Community Corner

Get Rid of Traffic, Clean Up our Streets, Lincoln Residents Say

A new grassroots group surveys 640 residents about improving the boulevard. Here are the results.

Residents have more than a few ideas about how to improve Lincoln Boulevard: relieve gridlock, clean up weeds and trash, and make it safer.

They also say there are too many auto dealerships and shops and not enough restaurants and coffee shops, according to new survey results released this week by the Lincoln Boulevard Task Force, a grassroots citizens group that wants to make the thoroughfare "safe, clean, beautiful, and green."

"Until conducting the surveys, we had little data to guide our efforts," the task force's chairman, Roger Swanson, said in a statement.

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Swanson said the task force deployed walking teams that contacted 100 percent of the businesses and most residents from 11th Street to 6th Street and from the 10 Freeway to the Venice border about taking the survey. They received responses from 638 residents, 91 percent of whom live south of the freeway.

Other priorities identified by the residents? Graffiti and homelessness.

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"Much of what the data shows was common knowledge: Lincoln is a congested roadway that appears to be neglected and over-represented by auto serving business," the chairman said. 

More apartments and shops are likely to crop up along the busy boulevard in the next decade, most of them north of the freeway. The city is weighing at least eight applications to build mixed-use developments on Lincoln between Santa Monica Boulevard and the 10 Freeway. (See map here.)

Among the proposed developments is the "Lincoln Boulveard Collection," four apartment buildings that would be built near the former Wertz Antique Mart with a combined total of 421 unites.

According to the survey, 64 percent of residents want to see the city limit building heights to three stories. Less than 40 percent want more units restricted to tenants with low incomes.

"The community voiced their opinions and we are listening," Swanson said.

Click here to view the survey results.

SEE ALSO:

City Delays Adding Bus-Only Lanes on Lincoln Boulevard

Developer Buys Antique Mall for Reported $11 Million

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