Westside Subway Extension: Beverly Hills Merchants To Wage War On Metro

If you thought folks in greater LA were beyond the xenophobic fear that public transit will ruin the tonier areas of the metropolis by providing access for the poor, unwashed masses, you'd be wrong. According to the Los Angeles Business Journal (subscription required), Rodeo Drive-area merchants are organizing to fight the proposed stop near Wilshire and Beverly Drive--last month, 20 merchants gathered at Spago to discuss their anti-station strategy. Aside from worries over construction impacts, Paris Nourafshan, an owner of an office tower at 9454 Wilshire, provided the following rationale for opposition: "The people who shop Rodeo Drive now don't come in by transit bus, so I don't think someone who shops on Rodeo Drive is going to take the subway. The subway riders are not potential shoppers. They cannot afford the kind of products retailers in the Golden Triangle sell." It's limousines--and possibly their own cars--that get the richies to Rodeo Drive, the merchants say.

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