The Four New Crosswalk Murals on La Crescenta Avenue Sit Where the Street Changed Most

"Have you seen the new crosswalk at Piedmont and La Crescenta avenues? It is very colorful, to say the least." That line opened an August 13 column from the publisher of Crescenta Valley Weekly. The column also asked how the city chose where to put the colorful crosswalks.

The answer is on the street itself. Glendale painted four creative crosswalks along La Crescenta Avenue, at Piedmont Avenue, Shirlyjean Street, Oakmont View Drive and Roselawn Avenue. Each one sits at a point where the La Crescenta Avenue Rehabilitation Project changed how people cross, turn or ride. Read in order, the paint works as a map of the redesign.

A Finished Corridor, Three Days Into Its Official Life

The project covers La Crescenta Avenue from North Verdugo Road to Montrose Avenue. The city's completion release says construction wrapped up on August 3, 2026. The ribbon cutting took place on Wednesday, October 7, at Sparr Heights Community Center, 1613 Glencoe Way. It followed the Walk to School Day walk that started at Montrose Community Park.

The scope ran far beyond paint. The city lists sewer upgrades, new curbs, sidewalks and driveways, repaving, ADA curb ramps, and realigned intersections. It also lists signal and fiber-optic upgrades, bioretention facilities, reflective pavement, tree planting, and the change most drivers felt first. One travel lane came out in each direction, a two-way center turn lane went in, and protected and buffered bike lanes filled the rest of the width. Measure M and Measure R, gas tax and sewer fund money paid for it.

The price is reported a few ways. In 2024 the City Council voted 3–2 to negotiate a $14.75 million contract, according to the Glendale News-Press. Streetsblog LA puts the whole project at $15 million to $17 million.

Why the Lower Stretch Got the Strongest Treatment

The street's geography explains the design. The Verdugo Wash runs in a fenced concrete channel along the west side of the lower part of La Crescenta Avenue. That leaves southbound drivers with few intersections and no driveways. The posted limit there is 40 mph, and Streetsblog reports that drivers commonly go over 50.

The bike facilities change with the width of the road. The 1.5-mile project includes:

• about 0.8 miles of protected bike lanes
• about half a mile of standard unprotected lanes
• about a quarter mile of buffered lanes, roughly in the middle of the corridor

On the Wash side, plastic bollards protect the downhill lane. On the east side, the uphill lane runs between the curb and a row of parked cars. The city also realigned several intersections, including Sycamore Avenue, so side streets now meet La Crescenta at closer to a right angle. At La Crescenta, Sierra Vista and Arlington, and again at La Crescenta, Las Palmas and Paloma, the city removed slip lanes and planted rain gardens. Curb openings send stormwater into those planted areas to soak in.

That leads to the four crosswalks.

Four Murals, Four Changes

All four designs come from artists with 11:11 PROJECTS, and Glendale's Arts & Culture listing says all four went in during August 2026. Here is what each one depicts and what changed around it.

Piedmont Avenue. Chang's palette assigns a meaning to each color. Yellow stands for activity, blue for trust and unity, purple for wisdom and diversity, orange for creativity and energy, and green for growth and nature. The crosswalk sits between two neighborhood landmarks, the American Legion/Verdugo Hills Memorial Hall on the west side and the La Crescenta Woman's Club on the east. The same CV Weekly column that called the paint "real pretty" also welcomed the new pedestrian light, writing that people crossing there used to "take their lives in their hands."

Shirlyjean Street. Bell describes "Flowers" as a 1970s look with retro Afro-futurist influence, built on movement, flowers and energy. The location matters because the road changes here. North of Shirlyjean, La Crescenta runs straight north and south up a steeper grade, and the bike lanes have no barrier.

Oakmont View Drive. "Shine on Us" is a geometric universe in which circles stand for the sun, unity and togetherness. It is painted at the intersection that received the corridor's new traffic signal.

Roselawn Avenue. "Vision Pop" reduces traditional signs and symbols to a simpler, universal visual language. Roselawn is also where the city took something away. It removed the crosswalk leg toward the Verdugo Wash because there was no sidewalk or ADA access on the west side. At the public hearing, residents objected that removing it could cut off a future connection to the Wash. Below Roselawn, Streetsblog's July photos showed drivers still going over the 40 mph limit on the straight downhill run.

Missing from the table is the mid-block signalized bike crossing beside Fremont Elementary. It has its own bicycle signal and lets riders cross a street where through traffic otherwise does not stop.

What's Under the Pavement

The drainage work is easy to miss and may last longest. Glendale's drywell fact sheet describes perforated pipes about 3 feet wide and 20 to 50 feet deep. They take runoff that would otherwise reach storm drains at Montrose, Piedmont, Honolulu, Arlington, Las Palmas and Paloma avenues and release it underground, below the clay layers, to recharge groundwater. The fact sheet plans one drywell for each of six improved blocks. A 2024 News-Press report counted 10 drywells and three bioretention facilities, so the final count depends on which document you trust.

A Street People Argued About for Four Years

The current layout traces back to 2022, when the council weighed two options. Alternative 1 offered one car lane each way, a center turn lane and colored protected bike lanes. Alternative 2 kept wider shared lanes marked with "sharrows." One supporter cited 83 collisions in five years. Opponents raised cut-through traffic on side streets that lack sidewalks or lighting, emergency access, congestion and lost parking, as CV Weekly reported in September 2022. The finished street follows Alternative 1.

The argument kept going during construction. In May 2026, a resident told the council the bikeway would sit empty and that less road capacity could make a wildfire evacuation harder. A councilmember asked for comparison data from earlier street projects. The CV Weekly publisher wrote in August that she had not yet seen more cyclists on the corridor. Streetsblog does not expect large bike numbers on a steep, car-oriented edge of the city either. It argues the project is mainly about safety for the much larger number of drivers. In the completion release, Mayor Ardy Kassakhian said the city listens to resident feedback "to make the next project better."

Where the Program Goes Next

La Crescenta Avenue is the latest stop for Glendale's Creative Crosswalks Program. Library, Arts & Culture, the Arts & Culture Commission and Public Works started it as a pilot in June 2023. The program's earlier murals are at Broadway and Galleria Way in July 2023, at Adams Street and Palmer Avenue in August 2024, and along San Fernando Road in October 2024.

The next round has a Sister Cities theme and covers North Glendale Avenue, California Avenue and a second phase on San Fernando Road. Artists receive $1,000 for each crosswalk-leg design, and a city contractor does the painting. Under the current guidelines, the Arts & Culture Commission is scheduled to give final approval on December 17, 2026, with installation planned for 2027 and 2028.

At G&C Properties, we follow street changes like this one block by block, from Piedmont down to Roselawn. If you own a character home on one of the side streets off La Crescenta Avenue and want to talk through how the new corridor fits your plans, let's make it personal. Contact us to discuss your character home.