Two popular design stars, six spectacular design rooms, more than 500 industry experts, thousands of products and services.

You’ll find them all at the 33^rd annual Philadelphia Home Show, which runs over two long weekends — Jan. 18-20 and 24-26 — instead of eight straight days at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Celebrity guests include Ahmed Hassan, formerly of DIY Network’s “Yard Crashers,” who will motivate you to take on even the most difficult landscaping and design projects, and John DeSilvia of DIY’s “Under Construction” and “Run My Renovation,” who will teach how to get the most out of planning your home renovation.

New this year is Family Day on Jan 20, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Kids under 12 get in free. On Hero Day Jan 24, military, firefighters and police get in free.

In “Simon’s Sticker Room by IKEA,” a completely white room will be transformed with stickers over the course of the show.

In the “Unhinged Challenge,” celebrity experts and design bloggers are competing in a contest to repurpose a door from Habitat for Humanity’s Philadelphia ReStore location

Many final additions and show attractions for the 2014 show are still being confirmed, so please check in http://www.phillyhomeshow.com for updates and for ticket information.

Tickets are $13, door; $10, online; $3, ages 6-12. There will be free parking at the Sugar House Casino and a free shuttle to the Convention Center.

More info: http://www.phillyhomeshow.com

—Jodi Duckett

Newport council decides to turn a 1,300-square-foot triangular plot into a pocket park, perhaps with seating and a sculpture.

By Emily Foxhall

January 14, 2014 | 9:47 p.m.

On East Coast Highway in Corona del Mar, just north of Hobie Surf Shop, green grass covers a triangular piece of land that is easy to miss, save for the painted mural periodically changed on the wall behind it.

The mural will continue, but this 1,300-square-foot property won’t be left alone for long.

The Newport Beach City Council voted Tuesday night to move forward with plans to landscape it as a pocket park.

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  emily.foxhall@latimes.com

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“It will certainly look nicer, and it will be usable space there, which is great,” said Laura Detweiler, the city’s recreation and senior services director, adding that the projected cost of the project is $90,000.

As part of an ongoing effort to increase walkability in the area, the space could include an area for seating and perhaps a sculpture, explained Ron Yeo, a Corona del Mar resident and architect who did the preliminary design pro bono.

A bronze plaque in the park will pay homage to Myrtle Cox, who lived in El Cajon but owned various commercial properties in Newport Beach. Cox agreed to donate the land before her death in December at age 87.

“It was a remarkable gift from one who was not even a resident of our city,” said Mayor Pro-Tem Ed Selich.

The part of the land that slopes upward will be terraced. A different type of water-conserving plant will be showcased on each level, said Selich, who first had the idea for the park about 15 years ago.

“This had all the elements of the right size, the right location,” he said. “All the little pieces just fell into place.”

Residents might stop to rest their feet there, Yeo imagined, perhaps picking up a lemon supreme cupcake or a scoop of bubblegum candy from B.Candy, which borders the park to the north. Yeo passes the space on his morning walks.

As it stands, teenagers have posed in front of the wall to take pictures during the summertime. Families have stopped by the grassy spot to take Christmas card photos in December, said Sarah Dineen, a store manager at Hobie Surf Shop. Otherwise, it often remains vacant.

Dineen looked forward to the park being built next to the store, expecting that it could bring added business.

And even if this does not draw more business to the area, it will benefit shoppers who may need to take a rest between stores, said Bernie Svalstad, vice chairman of the Corona del Mar Chamber of Commerce and the Business Improvement District.

“It will add to the charm of Corona del Mar Village,” he said. “I think that’s what it’s all about.”

The park follows a number of ideas dreamed up as part of the Corona del Mar Vision Plan, which Selich helped to oversee when he served as a planning commissioner. It included crosswalk improvements across Coast Highway and median landscaping. Next up may be bike racks and cleaned up newspaper stands.

Also Tuesday, council members approved appointments to various council committees, held a public meeting on the renewal of the Newport Beach Tourism Business Improvement District and conducted a public hearing on new regulations for wireless telecommunications facilities.

A battle of the streets could be brewing in the Harbor Area as competing makeover ideas are eyed for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Great Streets Initiative.

The program and its impact specifically on San Pedro was discussed Tuesday morning at a meeting of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce’s Economic Development and Policy Committee.

The Great Streets program, announced in October as Garcetti’s first executive directive, aims to improve and beautify 40 streets throughout the city of Los Angeles by adding landscaping, features such as pocket parks and plazas, bike corrals, and sculptures and murals.

