Residents and local advocates are pushing to turn a 3-mile, 30-acre stretch of San Vicente Boulevard—running past the Mid-City area and along the former Red Car line—into a linear park. The idea has backing from neighborhood residents and council members, but
Just past noon. a young man appeared on the north side of San Vicente Boulevard. a block west of Hauser. and kept an eye on westbound traffic. When there was a gap. he slid across the median strip and waited for eastbound cars to ease up before crossing over to the south side of the boulevard to grab takeout food.
Then he did it again—retracing his steps across the wide thoroughfare that cuts through the center of Los Angeles along what once was the Red Car line of the Pacific Electric Railway.
He should have used the nearby crosswalk. But on San Vicente Boulevard, there aren’t enough of them. Pedestrians routinely “skitter and scoot” across the street the way players move through Frogger.
That everyday choreography is part of why a small group believes the boulevard could be something else: a park hidden in plain sight.
From a coffee shop near the corridor, the vision sounded equal parts ambitious and urgent. Oren Hadar. a sound engineer. and Michael Wacht. an architect. are working with a coalition of neighborhood supporters to reshape the Mid-City portion of San Vicente Boulevard—from the Beverly Center on the west to just past La Brea on the east—into a 3-mile. 30-acre linear park.
They’re not pretending it will be easy. “One of the things I always say is L.A. needs to get back into the business of taking big swings,” Hadar said. He is motivated, in part, by the fact that his two young kids don’t have a nearby park to play in.
The push lands at a moment when Los Angeles has slipped in how the country measures park access. In the annual Trust for Public Lands ranking of the 100 largest cities in the U.S., Los Angeles fell from 90th to 93rd in park acreage, investment and accessibility.
In a video on the group’s San Vicente Park website, a narrator asks: “What if L.A.’s next great park was already here, hiding in plain sight?”
The proposal is straightforward in concept: sun-baked asphalt would give way to turf, pedestrians and cyclists would have more breathing room, and traffic would be reduced.
Wacht said the design could include “micro forests,” farmers markets, growing areas, fountains, and playgrounds.
Catherine Geanuracos. a CicLAvia board member who has advocated for turning the Silver Lake Reservoir into an aquatic park. joined the conversation and called the idea “eminently feasible.” She said she’s lived in New York City and San Francisco and believes there’s more room here for engaged residents to advance civic improvement ideas.
The advocates say they’ve received encouragement from Councilmembers Heather Hutt and Katy Yaroslavsky. whose districts include the area of the proposed park. Hutt’s office sent a statement saying she supports “effrorts to create more walkable. green communities.” The statement said she has encouraged the group to keep exploring the vision and looks forward to hearing input from other neighborhood groups.
Hadar also writes a blog called The Future Is L.A., described as “part love letter to Los Angeles and part lament on unmet potential.” In a recent post, he called for Los Angeles to have its own policy and research think tank dedicated to pursuing ideas that could make the city better.
But on a boulevard defined by fast movement and complicated crossings, the questions come fast—especially for parents, dog-walkers, and anyone who has watched traffic squeeze through the gap.
One major hurdle is whether L.A. city government can manage what already exists. The advocates face a stark reality: city government has trouble managing existing parks and even the open spaces around City Hall, so building and caring for another 30 acres raises obvious doubts.
Then there is the money. The cost would be in the millions.
And the biggest obstacle is physical: creating the park would mean squeezing off one or two lanes of traffic in each direction of San Vicente. That would likely move more cars onto surrounding streets and trigger yet another “road diet” fight—one that pits car culture against a growing demand for safer. more inviting streets for people who walk. bike. and use transit.
The advocates plan to examine all of it in a feasibility study they are raising money for. Still, supporters argue San Vicente is lightly traveled compared to Wilshire, Pico and Olympic, and that stealing lanes wouldn’t be catastrophic.
They say the park would function more like a neighborhood service street than a throughway. Supporters also argue the crossings into the new park would be safer, and that the corridor already has plenty of full-grown trees.
Even so, the idea meets mixed reactions out on the sidewalk.
A man walking along the median strip called the park proposal “a bad idea.” After bike lanes were added a few years ago, he said, vehicular traffic was squeezed and San Vicente became more dangerous. In his view, putting a park between lanes of traffic would be disastrous.
Miguel Lopez, seated on the median strip with a book, looked like he was trying to help the plan become real. When he was shown a rendering of San Vicente Park, he smiled.
Blanca Vanburian was doing a variation of Tai Chi on the lawn outside her apartment building and had questions that went straight to the heart of the pitch. She wondered whether the city can be trusted to maintain a new park. raised concerns that residents would worry about how traffic flows change through side streets. and asked whether a park would attract more homeless people.
Hadar told her the feasibility study would probe all of it. As the conversation went on, Vanburian said the more she heard, the more she came around to the idea.
Wacht, scanning an unattractive stretch of roadway that generates exhaust and serves as a barrier dividing two neighborhoods, said, “I get disappointed when I see so much of it devoted to this, and it’s keeping us from being more of a cohesive neighborhood.”
Margaret Free, walking three basset hounds—Bob, Doris and Ruth—said she and her dogs could count as four votes for the park.
Jo, who managed a Frogger crossing with her dog, Elle, said she is absolutely in favor of a park and doesn’t think losing lanes of vehicle traffic is a bad thing. But she worried about backlash from drivers who disagree and asked that her last name be withheld.
Joshua Mock, owner of Dam Good Coffee, said the park would benefit everyone, especially neighborhood children. “It’d be dope,” he said, “and good for business.”
For the skeptics, the advocates point to public space makeovers around the country. They cited New York City’s High Line and pointed to local projects in the design or construction phase. including the L.A. River master plan, the Broadway-Manchester streetscape project, and the park under the Sixth Street bridge.
As the group looks to raise money for the feasibility study, the question on San Vicente Boulevard remains tactile and immediate: will this corridor keep demanding Frogger-level improvisation—or will the city, finally, take the big swing the advocates say it’s been missing?
San Vicente Boulevard Los Angeles parks linear park traffic lanes councilmembers Heather Hutt Katy Yaroslavsky Oren Hadar Michael Wacht Trust for Public Lands feasibility study