The Shrine Auditorium will host the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards on Saturday for the first time since 2020. With one of Hollywood’s largest award events on USC’s doorsteps, preparations are underway—but at the cost of sidewalk and traffic lane closures.
Jefferson Boulevard and 32nd Street, between Hoover and Figueroa, will both be fully closed and access to the USC Shrine Parking Structure and Royal Structures from those streets will be affected, as well.
The impacts of the event, which started on Feb. 14, have some students making alternate plans for the weekend.
“I was supposed to go home this Saturday, but since I’m worried about not being able to get back into the Shrine parking lot, I might wait until Sunday,” said Faith Snyder, an undergraduate international relations major who parks at the Shrine structure. “Already, it’s hard sometimes to find parking spaces.”
While the closures will peak on Saturday, some will remain in place until Feb. 27. An email sent out by USC Transportation to the USC community warned of “additional traffic and congestion in the area for the rest of this week.” The department also provided students with a map of the closures.
“I think USC did a proper job in alerting us,” Snyder said. “I regularly check my emails so I was aware in advance about the street closing.”
Permit holders and USC Village employees are still allowed to use the Shrine parking structure, though they will have to use the 32nd Street entrance and be prepared to show identification to Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) officers who will be managing the parking lot Saturday and Sunday.
At the Royal parking structure, permit holders must use the McClintock entrance.
With the expected overflow from the Shrine structure, USC Transportation said it would be offering parking to permit holders at the Figueroa Structure after 5 p.m. Friday and all day Saturday.
But the most impacted will be those who live adjacent to the event, such as residents of USC housing building Troy Hall and off-campus apartment complexes like The Shrine Collection, Gateway and more.
“It’s pretty annoying,” said Quinn Chow, an undergraduate in Dornsife and Troy Hall resident.
Chow said he would have to take a detour instead of his regular route to campus because of the 32nd Street sidewalk closures. For senior accounting and business administration major Chloe LaBelle, who lives at one of the Shrine Collection properties, the impacts have also already started.
She said her usual trek to campus, through the alley between the Shrine and Gateway, has been closed since Tuesday due to the event.
In addition, sound from reversing event trucks and the noise of unloading heavy equipment have created even more disruption to her daily life.
“A lot of the times when the Shrine has events they’re pretty loud anyway,” LaBelle said. “So I think I’m used to it at this point.”
While some students were inconvenienced by the SAG Awards, students like Chow did not even know what these awards were, let alone that they were happening in their backyard.
As cones and blockades go up, students will continue to create their own detours and maybe even get a chance-encounter with the celebrities just across the street.