LOS ANGELES — Small businesses along the torn-up stretch of Hollywood Boulevard could receive modest cash grants under a proposal introduced this week at City Hall, a tacit admission that a street-improvement project has been rough on the people who make their living on the street.
The motion, from Councilmember Alicia Rendón, whose district takes in the Boulevard, instructs city staff to draw up a relief fund for ground-floor businesses on the blocks where repaving crews have worked since spring. The Council referred it to committee on Tuesday, and it will be weeks before any grant is written.
The repaving was meant to be further along by now. Its first completion date has come and gone, and stretches of the Boulevard remain lined with fencing that funnels pedestrians into narrow lanes and hides shopfronts from the sidewalk. Merchants have spent much of the year saying the work drove off the foot traffic they depend on.
“You cannot see my window from ten feet away, because there is a plywood wall between my window and the street,” said Ofelia Barreda, who runs a gift shop on one of the affected blocks and testified in support of the motion. “I do not want a handout. I want the street back. Until I can have the street, yes, I will take the help.”
Rendón framed the fund as a bridge rather than a fix. “We asked these businesses to survive a project the city itself has not finished on time,” she said. “The least the city can do is help a few of them reach the other side of it.”
Details remain to be worked out, including how large the grants would be, how many businesses would qualify, and where the money would come from. A preliminary staff estimate put a workable program in the low millions, a figure that drew caution from at least one council member who noted the city is already absorbing the cost of the overrun.
“I’m sympathetic, and I’m also going to ask what account this comes out of,” said Councilmember Harlan Beaufort, who represents a neighboring district. “We can’t keep finding new reasons to spend money we budgeted for something else.”
Under the motion, staff would report back within 60 days with a proposed structure. Any fund would then need a second vote to be created and a third to be paid for, a sequence that all but guarantees no grants before the new year.
For merchants, the arithmetic is more immediate. Barreda said the holiday weeks would tell her whether she reopens in the spring, fund or no fund.
“Sixty days,” she said, repeating the staff timeline outside the chamber. “In sixty days I will know if I made it or if I didn’t. The report will arrive right on time to describe what already happened.”