Slow Growth Gets a Dig as I-405 Project Begins

Orange County’s most influential business and political leaders gathered in a South Coast Plaza parking lot Monday--not for an outdoor sale, but for the beginning of the two-year, $34-million San Diego Freeway (I-405) widening project.

But the issue of the county’s future growth dominated the ceremony marking the occasion, with speakers defending the county’s continued growth as necessary and criticizing any move to slow it down.

Henry T. Segerstrom, developer of South Coast Plaza, joined State Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), Caltrans Director Leo J. Trombatore and a cast of about 100 people in the unveiling of the first freeway sign alerting motorists to the project.

During the next two years, soundwalls and car-pool lanes will be added to the 14-mile stretch from the San Gabriel River Freeway (I-605) in Seal Beach to the Corona del Mar Freeway (California 73) in Costa Mesa. Work on a $22-million, 10-mile stretch south to the Santa Ana Freeway (I-5) in Irvine will begin in about six months.

Lane Closure Hours

Both segments are scheduled for completion in 1989. Lane closures will be restricted mostly to nighttime hours to avoid more traffic snarls, according to the California Department of Transportation. However, traffic may be reduced to one lane in each direction at times.

On a makeshift stage under a white canopy in the shopping center’s parking lot near Bear Street and the freeway, several participants in Monday’s ground-breaking ceremony acknowledged that they were trying to deliver a political message to traffic-weary Orange County motorists as well as celebrate the start of the county’s first major freeway project in 10 years. A poster proclaimed: “The solution is here and now.”

“This is another step in the right direction,” Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez said. The San Diego Freeway project, he said, shows that Orange County can “conquer” transportation problems. He said the “ultimate conquest” will occur when three new projects are completed: the San Joaquin Hills, eastern corridor and foothill corridor freeways in south Orange County.

To be sure, some speakers, such as county Transportation Commissioner James Roosevelt, treated the event as a celebration. Roosevelt, nearing 80, joked about how glad he was to live long enough to see the start of a project that had been discussed for so many years.

Slow-Growth Initiative

But several speakers at the ceremony--and at the lunch that followed at the Westin South Coast Plaza Hotel--took aim at the so-called slow-growth initiative that freeway foes and other activists hope to place on the county ballot in June, 1988.

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) referred to Orange County as the “economic heart of California.” Without referring to the slow-growth initiative specifically, Ferguson warned against anything that threatens to slow down the county’s--and hence the state’s--economic growth.

During the lunch, Segerstrom said he was pleased to be in a room full of “pro-activists” instead of “reactivists,” and added, “I know you know what I mean.”

Segerstrom recalled that in 1953, state highway officials doing long-range planning for the San Diego Freeway were met by hostile farmers protesting the idea of a freeway cutting across their crops diagonally.

There are still protesters, Segerstrom noted, but they are now opposed to growth.

Segerstrom also criticized unnamed people he described as being unwilling to “pay for the (transportation) system.”

Segerstrom was a driving force behind the routing decisions that were made for the San Diego and Costa Mesa freeways during the 1960s and 1970s that benefited his development plan for South Coast Plaza and the Town Center office complex nearby.

However, both Segerstrom and Trombatore observed Monday that the Costa Mesa portion of the San Diego Freeway was not open to traffic until a year after South Coast Plaza was built.

Trombatore argued that this is evidence that freeways serve existing traffic and do not directly cause more development, a major argument advanced by slow-growth advocates.

However, Segerstrom’s critics allege that he knew where the freeway would be built long before he committed his own money to developing the site.

SOUNDWALL CONSTRUCTION SITES Soundwalls will be built along the San Diego Freeway during the widening project. At a ground-breaking ceremony in Costa Mesa on Monday, Caltrans released the following list of soundwall construction sites:

West Side of Freeway

Corona del Mar Freeway to south of Fairview Road.

North of Fairview Road.

Harbor Boulevard to the Santa Ana River.

Ward Street to Talbert Avenue.

Slater Avenue to Bushard Street.

Magnolia Street to Heil Avenue.

Heil Avenue to Newland Street.

McFadden Avenue to Bolsa Avenue.

North of Edwards Street.

Westminster Avenue to south of Bolsa Chica Road.

North of Seal Beach Boulevard to the Garden Grove Freeway.

East Side of Freeway

Talbert Avenue to Brookhurst Street.

Slater Avenue to Bushard Street.

Warner Avenue to Magnolia Street.

Magnolia Street to Newland Street.

Beach Boulevard to McFadden Avenue.

McFadden Avenue to the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks.

Goldenwest Street to south of Edwards Street.

Edwards Street to south of Westminster Avenue.

Westminster Avenue to Springdale Street.

Springdale Street to south of Bolsa Chica Road.