New raised medians on Harbor Boulevard in Costa Mesa get a preliminary OK; city wants more public input

A proposal to build raised landscaped medians on Harbor Boulevard between Wilson and 19th streets in Costa Mesa cleared an initial hurdle Tuesday night.

The City Council voted 3-1 to approve a conceptual design for the medians but was hesitant to approve the project outright after listening to concerns from area residents and business owners.

Council members directed city staff to hold another meeting to solicit public input, finalize a landscaping plan and send the project back to the council for final approval.

Mayor Pro Tem Sandy Genis dissented and Councilman Jim Righeimer was absent.

Councilman Allan Mansoor said that while he approves of the project’s goal to beautify and improve safety along Harbor, he wants to see the final plans before moving to the construction phase.

“I want to make sure we’ve heard all the concerns of the public before we finalize anything,” he said.

Though an aim of the project is to enhance the look of the nearly 1-mile stretch of Harbor — where there’s currently an empty median — the main goal is to improve road safety, city Public Services Director Raja Sethuraman told council members Tuesday.

Between 2008 and 2013, 84 midblock, or non-intersection, traffic collisions were reported on that stretch. Many of the crashes resulted in injuries, and one was fatal, according to city data. Though the proposed raised medians wouldn’t eliminate crashes entirely, city staff expects they would reduce them by slowing traffic and limiting where drivers can make left turns.

“It would narrow down the wide appearance of the street and help bring speeds down, which will improve safety,” Sethuraman said.

Medians along another stretch of Harbor, north of Wilson Street, were installed two years ago and provide the same benefits, he said.

However, a handful of residents and business owners at Tuesday’s meeting questioned whether installing the medians might snarl traffic or make it difficult to access businesses along Harbor.

“If we kill off our small businesses we’re going to kill off the character of Costa Mesa,” resident Robin Leffler said.

Genis said Wednesday that she voted no because of the possible effects on small businesses, saying more outreach to them needs to be done.

Another issue raised at the meeting is that the line of cars waiting in left-turn pockets on Harbor sometimes stretches into the existing striped median. Building a raised median, some said, would cause those vehicles to back up into other lanes, disrupting traffic. Similar concerns were raised by community members at meetings about the project in August 2016 and May this year.

The city made several tweaks to the project following those meetings — such as eliminating proposed medians in front of the 99 Cents Only store and the Maaco body shop and reducing the size of the proposed medians at Harbor and 19th Street and Hamilton Avenue and Bay Street.

A few speakers Tuesday favored the project, noting that driving along Harbor has become a hazard.

“When you drive down that street, yes, the left-turn pockets back up and you have to be careful and aware, but the real kicker is the pedestrians who just walk out in the middle of the street,” resident Barrie Fisher said. “You have this very wide impression and [drivers] hit the gas and fly through the intersection at Wilson and Harbor. I would say it’s an accident waiting to happen, but I think this shows it’s already happening.

“Do whatever you have to do to make it safer,” she added.

The project, which is expected to cost more than $900,000, will be funded in part by a $423,100 grant from the Federal Highway Safety Improvement Program. The remaining cost will be funded through the state gas tax, Measure M2 — a county sales tax approved in 2011 for transportation projects — and the city’s general fund, according to a city staff report.

City staff plans to hold the community meeting requested by the council before the project moves to the Parks and Recreation Commission, which will weigh in on the proposed landscape design. The city plans to incorporate greenery such as drought-tolerant and Mediterranean-style landscaping that is already present in existing medians on Harbor.

Construction could begin by next spring or early summer and is estimated to take four months.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN

UPDATES:

12 p.m.: This article was updated with Sandy Genis’ comment.

This article was originally published at 10:15 a.m.