A wish list for 2025

With Christmas 2024 in the bag, WEHOonline shares a wish list for the coming year.

The French Market

We would love to see the French Market’s long-awaited retour à la vie actually start happening. The Crescent Heights-Laurel-Fairfax stretch on Santa Monica Blvd. is one of the most blighted sections of the city, and the neighborhood needs a shiny new shopping development to elevate it into something like a mini-Beverly Grove.

Bike locks

The bike giveaway was a great but overambitious idea — the city later realized they bit off more than they could chew. So how about a bike lock giveaway? In reality it’s the constant threat of theft — not lack of bike lanes — that keeps ridership in WeHo so low. (I’ve had two bikes stolen in under two years) For less than $1,000, City Hall could give out at least 100 locks.

Minor Medical Care

The city contracts special agencies to provide on-call, on-location medical care and checkups to homeless people living in WeHo. Why can’t they do something similar for uninsured or underinsured residents who aren’t living on the streets, so they don’t have to depend on the price gougers at Urgent Care, who charge $400 to squirt hydrogen peroxide in your ear to remove earwax.

Fountain Ave streets and sidewalks

While we aren’t really feeling the bike lanes the city has planned on Fountain Avenue, we’ve been calling out the city’s shittiest sidewalks since 2022. We literally can’t wait to walk them. And sorry, Bette Davis: Even more urgent is the need to reduce rampant speeding on the street, which Councilmember John Erickson correctly labeled a “death trap.” Bring on the speed bumps and four way stops.

Flashing pedestrian lights

How many near-death experiences have you had on WeHo’s fancy illuminated crosswalks, which force pedestrians to walk directly into oblivious oncoming traffic? Most drivers don’t even notice the twinkling yellow lights embedded in high-traffic crossings along Santa Monica, Fairfax, Fountain, Melrose and San Vicente, and the rest just ignore them. Go back to classic red light crossings if you can’t do better.

Cheap big box stores

Not all of us will be able to shop at Erewhon (and many won’t want to). With prices at Gelson’s and Pavilions climbing ever higher and the extinction of local 99 Cents or Less stores underway, WeHo desperately lacks affordable grocery stores. City Hall should be actively courting Costco, Walmart Express and other popular big box retailers to fill this massive gap and force WeHo’s high-end markets to price more competitively. And how about an IKEA for the newly populist Pacific Design Center to get new customers in the doors of our red, blue and green ivory towers. Behold the (spending) power of the people!