UCLA students propose parklets to Westwood Business Improvement District

He walks by the Westwood hotspot Diddy Riese Cookies regularly, often passing up its signature ice cream and cookies because of the long line of customers that seems to stretch continuously down Broxton Avenue.

But Gary Benjamin, a recent graduate from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, said his plan for a small park in front of the popular ice cream shop will encourage others like him take the time to stand in line.

Benjamin is one of several students who created designs for small street parks, or “parklets,” and presented them to the Westwood Business Improvement District as part of a UCLA seminar on public space spring quarter.

Earlier this month, students enrolled in the seminar presented 12 parklet designs to the Business Improvement District in the hopes that their designs will be adopted.  The Business Improvement District is an association tasked with making Westwood more appealing to business owners and shoppers.

Parklets are miniature parks usually built on the site of former street parking spaces. The first parklets in Los Angeles were approved last year to be built downtown, according to Daily Bruin archives.

Business Improvement District staff started looking into implementing parklets in the past year, but have not yet designated any money to build them, said Andrew Thomas, executive director of the association.

Groups of two to three students identified potential parklet sites in Westwood Village where public space is underutilized, said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, associate dean of the Luskin School of Public Affairs, who taught the seminar on public space. Students created parklet designs for the final project of the quarter, she added.

During the last class, students presented their parklet designs to members of the Westwood Village Improvement Association, Loukaitou-Sideris said.

Students created designs for small parks in different locations around the Village and included features such as a fold-out dance floor and electric vehicle recharging stations. Students this year were the first to present designs to the Westwood Business Improvement District since the seminar began in 1990, she added.

The Clean, Safe and Beautiful Committee of the Business Improvement District will review concepts for parklets in Westwood, Thomas said. The association has not yet taken an official position on whether they will build any parklets in the village.

He said the benefits of parklets for businesses would probably offset the loss of one or two parking meters they would cause. He added that Westwood has a surplus of underused private parking spots.

“We have a huge parking inventory in Westwood, especially in the form of off-street and private parking,” Thomas said. “Losing a few (on-street) spaces to parklets won’t make a big difference if we convince more people to park off-street.”

The association is considering building parklets because small parks could be a place for residents to meet and would help local businesses, Thomas said.

Benjamin’s parklet design would replace three-metered parking spaces with outdoor seating, effectively widening the sidewalk outside of the restaurant. The design features planters and outdoor seating to accommodate patrons of Diddy Riese and the new restaurant Fab Hot Dogs, which both have limited seating areas.

Benjamin also included in the design a statue of a female deer, dubbed “Edward L. Doe-heny” after Edward Doheny, the oil tycoon who started the Southern California oil boom.

Benjamin said he hopes the doe statue would become an icon in Westwood, and could be used as a photo opportunity for visitors.

“What we lack in Westwood are real public spaces,” Thomas said. “There aren’t many places for people to congregate, but I think (parklets) could change that.”