HUNTINGTON BEACH : Walnut Widening Plan Abandoned

Property owners along Walnut Avenue between Main and 6th streets scored a victory this week when they received assurances that their buildings will not be carved up by a traffic-easement plan.

Ending more than 18 months of discussion among city officials on the proposed widening of Walnut Avenue from two to four lanes, council members this week finally abandoned the idea.

It was a matter of widening a half-mile section of an old street by 20 feet. And council proponents said their plan was not necessarily to widen Walnut at all, but to reserve the right to do it some time in the future, just in case traffic one day becomes unbearable.

As the city’s downtown Main-Pier Redevelopment Project progressed during the past two years, city officials began leaning toward the idea of widening the section of Walnut--slicing through the heart of the area being revitalized--to 80 feet from 60 feet. Walnut Avenue property owners, who each would have 10 feet of their properties slashed away if the street were ever expanded, strongly resisted.

Planning commissioners unanimously endorsed the plan. But the council’s once-solid backing of the idea eroded in recent weeks when a city staff report recommended that Walnut be maintained as it is.

The staff’s recommendation stemmed from the latest study of projected downtown traffic by a city-contracted consultant. That study concluded that the area could flourish well beyond current redevelopment proposals without Walnut being widened.

For Walnut Avenue property owners, the decision was a rousing victory in a battle with city officials over redevelopment.

“Widening Walnut would defeat the purpose of redevelopment because owners would be discouraged from developing their properties, because they’d lose 10 feet,” said Loretta Wolf, who owns three buildings on the street.

Blanche Wood, who lives at Walnut and 5th Street, said she had been “just sick” about the prospect of having 10 feet of the old house threatened.

“If they were to destroy (part of) my property, I don’t know what I’d do,” she said. “This old house is the first cement-foundation house built in Huntington Beach, and I haven’t done anything to it in all those years, and I don’t intend to.”