Coastal Panel Backs Venice Blvd. Repairs

The California Coastal Commission has unanimously approved a plan to finally repave, widen and improve an axle-busting stretch of Venice Boulevard used by millions of beach-goers each year.

The dilapidated one-mile stretch of roadway from Lincoln Boulevard to Pacific Avenue has been in need of repair and repavement as long as area residents can remember. Conditions got so bad several years ago that some began lobbying their elected officials with bumper stickers, pleading with them to “Please Fix Venice Boulevard.”

First, according to Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, motorists went to her predecessor, Pat Russell, and then to Mayor Tom Bradley. Finally, bumper stickers began appearing that said, “Anyone: Please Fix Venice Boulevard.”

To this day, however, in part due to wrangling between the city of Los Angeles and Caltrans, the stretch of roadway remains unfixed, unsafe and unsightly.

Toward Lincoln Boulevard, a median strip hundreds of feet wide is filled with weeds, billboards and trash. Near the Pacific Avenue end, the boulevard crosses the Venice canals on a rotting wooden bridge.

But in an 8-0 vote in Marina del Rey Thursday, the Coastal Commission approved a plan by Caltrans that will not only overhaul the road and replace the bridge with a concrete one, but add bike paths, reinforced roadway at bus stops and roadside parking spaces.

“This is something that has been many years in the discussion stage, and I’m very pleased with getting it one step toward implementation,” Galanter said after the vote.

The city of Los Angeles has already approved the repair plan. It awaits only a final go-ahead from Caltrans, which has jurisdiction because Venice Boulevard is a state highway. A tentative schedule calls for the $7-million construction project to start in early 1991 and be finished 15 months later.

The Coastal Commission needed to approve the project because it lies within the state coastal zone. Among its concerns was that the project not restrict beach access or harm the surrounding environment.

The project, as approved by the Coastal Commission, requires that a shuttle bus service be established during construction to take people to the beach at times when beachside parking is disrupted.

Arnold Springer, a community activist who heads the new homeowner group COAST, or Coastal Area Support Team, said the project was a good compromise between Venice residents, who sought to avoid aggravating neighborhood congestion, and state officials who wanted to widen the roadway.

“I think we got the compromises we needed to get,” Springer said. “It’s about time that this be done. It’s been hanging fire for seven or eight years.”

Larry Sullivan, president of the Venice Town Council and the leader of the Venice Cityhood Committee movement, was not so supportive. He said he was among the “many” community members who support repaving the road but do not support the entire face lift.

Sullivan said the area will lose some much-needed parking space, and that some residents’ proposals to create a community garden or make other creative use out of the massive median strip areas were disregarded.

Moreover, Sullivan said, “They want to turn (the road) into a superhighway and get people to the beach quicker, where they’ll have no place to park.”