COSTA MESA : Victoria St. Is City’s Big Capital Project

Victoria Street has become a place to avoid--temporarily, at least--as it undergoes a widening project that is considered the largest capital improvement project the city has ever undertaken.

With construction slowing traffic, the dusty, muddy mess has yet to reveal the grand boulevard planned for the street east of Placentia Avenue to the Santa Ana River. The city expects the project to be completed by the end of summer, although drivers will be able to use the street before then.

A county project to widen the Victoria Street bridge over the river is not expected to be finished until the end of 1992.

Since 1987, the city has considered the project a priority after studies showed that Adams Avenue would soon reach its traffic capacity and that more vehicles crossing the Santa Ana River there would require extra lanes on Victoria Street. After 17 public hearings, an environmental study and subsequent additions, the City Council agreed to undertake the widening of the two-lane residential road.

“They knew they would have to do something on Victoria because of Adams, or else it would bring the city to a standstill,” said Bill Morris, the city’s director of public services.

The council approved the sale of bonds to finance the $23-million project in 1988 and last August awarded the contract to Sully-Miller Contracting Co. of Long Beach. County and state funds account for $1.4 million of the project, but the bulk of the cost has been assumed by Costa Mesa.

Barring heavy rains, which could delay the project, the street-widening project will continue at an accelerated pace as the city aims to smooth traffic congestion, which has brought complaints from residents at City Council and General Plan meetings. Residents say their children are in danger when crossing major streets around the construction and blame much of the increase in traffic on people coming through the city on their way to the beaches.

But Morris said studies have shown otherwise.

“There is a misconception that all of the traffic on our arterial highways is just passing through,” he said. “Much of it is bound for Costa Mesa or originated in Costa Mesa.”

Nevertheless, city and county engineers agree that with only three crossings of the river--at Adams Avenue, Victoria Street and Pacific Coast Highway--Victoria Street needed to be widened to handle traffic in and out of Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Fountain Valley. The county had targeted Victoria Street for widening on its master plan and has also planned for two additional bridges, at Gisler Avenue and 19th Street, but the city objects to those plans.

In the four years since the first hearing on the Victoria Street project, the city has bought or condemned 70 homes and 20 other properties or partial lots. Eight streets that had extended through to Victoria Street are now cul-de-sacs after residents asked to be spared the extra traffic coming off the main road into their neighborhoods.

“The street has shifted to the south where the homes used to be,” Morris said. “Now you have the old Victoria Street, which will be a portion of the frontage road.”

The finished project will have bicycle paths, meandering sidewalks, picnic tables and clinging vines on sound walls to keep graffiti taggers from vandalizing them. There will also be spaces for artwork or sculptures that in the future may be donated to the city, Morris said.