Anyone who has driven, walked, or waited for a bus on Colorado Boulevard near Eagle Rock Boulevard has a Pillarhenge story. Maybe you remember when the graffiti got bad enough that the neighborhood council asked the city to declare it a public nuisance. Maybe you've taken a photo of Pinky, the papier-mâché bird that's nested atop those concrete pillars since around 2014, because a friend visiting from out of town refused to believe you when you described it. Either way, you've probably stopped noticing the lot itself. It's been there so long it stopped registering as unfinished and started registering as furniture.
That's about to change, and it's changing at the same time as something else residents have been arguing about for even longer. In October, Metro construction crews are scheduled to move into Eagle Rock and North Hollywood to begin building dedicated bus lanes on Colorado Boulevard, the next phase of a bus rapid transit project that's been fought over since 2019. Two stalled Eagle Rock sagas, one about a lot and one about a lane, are both hitting their most visible construction phase in the same handful of months, on the same street. If you live along this corridor, this is the season to know what's actually happening rather than just noticing that things look different.
The Lot Everyone Has a Story About
The pillars at 1332 Colorado Boulevard date back to a Great Recession-era housing project that never got finished. The site sat abandoned starting in 2010, and over the following decade it changed hands more than once, first selling for $1.9 million in 2016 and again for $2.76 million in 2022, without anyone actually building anything. It became a local shorthand for L.A.'s inability to get housing built even when the will was there. One longtime local, walking past on her daily stroll, put it about as plainly as anyone could when a Los Angeles Times reporter asked what she thought:
"I'm sick of looking at it. Just build something. Anything."
That's finally underway. The approved plan replaces the pillars with a four-story building holding 31 apartments above ground-floor retail and parking. The project moved forward using the city's Transit Oriented Communities incentive program, the same kind of density bonus that rewards development near transit lines, and three of the units are set aside for extremely low-income renters as a condition of that deal. The pillars themselves aren't going anywhere. According to the project architect, they'll stay in place as structural bones, just no longer visible once the building wraps around them.
Pinky has weathered the whole ordeal. The original bird got ragged enough that it was pulled down and replaced in 2024, and it briefly vanished again earlier this year, disappearing about a month before a wind and rain storm swept through, only to reappear on its perch in March 2026. Whatever the explanation for its comings and goings, its return coincided with renewed activity at the site, which tracks with what residents are seeing now: this isn't another false start. Something is actually rising there.
The Construction That's Actually Arriving in October
The other long-running Eagle Rock story is the fight over bus lanes on Colorado Boulevard, part of Metro's North Hollywood to Pasadena Bus Rapid Transit line, a roughly 19-mile, 22-station project connecting the Metro B and G Line station in North Hollywood to the A Line's Memorial Park station in Pasadena. Metro's board approved moving the project into its construction phase back in December 2024, kicking off a $135 million preconstruction stage that included $44.5 million in early groundwork.
Eagle Rock has been the most contested stretch of that entire 19 miles almost from the start. Some residents have pushed back hard against giving up a car lane for buses, while a community coalition called Beautiful Boulevard spent years negotiating a compromise design that Metro's board ultimately approved in April 2022. That approved plan reallocates one travel lane in each direction for dedicated bus lanes specifically between Eagle Rock Boulevard and Linda Rosa Avenue, which is the walkable downtown core where Colorado Boulevard is lined with shops and restaurants. Closer to the freeway ramps, in the stretch nearer Broadway, the plan keeps all existing travel lanes intact because that's where car volume is highest. On-street parking, including space currently used for outdoor dining, was preserved in the final design rather than removed, which was one of the sticking points during years of public meetings.
None of that has fully settled nerves on the boulevard. When preliminary work began in Eagle Rock last fall, business owners were still voicing frustration. Michelle Cook-Helseth, who owns Native Boutique, told a reporter that the process felt like it "was really shoved down our throats." A mechanic working nearby, David Lanza, put his concern in simpler terms, worried that losing a lane down to two would just mean more traffic, not less. Those reactions came before the heavier construction equipment showed up. Now it actually is.
As of this month, construction on the same BRT line is already underway in Glendale and Burbank. Eagle Rock and North Hollywood are next, with work scheduled to begin in October. On the Pasadena end of the line, the project includes four new stations: one at Pasadena City College, one at Colorado Boulevard and Lake Street, one at Colorado and Los Robles Avenue, and one at Holly Street and Arroyo Parkway near Memorial Park. If you commute between Eagle Rock and Pasadena, that's the corridor you'll want to watch alongside your own block.
What This Actually Means for the Next Few Months
The useful thing to understand here isn't that Colorado Boulevard is having a moment. It's that two separate, years-long stalemates are both converting into visible construction activity at the same time, which means the boulevard is going to feel busier and messier before it feels better, regardless of which side of the bus lane debate you're on.
A few things worth keeping in mind heading into fall and winter:
- Lane changes are concentrated in the downtown core between Eagle Rock Boulevard and Linda Rosa Avenue, not the entire boulevard. Stretches nearer the freeway ramps keep their current lane counts under the approved design.
- On-street parking and outdoor dining space were preserved in Metro's final plan, so the loss of a driving lane doesn't automatically mean the loss of a parking spot in front of your favorite spot.
- The Pillarhenge building at 1332 Colorado Boulevard is going up with its original pillars intact underneath the new structure, which means the exterior you've been looking at for over a decade is about to be enclosed rather than removed.
- If your routine takes you toward Pasadena, expect the same kind of construction activity to show up near Pasadena City College and the Colorado and Lake Street intersection as the project moves east.
None of this requires anyone to have an opinion about bus lanes to be useful. It's just what's physically about to happen on a street most of Eagle Rock uses every week, whether that's a grocery run, a walk to get coffee, or the drive to drop kids off before the 134 on-ramp backs up.
Pinky Is Still Watching
There's something fitting about a decade-plus of civic gridlock resolving into actual construction dust in the same season. Eagle Rock has spent years being told that both the lot and the lane were eventually going to change, and for a long time neither one did. Now they're both moving, on the same boulevard, within the same few months, and the neighborhood's unofficial mascot happens to be sitting right in the middle of it, watching the pillars it's called home finally get built around.
If you've got questions about how any of this touches a specific address, a specific block, or what it might mean down the line for a property you're keeping an eye on, that's the kind of hyperlocal detail Joe Kaplan tracks closely, construction background included. Let's Connect.
