Agoura Hills Mayor Withdraws Plan to Reopen Closed Street

The mayor of Agoura Hills withdrew his proposal to reopen controversial Medfield Street late Wednesday at an emotional City Council session in which the other four council members criticized the plan as an ill-conceived “quick fix” for the traffic jam caused by the street’s closure last week.

But the council did not rule out reopening the street temporarily, ordering city engineers to study making it a one-way street, widening it or banning trucks from it. Council members also suggested that residents shop at off-peak hours and that businesses consider staggered work hours.

The Committee to Close Medfield, a group of homeowners in the Old Agoura neighborhood, has fought for several years to close the street, which residents said brought dangerous and loud traffic into their quiet neighborhood.

Medfield Street was built by a developer for construction traffic in 1978 without county approval, and when Agoura Hills was incorporated in 1982, it did not accept the street. Neither the city nor the county is willing to accept legal liability for the street, which the county closed Aug. 3, to the delight of the Old Agoura group.

But the street was one of only two direct routes from the Ventura Freeway to the Dale Poe Industrial Park, the Canwood business center and the city’s post office. The remaining route leads into what city officials say is Agoura Hills’ most dangerous intersection, Kanan Road and Canwood Street.

City traffic engineers estimated that the closure diverted into the troublesome intersection about 2,300 cars that had been using Medfield Street each day. Many of the more than 100 people who packed Wednesday’s council meeting urged the council to reopen Medfield Street for safety reasons.

Second Access

“We need a second access into the Canwood business center,” said Brian Heller, owner of one of the business parks.

At Kanan Road and Canwood Street, “the present condition is intolerable,” said Mayor Jack W. Koenig, who had proposed improving narrow, substandard Medfield Street, reopening it and accepting it as a city street.

“You have gridlock. The image of the city is poor, to say nothing of the safety issues.”

Since the county closed Medfield Street, Agoura Hills has deployed two sheriff’s deputies at the Kanan-Canwood intersection to direct traffic at a cost of about $500 a day, Koenig said. Left turns from westbound Canwood onto Kanan have been prohibited.

Koenig did not seek a vote on his proposal after all four of his fellow council members spoke against it.

Councilwoman Louise C. Rishoff called it “shoot-from-the-hip expediency.”

No Solution

“Running around the city and whipping the residents into a panic will not solve the problem,” Rishoff said.

Rishoff and council members Fran Pavley and Darlene McBane expressed concern that effort and money spent to improve Medfield Street would be better directed to the city’s long-term solution, the extension of Canwood east from Derry Avenue to Colodny Drive. The extension, at an estimated cost of about $2 million, would provide an alternate route to the freeway. In the meantime, the city hopes to install a traffic signal at Kanan and Canwood by the end of November.

Councilwoman Vicky Leary said that the street is the county’s problem and residents should ask county officials to find a solution.

Several representatives of Monarchs National Gymnastics Training Center told the council that approximately 500 children train at the center and are endangered by having to ride through the Kanan-Canwood intersection.

But members of the Committee to Close Medfield said their children were endangered as well by traffic from Medfield Street.