direction; in a curb closure, traffic is allowed in both directions but a single lane is closed.)

That was the year Garcetti established a street closure advisory committee, made up of business owners and community leaders, to review closure requests. The head of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce sits on the committee, along with representatives from the El Capitan Theatre, the Central Hollywood Neighborhood Council and the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, among other organizations.

Though the group provides only recommendations to Garcetti, Morrison said it has been effective in reducing the number of full street closures in the area. In 2004, there were 10 events that required full closures, seven that required partial closures and 39 that required curb closures.

The committee was able to persuade some promoters to move to other locations in the city. The Nike Run Hit Wonder, for example, in 2004 was moved from Hollywood to an area near USC. And the committee did not support the National Football League’s request to hold an outdoor concert at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue to kick off its 2005 season; the concert was held at the Coliseum.

Members of the street closure advisory committee say they don’t want to get rid of all large-scale events. One of the biggest and most famous -- the Academy Awards -- is crucial to the neighborhood’s allure. The Kodak Theatre is also home to other well-known affairs, including the Black Entertainment Television Awards and the ESPY Awards.

“There are things specifically related to what’s historically been acceptable in Hollywood -- award shows, premieres, [Hollywood Walk of Fame] star dedications -- we tend to support,” said John Tronson, former president and chairman of the entertainment district who now sits on the street closure advisory committee.

Residents and merchants say they know that some events should stay in Hollywood.

Uri Zahavi, who has owned Hollywood Souvenir for 30 years, said business declined by at least 25% last week. But that doesn’t mean he thinks that the awards show should be held elsewhere; he knows his sales of the miniature Oscar statuettes depend largely on tourists who come to see the show venue.

“We want the Oscars and everything else to be here,” said Catherine Adamic, whose eight-mile commute from her office in Hollywood to her home in Burbank was doubled -- to 40 minutes one way -- last week. “But the city has to provide relief for our poor commuting.”