High Road, Slow Road: All Lead, Eventually, to the Fair

What do you get when tens of thousands of concert and fair goers converge on the Orange County Fairgrounds at the same time? Gridlock in Costa Mesa.

At least that’s what happened last year when the Beach Boys appeared at the Pacific Amphitheatre at the same time the Orange County Fair was in full swing.

To keep traffic from coming to a standstill Saturday evening, officials have mapped plans they hope will keep traffic flowing smoothly.

However, the success of these efforts, they readily acknowledge, will depend in large part on the cooperation of the 50,000 folks expected to be taking in the sights and sounds of the fair as another 9,000 people are being entertained at an 8 p.m. concert by pop singers Al Jarreau and Chaka Khan.

Last week, representatives of the Fair Board and the amphitheater met to fashion a strategy to reduce traffic snarls. Their plan calls for directional signs to be placed on the San Diego Freeway to divert traffic bound for the fair or concert away from Newport Boulevard and onto Harbor Boulevard, said Fair Manager Norbert Bartosik. Motorists then would follow signs along Harbor and Merrimac Way to the Merrimac gate to the fairgrounds.

Supervising the traffic will be four motorcycle and eight traffic-control officers, said Sgt. Dick DeFrancisco, special events coordinator for the Costa Mesa Police Department. He said the amphitheater has agreed to pay half the cost of providing the police officers, but he did not know what that cost will be.

To help with the expected parking crunch, satellite parking for 2,000 cars will be available at Orange Coast College; another 1,000 spaces will be available at Costa Mesa High School, Bartosik said.

Those arriving about the time of the 8 p.m. concert probably will be directed to these parking areas, he said.

“We recommend that those not going to the fair or the concert avoid Newport Boulevard and Fairview Road from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday,” DeFrancisco said.

The amphitheater is on the fairgrounds but is operated under a 40-year lease by New York-based Nederlander West.

“It looks like things will be well taken care of,” said Costa Mesa Mayor Donn Hall. Still, he and others complained that the potential traffic problem could have been avoided if Pacific Amphitheatre’s management had not ignored objections and gone ahead with Saturday night’s concert.

‘Bad Situation for Residents’

“It’s like (Pacific Amphitheatre) is attempting to create a bad situation for the residents of this community,” Hall said.

Repeated phone calls to Pacific Amphitheatre General Manager Steve Redfearn were not returned. A spokeswoman for Nederlander West in Los Angeles said she could not immediately provide information about why the amphitheater was holding a concert Saturday night or what amphitheater management was doing to resolve the traffic problem.

However, Bartosik said amphitheater representatives told him they scheduled Saturday’s concert because “this act was not available at any other time of the year.”

Nonetheless, Bartosik said the amphitheater’s management did not show “prudent judgment because they’re causing hassles for people.”

Last April, the Orange County Fair Board asked that the state attorney general’s office sue the operators of the amphitheater to block the concert. The Fair Board maintained that the lease agreement prevented the amphitheater from holding concerts during the fair.

The attorney general decided not to file the suit, Bartosik said, because legal action was “not in the best interests” of the Fair Board.