‘Exciting’ Hollywood Boulevard makeover unveiled. But don’t call it radical.

A major makeover of the Walk of Fame was unveiled Thursday, the day after a ban on almost all cars on San Francisco’s Market Street went into effect—and the timing makes the Hollywood plan look very tame.

The draft plan, spearheaded by Los Angeles City Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell and designed by Gensler and a team including Studio-MLA, proposes widening sidewalks, removing lanes of car traffic and street parking between Argyle and La Brea, and adding bike lanes, landscaping, and sidewalk dining. At the core of the proposal is one idea, the plan says: “The street is for everyone.”

That includes drivers.

Transit advocates have pushed, since at least 2014, to pull a Market Street on Hollywood Boulevard and eliminate cars entirely to make the street safer for people who walk, bike, and ride public transportation.

Supporters of a car-free street, including Curbed’s urbanism editor Alissa Walker, have pointed out that with movie and awards ceremony closures, big chunks of the street are already closed to cars for a significant portion of the year.

Elvina Beck, president of the Central Hollywood Neighborhood Council, attended a couple of meetings during the visioning process for the new Hollywood Boulevard concept plan. While she fully supported an option that would have removed private cars from the street, she says she was in the minority.

Still, Beck says she thinks this first draft is “great,” and that it delivers much better walkability, which was her main concern.

“Hollywood Boulevard is a letdown right now,” because it doesn’t offer much for locals, Beck says. She says this plan would be a huge improvement.

Jessica Meaney, of transit advocacy organization Investing in Place, agrees. But if the plan is for residents—not just tourists—she questions how the plan prioritizes public transit, especially buses.

Metro’s frequent bus service plan aims to get buses through Hollywood Boulevard every 5 to 7.5 minutes—instead of every 20 to 60 minutes for some local buses, but this new proposal could actually slow buses down. It calls for buses along Hollywood to use cut-outs for pick-ups and drop offs, which “creates the potential for delays,” the plan acknowledges, as those buses would have to wait to re-enter traffic.

John Yi, executive director of Los Angeles Walks, says more connections are needed between the upgrades planned for Hollywood Boulevard and the rest of the city, to ensure that people can walk, bike, or take the bus to get to this destination, not just enjoy those ways of getting around while they’re there.

Hollywood is a tourist destination, Yi acknowledges, but Angelenos live there too, and the makeover of Hollywood Boulevard is an opportunity to connect locals to other parts of the city by tapping into existing networks and making it easier to access them.

Still, he calls the plan “exciting and much-needed.”

Via Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell

The stretch of Hollywood Boulevard that runs parallel to much of the Walk of Fame draws millions of tourists very year, and efforts to improve what they find as they amble along the black and pink terrazzo have long been in the works.

As it is now, the Walk of Fame area of Hollywood Boulevard has “insufficient space for the millions of people who visit every year,” the proposal says.

Vendors, people dressed up like superheroes and Jack Sparrow, performers, tour bus hawkers, out-of-towners, and residents entering and exiting Metro stations all battle for limited square footage.

Wider sidewalks would make great strides toward creating more space for people to spread out—eliminating a significant part of the argument that was used to banish street vendors from the area as the activity was legalized across much of the city.

But vendors still might not be welcomed back.

The project description notes that there may be specific sites for “licensed” vendors to sell along the boulevard, but Tony Arranaga, a spokesperson for O’Farrell, says there’s no plan to end the “No Vending Zone” imposed on the area now.

Rudy Espinoza of Inclusive Action for the City, which organizes with and advocates for street vendors, says vendors have been unfairly blamed for crowding sidewalks in and around the Walk of Fame. He says he hopes O’Farrell “decides that street vendors have a future—and a present—in Hollywood.”

In a statement, O’Farrell said the plan’s goal is to “update the Walk of Fame in a balanced, holistic, cohesive way.” As the process continues, “we will keep building a sense of consensus and collaboration around various ideas.”