Just after noon, a young man came to the north side of San Vicente Boulevard, west of Hauser, and watched the flow of westbound traffic.
When he saw the hole, he slid across the center line, where he waited for eastbound traffic to clear before crossing south of San Vicente to pick up takeout. He then retraced his steps across the 150-foot-wide street that knifes through the city near what used to be the Red Car on the Pacific Electric Railway.
He should have used the nearest crosswalk, but there aren’t enough of those on the boulevard, so pedestrians tend to swing and walk across the street like they’re in a game of Frogger.
I watched this show the other day from Dam Good Coffee, where I met two young men who live in the area and, in their spare time, they have been thinking a lot. They’re fine-tuning the pitch to redevelop the boulevard, reduce traffic, improve access to two new transit lanes and transform the Mid-City section of San Vicente Boulevard — from Beverly Center in the west to La Brea in the east — into a 3-mile, 30-acre park.
Prominence. External. You are crazy.
From left, Catherine Geanacouras, Oren Hadar and Michael Wacht of the San Vicente Park Foundation have a plan to turn part of San Vicente Boulevard into a greenway.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
It’s all that and a lot of work, given the many obstacles that can get in the way of their dream. But Oren Hadar, a sound engineer, and Michael Wacht, an architect, are determined, too a small cooperative of neighboring believers.
“One of the things I always say is LA needs to get back into the business of taking big swings,” Hadar said. She is motivated in part by the fact that her two young children do not have a nearby park to play in.
The biggest change comes at a time when Los Angeles is new down from 90 to 93 in terms of park area, investment and accessibility in the year Trust for Public Lands ranking of the 100 largest cities in the US You’d think that a city with great weather and thousands of people living in apartments with little or no outdoor space would fight for a place in the top 10 rather than sink to the bottom of the pile.
“What if LA’s next great park was already there, hiding in plain sight?” the narrator asks in a video from the San Vicente Park team’s website.
Local resident Jo and her dog Elle carefully cross San Vicente Boulevard in Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 17, 2026.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Sun-burnt asphalt may crack. Pedestrians and cyclists can have more breathing room. There will be very little traffic.
“You can put in small forests,” Wacht said. “You can do farmers markets. You can do growing areas. You can do fountains. Playgrounds.”
Catherine Geanuracos, a CicLAvia board member who has been an advocate for turning Silver Lake Reservoir into a water park, joined our discussion and called the idea “remarkably feasible.”
“I think this is what makes LA great,” Geanuracos said. He has lived in New York City and San Francisco and thinks there is a huge opportunity here for citizens who are involved to develop their ideas for community development.
Advocates said they received encouragement from Council members Heather Hutt and Katy Yaroslavsky, whose districts include the site of the proposed park. Hutt’s office sent me a statement saying he supports “efforts to create beautiful, green communities.” He said he encouraged the group to continue exploring the idea, and looked forward to hearing ideas from other different neighborhood groups.
Hadar writes a blog called The Future Is LA, which is part love letter to Los Angeles and part bemoaning its unfulfillment.
“Almost every other major American city has a policy and research think tank dedicated to pursuing ideas that can make the city better,” Hadar recently wrote, calling for LA to have its own.
I don’t want to say that the possibilities of the park idea are small, but let’s look at a few obstacles.
Traffic is moving through the intersection of San Vicente Boulevard and La Brea in Los Angeles.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
The LA city government is having trouble managing the existing parks and open spaces around City Hall, so how can they build and maintain another 30 acres of greenery?
The cost can be in the millions, and the cup is never finished.
Then there is the biggest pitfall on the road to pastoral miracles:
Building this park would mean cramming one or two lanes of traffic on each side of San Vicente. That would dump more cars on the surrounding streets and create another conflict of street food trends that oppose the car culture against the growing need for a safer and more welcoming city for pedestrians, cyclists and transit users.
All of this will be analyzed in a study conducted by the lawyers who collect the money. But fans say San Vicente is less traveled compared to Wilshire, Pico and Olympic, so stealing traffic lanes won’t be a disaster.
I said I would think twice about sending the kids to play in the median strip park. But supporters say San Vicente will be a neighborhood street rather than a road, with safe crossings in the new park, which already has plenty of fully grown trees.
When I took the trip and polled people about the idea of the park, I got mixed reactions.
“That’s a bad idea,” said the man walking in the middle lane. He said he thought that after the addition of bike lanes a few years ago that squeezed out traffic, San Vicente became more dangerous, and the idea of a park between the lanes sounded like a disaster to him.
Miguel Lopez looked like he was trying to bring the idea of the park to life. He sat in the middle row reading a book and smiled when he was shown the version of San Vicente Park.
Blanca Vanburian practices tai chi in her backyard near San Vicente Boulevard on Wednesday.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Blanca Vanburian, who was doing Tai Chi on the lawn outside her building, had several good questions, including whether the city could be trusted to maintain the new park. He said many residents will be concerned about the flow of new cars onto the side streets, and he wonders if the park will attract more homeless people.
Hadar told him that a feasibility study would investigate all of that, and the more he heard, the more Vanburian came to the park idea.
“It’s up to us how we use the public space,” Wacht said, looking at the unsightly road that emits a lot of air and acts as a barrier, separating the two areas. “I’m disappointed when I see so much is given to this, and it prevents us from being a united place.”
Margaret Free walks her three basset hounds, named Bob, Doris and Ruth, along San Vicente Boulevard in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Margaret Free was traveling with three Basset Hounds – Bob, Doris and Ruth. He said he and the dogs could be counted as four votes in favor of the park.
A woman named Jo was able to cross the Frogger safely with her dog, Elle. Jo said she absolutely loves the park and doesn’t think the loss of traffic lanes is a bad thing, but she’s afraid of backlash from opposing drivers and asked me to withhold her last name.
Mr. Joshua Mock, the owner of Dam Good Coffee, said that everyone will benefit from this park, especially the neighborhood children. “It can be dope,” he said, “and it’s good for business.”
For all skeptics, advocates point to several projects across the country where public spaces have been repurposed, including The New York City High Line. And they realize that many local projects are in the design or construction phase, incl LA River master plan, Broadway-Manchester streetscape project and park under the Sixth Street bridge.
If you have ideas for repurposing your neighborhood, send them my way.
Then take the high score.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
