Stores Fear Business Will Be Rerouted : Saticoy: Merchants are concerned that the Caltrans proposal to realign California 118 will cost them customers.

Few in Saticoy celebrated when Caltrans announced that it would finally begin rebuilding the state highway through town in April.

In fact, many Saticoy merchants along California 118 are downright cranky.

Some fear that the realignment of the street, which is scheduled to be completed by 1995, will cost them half their customers--the commuters who stop at Saticoy’s family-owned markets, shops and restaurants when the traffic backs up.

The project would widen the aging two-lane Saticoy Bridge to four lanes and straighten out a dogleg, relocating several blocks of the highway to the south. The existing road will remain, but merchants fear commuters will forget the businesses when they zip through on the new route.

“I think it would hurt us quite a bit and maybe, eventually, we would have to move,” said Masanobu J. Yeto, who has run Yeto’s Market for 20 years. He and other merchants banded together during the environmental review five years ago to fight the project, which has been in the planning stages for a decade.

Other business owners, whose buildings are close to or in the way of the proposed route, voiced frustration at not knowing if, when or where construction will start.

Although construction is set to begin in April, Southern Pacific Transportation Co. recently raised concerns over the new road crossing the railroad tracks only a block from where the old road crosses them.

“It’s inefficient and impractical to have crossings that close together,” said spokesman Mike Furtney. “It’s not necessary.”

Furtney said the company may file a formal protest with the state Public Utilities Commission. The protest could delay the highway project by up to 18 months.

For now, the only thing business owners like Charles Davis can do is wait and see.

“It’s like postponing death,” said the owner of Buster’s Bar-b-que. Davis was notified two months ago by Caltrans that he must vacate his building by April to make way for the new road.

A native of Saticoy, Davis opened a fruit stand at the site 15 years ago, built his restaurant there four years ago and remodeled it a year ago.

He said he wants to find a new site for Buster’s in Saticoy, but not before he has to. He just wants the California Department of Transportation to make a decision.

“Do it soon. Do it now, so I can get off the dime and do what I have to do,” he said.

Before Southern Pacific threw up the red flag, Caltrans had planned to ask for bids next month on the first phase of the project.

News of Southern Pacific’s concerns shocked Ventura County Transportation Commission members who said the company did not object to the second railroad crossing at public hearings five years ago.

Commissioners said if plans must be changed, they want to limit revisions of the environmental impact report to avoid having to reopen the public comment period.

At Friday’s commission meeting, Ventura County Supervisor Susan K. Lacey, who serves on the commission, said Saticoy business owners might try to change the realignment plan given the chance.

“For every day it’s delayed, it could become more complicated,” she said.

Meanwhile, the traffic problems continue. “Every day we’re endangering kids, we’re endangering people’s lives, and it’s just got to stop,” Lacey said.

In 1984, an average of 27,300 cars a day traveled through the dogleg in Saticoy. Traffic increased to 32,500 vehicles a day in 1990, including 4,550 trucks, said Caltrans spokesman Russell Snyder. In 2010, that number is projected to reach 48,100 vehicles.

Although the official public comment period on the highway reconstruction project ended in 1987, Snyder said the agency still is willing to listen to residents’ and merchants’ concerns. Southern Pacific’s protest, however, would be heard by the Public Utilities Commission.

Even the project’s opponents agree that traffic snarls on California 118 are reason enough for some changes to be made. The highway takes sharp turns and is almost impossible to cross or re-enter from a side street.

But Yeto said he and neighboring merchants see hard times ahead, given the drop in business already caused by the recession.

Business is down at least 40% to 50% since last year, Yeto said as he stood in front of his store and waved to a passing motorist.

Although the road has yet to be built, it is already posing financial problems for Buster’s Bar-b-que and delaying expansion plans for owners of the Cabrillo Meat Market across the street.

Because the state and county “don’t talk to each other,” Davis said, he was fined $2,250 last month for failing to comply with building code requirements on the remodeling of his restaurant. He did not finish the work because he knows he must sell his property to Caltrans, he said.

Lorena Esquivel, who helps her family run the meat market, said plans to expand the store and use the adjacent lot for parking are on hold until Caltrans decides whether to take part of the lot for the highway.

Still, Esquivel is among the few merchants who favor the new route.

She expects the reconfigured highway to increase the property value of her family’s market, which sits on one corner of the dogleg. And with the traffic tie-ups on the existing road, she said, conditions can only improve.

Jim Jenkins, owner of the B & J Drive In hamburger stand, is all for having the new highway built behind his 24-year-old business rather than reconstructed in front of it.

“We’d be eating dirt forever and a day,” he said.

Besides, he added, “It’ll be better for the people all the way around because there’s so much traffic. If you get off, you can hardly get back on.”

Some people in the small community have remained untouched by the controversy.

The new road was news to Guadalupe Gaona, an 80-year-old retired lemon picker who has rented a house with his wife in the middle of the business district for 15 years.

Pointing to four chairs on his lawn, he said he did not mind the cars going by. “We sit here and watch the traffic,” he said.

California 118 Improvement Project This map shows the existing route for California 118 and its realignment as proposed by Caltrans. Also marked is the proposed railroad crossing that could delay the project.