Plans afoot for Rodeo Drive

Despite its name, it has been a very long time since there were hitching posts on Rodeo Drive, the four-block mecca of luxury shopping in Beverly Hills. Where horses clip-clopped 99 years ago - the street was laid out in 1907 - today there is the purr of Bentleys, Porsches and Ferraris.

For most of us, a visit to Rodeo Drive has only one purpose: to ogle at the wares we could never afford, to survey the facelifted men and women who apparently do have more money than sense (the average outlay of customers at the design shop Bijan is $100,000) and, finally, to look at all the nice cars.

But as the street approaches its centenary, plans are afoot to change the character of arguably the most chi-chi of the Rodeo blocks by banning cars and delivering it entirely to pedestrians.

Depending on whom you talk to, the idea is practical or it is heresy.

Rodeo Drive, which boasts such brand names as Chanel, Ferragamo, Tiffany, Prada and Gucci, is a byword for posh. But as critics of this proposal point out, Rodeo Precinct sounds, well, anything but.

Reaching agreement on the plan, floated by the Vice Mayor of Beverly Hills, Jimmy Delshad, may prove trickier than settling the North Korean missile crisis. No one in City Hall is placing an order for paving stones just yet. (We assume only Italian white marblewould do.)

Among those anxious about the idea is Fred Hayman, who has spent 40 years promoting Rodeo Drive and its retailers. In 2005, the street, mostly lined with unimposing, single-storey buildings, generated revenues of $350 million, a tidy sum for such a relatively small number of shops.

"I don't think the street should be closed," Hayman told the Los Angeles Times. "Exotic cars are part of the attraction of California."

On the other hand, he added, the idea of making space for tables, chairs and maybe for wandering musicians does have some appeal. "The street has to be more fun to walk," he said.

Others worry about further opening up a street where bona fide shoppers are already far outnumbered by tourists who do not always dress to the standards of the mannequins in the windows. Wrought-iron benches a la Paris may prove popular with dowagers weighed down with bags from Yves Saint Laurent, but what if they become perches for down-and-outs?

Delshad, who has asked the city for a feasibility study into his traffic-free proposal, may have one ally.

Bijan himself has apparently signalled that he is not necessarily opposed. "He said he wanted to think about it," Delshad reported.

One thing may give Bijan pause. He rides to his shop nearly every day in his navy-blue Rolls-Royce. Where would he park it if the plan goes through?

- THE INDEPENDENT