Medfield Street Becomes a Road to Nowhere

Medfield Street, long the target of protests by an Agoura Hills homeowners group, was closed Wednesday by Los Angeles County, but city officials who had tried to keep the road open said its closure caused severe traffic problems in the area.

The street was built as a temporary access in 1978 by the developer of an adjacent industrial park. But because it was never approved by the county or accepted by Agoura Hills when the city was incorporated in 1982, neither government is willing to accept legal liability for it.

The homeowners group, the Committee to Close Medfield, maintains that Medfield Street is illegal and that traffic from it endangers children and others in their neighborhood.

But for the past six years, the county kept the road open at the request of the city. City officials said the closure of Medfield Street would send all of the area’s traffic through the already busy intersection of Kanan Road and Canwood Street.

That intersection, about a mile west of Medfield Street, is the only other direct route from the business park to the Ventura Freeway.

The traffic jam that materialized Wednesday at that intersection was troublesome, “as we predicted,” said Agoura Hills City Manager David N. Carmany, who toured the area with city Public Works Director Vince Mastrosimone.

“We’re seeing cars having to wait a long time to get through the intersection,” Carmany said. “We’re seeing traffic backing up more than three blocks.”

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Kevin Mauch, who directed lunchtime traffic at the intersection with two deputies working on overtime paid by the city, described conditions as “just about to a gridlock situation right now.”

The only traffic accident in the area Wednesday was a minor fender-bender, Carmany said.

Many drivers were angered by the closure of Medfield Street. As cars approached the barricades, many drivers look perplexed at first, and then angry.

“We’re seriously considering relocating,” said Paul Ebensteiner, owner of the Ebensteiner Co., a contracting firm in the 169-unit business park next to Medfield Street, when he encountered the barricade on his way to lunch.

“You have to be able to get out. It’s impossible on the other end,” he said, referring to the intersection at Kanan and Canwood.

“I think it stinks,” said Eileen Kahn of Oak Park as she turned her car around at the barricade. “What happened to freedom?” Business park workers had collected more than 500 petition signatures Tuesday night after staging a protest against the road’s closure, said Alan Cohen, vice president of Apache Technologies.

Left Turns Banned

The city banned left turns Wednesday from westbound Canwood onto Kanan, Carmany said.

Deputies will continue to work overtime directing traffic, but the city has no other short-term plans until a traffic signal is installed at the intersection in November, he said. In the long term, the city is working on a financing plan for the extension of Canwood Street to create a second access from the freeway to the business park.

Diane Venable, leader of the Committee to Close Medfield, said she does not blame business park workers for being angry, but residents in her group can no longer tolerate Medfield traffic.

“We’ve been as patient as we can for as long as we can,” she said.