Norco Battles Freeway Blues : Commerce: When Interstate 15 was completed, bypassing the city, businesses experienced a sales slump.

For more than a decade, it ranked among Riverside County’s biggest hassles: Motorists bound for San Diego and Las Vegas on Interstate 15 would have to exit and drive down Norco’s main boulevard while a 10-mile link of the freeway remained unfinished.

But the detour couldn’t have worked out better for the Country Junction, a mom-and-pop restaurant on Hamner Avenue where motorists would get out, stretch their legs and have a taste of the establishment’s biscuits and gravy.

That tradition ended for many motorists in June, 1989, when the new stretch of Interstate 15 between the Riverside and Pomona freeways opened, leaving the Country Junction and a host of other businesses barely visible from the freeway. Now, many out-of-towners pass through Norco without even knowing it, and they are seldom seen in the Country Junction.

“They get off by mistake,” said Elmer Arnold, the restaurant’s owner. “They are surprised we are here.”

City officials and business owners are planning to fight back and recapture the attention of passing motorists. Their tactics range from erecting huge windmills near the freeway to developing extensive specific plans aimed at stimulating business growth in the area. And, in one of the most controversial proposals in this rural enclave, some are calling for the City Council to allow billboard advertisements along the interstate.

“We have suffered drastically, and we need some help,” Jim Emley, the owner of a Chevron station on Hamner Avenue, told the City Council in June.

When the freeway first went through, Emley estimated that Hamner lost as much as 75% of its traffic, a relief to many residents. But Emley’s daily gasoline sales dropped by 1,000 gallons, and he was forced to cut back his staff. Even a Norco dentist told a councilman that his business was suffering; he no longer had patients coming in for emergency tooth work on their way back from Las Vegas.

In November, an economic report devoted to Hamner Avenue revealed that Norco had suffered “substantial sales leakage” to Corona, which has greater industrial, commercial and retail development. Norco city officials say that with the freeway in place, it makes the leakage all the worse.

Restaurateur Arnold, who let several employees go after his business dropped $10,000 a month, says the solution is simply to let motorists know that there is a reason to stop in Norco.

“No one can see us until they’re at the top of the off-ramp,” Arnold said. “They got to have some kind of signage that tells them that there’s something in Norco.”

To prove his point, Arnold erected a temporary, 12-foot-high sign and placed it on the roof of his stucco restaurant, in plain view of freeway traffic. Although the sign violated city codes, more people noticed his business.

“All it said was ‘EAT,’ ” Arnold said. “But it worked. My business was up that weekend 25%.”

For all the freeway business that Norco merchants have lost since the interstate was completed, they have recaptured some of the locals who previously may have been put off by the traffic. Norco is hardly a ghost town: Sales tax revenues for the city for 1989-90 were $1.4 million, $228,000 short of projections but still slightly higher than the previous year.

In fact, some Norco residents believe that the freeway could be a window of opportunity, and that the city just needs to find its niche.

“Trying to hit a happy balance is what we need to do,” City Councilman Bill Vaughan said.

To start, the city plans to spend $100,000 on signs that will direct motorists to central business districts, parks, civic buildings and local landmarks as they exit the freeway.

In addition, Caltrans is expected to install signs on Interstate 15 identifying the 2nd and 6th street off-ramps as routes to gas, food and lodging.

Still, some business owners are skeptical of whether such an effort will be enough. Months before the freeway opened, Bob Adams, president of Santa Ana-based Adams Advertising, had begun lining up Norco businesses to purchase space on eight proposed billboards along the freeway.

Of the 16 billboard faces being offered, he has already sold 11 faces to local advertisers, Adams said.

“You can point to a whole bunch of towns that are bypassed by freeways that are currently like ghost towns,” Adams said. “It (billboard advertising) is the only successful form to get people off the I-15.”

But so far, the City Council has rejected all billboard proposals, and the Planning Commission even has concluded that the signs contribute to “urban pollution.” Even the Norco Chamber of Commerce came out against billboards at a June meeting.

“We don’t need the eye pollution of Winston cigarette ads,” said David Pollite, a member of the Chamber of Commerce board of directors. “I think that we’re pretty well convinced that billboards aren’t the answer.”

Michael Jents, a member of the chamber, added that the contours of the freeway would make the signs “some of the tallest structures in our city.”

Community Development Director Jim Daniels said the city fears that local businesses could eventually be priced out of the advertising space, and businesses in other cities or even national advertisers could wind up using it.

“Once you give them approval, the First Amendment takes over and you can’t control the content of those signs,” Daniels said.

But Adams said he has committed to give Norco advertisers first right of refusal and that the cost of advertising wouldn’t go up more than 10% per year. He also said he would not sell ads for hard liquor or cigarettes.

Adams added that the signs would be designed so they look like covered wagons, fitting into a western, rustic-style theme being promoted by city planners.

While the City Council has rejected the billboards, it has waived height restrictions on some signs that promote entire business districts. A red-and white sign promoting the Norco Auto Mall, for example, is 85 feet, even though restrictions limit such signs to 65 feet.

Already, the easing of those restrictions has caused controversy. Most recently, a new Jack-in-the-Box off the interstate was allowed to exceed the height limitation on the condition that it promote “Old Town Norco,” a district of western-theme businesses on 6th Street. But the sign, which includes a windmill at the top and bright lights outlining its letters, has made some residents irate.

One resident, at a council meeting last week, called it a “miserable, Jack-in-the-Box casino sign.”

Said another: “I feel like I’m in the middle of Disneyland.”

Community Development Director Daniels says signs won’t solve all of the problems on Hamner. Rather, he said, it will take an extensive new redevelopment strategy for Norco to make full use of the freeway market.

A Fullerton-based consulting firm, Urban Futures, has been working on a specific plan that will guide development along Hamner, known as the “I-15 corridor.”

The plan outlines a series of strategies to prevent business from being siphoned off to Corona, and suggests that the city should try to attract more hotel and motel facilities and greater entertainment, professional, health and leisure services.