Left in Lurch by Work in Progress : Transportation: Traffic delays born of street improvements in North County are costing merchants dearly, but what’s the alternative to decay?

Until August, Abbas Sarlak had run a fairly profitable gas station here on the busy corner of Valencia Mesa Drive and Sunny Crest Drive.

Then the city closed the Valencia Mesa Drive bridge that feeds traffic into his station, and his business foundered.

With the bridge expected to remain closed during a five-month reconstruction, Sarlak, 53, has sent a letter to the city complaining that his revenues are off as much as 45% and that he has had to get loans to stay afloat.

“It hurts. . . . I might go into bankruptcy,” Sarlak said this week.

Sarlak’s predicament is an increasingly common one in North Orange County, where an aging infrastructure has necessitated many road and bridge improvements such as the bridge in Fullerton.

Small-business owners, dependent upon a steady flow of traffic, have besieged officials in some North County cities with complaints about losing customers because of construction-caused traffic delays.

And with a slew of streets scheduled to be torn up soon for more projects in Fullerton, Placentia, Yorba Linda and Villa Park, officials warn that such disruptions will continue.

“It’s kind of an inconvenience for a period of time, but hopefully the long-term results (in better streets and bridges) will pay off,” said John Schiller, general manager of Steve Bubalo Construction in Monrovia, a firm that handles many road construction and repair jobs in North and Central Orange County.

In most of these projects, city officials said, crews work so quickly that disruptions are minimal. But they acknowledged that longer projects, such as the bridge job in Fullerton, have created major problems for some businesses.

Another of the more disruptive projects in North County is occurring along a two-mile stretch of Euclid Street in Anaheim, where the city is resurfacing the pavement and installing a new storm drain while the county adds new sewer pipes.

The $10-million project, between Katella Avenue and Broadway, began in September, 1988, and is expected to be completed on schedule by next month.

In August, angered over the trenches that have blocked entrances to some shopping centers and forced commute traffic down to a single lane at times, about 200 merchants along the street banded together to battle the city.

Anger directed at the city over the traffic disruption prompted the new Euclid Street Merchants’ Assn. to retain an attorney for a possible damage suit against the city. The merchants are also circulating a petition to ask Gov. George Deukmejian to declare Euclid Street a disaster area, making small businesses there eligible for low-interest loans.

“It’s just a big, big mess,” said Billy Mitchell, organizer of the Euclid Street Merchants Assn. and owner of Billy Mitchell’s Restaurant, where he said revenues have plunged as much as 70% in the last year.

“They’re taking us to the poorhouse a little at a time,” he said. “We are all suffering because we are losing everything we have.”

Other merchants report business losses ranging from 10% to 60%. Especially hard hit has been the Ball Euclid Plaza shopping center at the corner of Euclid and Ball Road, where Mitchell’s restaurant is located. Four small businesses in that shopping center have shut down for lack of customers, and many others are struggling, merchants there said.

“If I had not had my regular customers, I would not have made it,” said Larry Esmino, a longtime hairdresser in the center.

Rufino’s Pizza in the shopping center used to enjoy a brisk lunchtime trade. Since the construction project started, however, Rufino’s owner Rufino Chammas said his lunch business has been virtually nil.

“With the construction, nobody has time to come here and eat lunch,” Chammas said in his nearly empty restaurant one recent afternoon.

And at Spire’s Restaurant, on the corner of Ball and Euclid, assistant manager Donna Newton said a 40% drop in business has forced her to put her 42 full-time employees on part-time status.

“The dinner (rush) used to start at 3 o’clock,” Newton said, as road crews jackhammered the street out front. “We’re lucky now to have (a) dinner (rush) at 6 or 6:30.”

City Blamed for Delay

The merchants, along with many customers, blame the city for dragging its feet on the project. They said they were told it would take just six months. But city officials insist that everyone in the area was told in advance it would take 13 months.

“It’s been going on for too long,” said Jean Muller, 68, an Anaheim resident who was among a handful of customers dining at Spire’s recently. “If we had rain, like the Midwest, I could see the delays. But this is California.”

Not all the merchants agree that the city was at fault. While his B&L; Liquor Drive-In has lost as much as 60% of its business, Robert Gordon said the road crews have been hard at work every day and have let him know all along when they would be blocking off certain parts of the street and for how long.

“I’m not holding anyone accountable for it,” Gordon said. “It’s just bad luck.”

Gordon added that Euclid Street’s retail business had been declining anyway and that the road construction has weeded out some of the weaker stores.

Impossible to Avoid

Dave Nelson, city field engineer in charge of the project, said he sympathized with the plight of the Euclid Street merchants. But he said there was just no getting around the traffic disruptions.

“We’re rebuilding the whole street (because) a good portion of Euclid is just a shot street. The asphalt has served its design life. It’s time to upgrade and replace it.”

The road reconstruction was authorized under a 1982 city bond issue. The Orange County Sanitation Districts also decided to replace an outdated sewer line while the work was under way.

Nelson said it is actually a benefit to the public that the agencies are working jointly on the project: “Yeah, we tore the street up for 13 months. But instead of tearing it up for five or six months now and nine months to a year later with the sewer project, we’ve got double forces working.”

In Fullerton, where gas station owner Sarlak estimated that he is losing nearly $4,000 a month because of the bridge reconstruction, city officials said they had to rebuild the bridge because it was built in the early 1920s and is dangerously narrow.

Effect of Do-Nothing Option

Don Hoppe, a city senior civil engineer in charge of that project, said making no road improvements would hurt small businesses even more in the long run: “If the street is never repaired, it will become so bad that people won’t drive it anyway.”

But that is no consolation to Sarlak. He sent a letter to the Fullerton City Council last month, seeking financial relief to compensate for his losses. The council is considering the request and sent a city employee to Sarlak’s business recently to examine his receipts.

Without the compensation, Sarlak, a husband and father of four who has operated A&M;’s Service for six years, said he is worried that his business will fail.

“At this rate,” Sarlak wrote in his letter to the council, “I would expect to have severe financial difficulties resulting in (the) loss of my business, which will cause significant hardship on my family and loss of (my) home.”