In his rollout announcement of the program, Garcetti specifically named San Pedro’s Sixth Street as a potential candidate. Plans already were being floated to make Sixth and Seventh streets one-way arteries to allow diagonal parking and open-air dining throughout the main corridors of the historic downtown shopping district.

But the town’s Gaffey Street entrance and exit via the 110 Freeway also was earmarked on the city’s initial draft list of 180 potential streets to be considered for the mayor’s program.

While both conceivably could make the final list, a Garcetti spokeswoman said the timing wouldn’t be simultaneous and funding will be a factor as streets are improved.

“We expect only to be able to do three to five (streets) a year,” said Vicki Curry, ‎associate director of communications for Garcetti. “The whole concept is to leverage existent resources so the city isn’t necessarily bringing new money to rehab these streets.”

She said “possibly both” Sixth and Gaffey streets will be included in the final list, but if so they would likely be done a few years apart.

“There’s been a working group meeting since mid-October and they’ve been developing a list of candidate streets,” Curry said. “I believe they’re going to start announcing them one or two at a time as they’re ready to go.”

The first announcements, she said, could come as early as the end of this month or the beginning of February.

“It will be an ongoing process,” she said.

In Wilmington, Avalon Boulevard is expected to be the runaway first choice.

Alan Johnson of Jerico Development Co. — a partner in the Ports O’ Call redevelopment project — has been working on plans to redo Sixth and Seventh streets for several months, predating Garcetti’s Great Streets announcement.

“It was a happy coincidence,” Johnson said. “This was an initiative we’d embarked on six or seven months ago and then the idea that it might fit in with the mayor’s first executive directive — how lucky, if it works, if it fits.”

Both streets terminate at Harbor Boulevard, where visitors can enter the waterfront area, including Ports O’ Call Village to the south.

Octaviano Rios, Garcetti’s Harbor Area representative, told members of the chamber committee that Sixth Street “is a great pick” for the streets program.

Johnson’s plans also call for new signage on Gaffey to direct motorists into downtown and toward the waterfront.

Traffic on Sixth Street would be one-way east to west and traffic on Seventh would be one-way west to east.

The project, which would cover the blocks east of Pacific, is viewed as a way to help spur revitalization of downtown restaurants and shops while providing a connection to the water. Linda Grimes, chairwoman of the San Pedro Arts, Culture and Entertainment District, said outside dining has been a focus of that committee as well.

Also already in the works — but further along than Johnson’s proposal and with some funding already identified — is the city’s plan to revitalize Gaffey Street from the freeway to 13th Street, a stretch that has long been bemoaned as an eyesore for those entering the port community.

It would be a likely candidate to roll into the Great Streets program, city officials said.

An initial effort to spruce up the entrance came when city officials opened a welcome park August 2007. The 1.1-acre park replaced a closed gas station with grass, trees, decorative stone and a standard of flags.

Now the city also has acquired a long-vacant parcel on the other side of the street to develop into an “exit” park that motorists will see as they get on the 110 Freeway or Vincent Thomas Bridge from Gaffey.

The revitalization effort — for now still separate from the Great Streets Initiative — also would bring new palm trees, a new median and more work on the foot bridge overpass as envisioned by the Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative working with the city’s Department of Transportation. Bids are being sought now for the conceptual project.

The project also calls for creation of a business improvement district for Gaffey Street.

Rollingwood has provided area residents with an ideal template for planning new landscaping this spring with its “waterwise garden” at City Hall, 403 Nixon Drive.

The garden recently installed in front of City Hall contains no grass and is made up of plants aimed at significantly reducing the need for water (see story on page A1). With a continuation of the drought that has plagued Central Texas and destined to continue, according to the Lower Colorado River Authority and most experts, the city’s garden offers food for thought about landscaping in general.

Ideas for the garden began to materialize as a result of watering limitations during recent years. City officials deserve credit for offering a healthier alternative to simply ordering residents to reduce watering.

One of the only drawbacks of the new garden is a lack of labeling of plants, but city officials say it is still a work in progress, and that they are in the process of developing a plan to identify existing and future plants to make the garden more user-friendly.

Combined with the Rollingwood’s nearby community garden, the new garden and system of cisterns designed to capture rainwater for occasional irrigation during dry periods, Rollingwood is taking the lead in showing what one small city can do.

Once the city works out all of the details relating to which plants should be advocated and how to adequately label them, residents from throughout the Westbank and surrounding communities may be paying this small city a visit.

The garden is a testament to a small city taking a proactive approach to dealing with the drought, and residents have good reason to feel a sense of pride.