A Street By Any Other Name

If the name of the street you live on were to change, would you feel slightly disoriented? Would you continue to refer to it by the former name? Would you feel a lost sense of identity?

While some residents resist changing a street name to preserve a neighborhood’s past, others say new names can help bring a revived sense of community to fast-developing areas.

Changing the name of a street is not only a big adjustment for those who reside and work there, but it also can lead to unforeseen hassles, involving everything from changed business cards to renamed freeway signs.

Despite the drawbacks, a number of streets in North County have received new names late in life. They include thoroughfares--Carlsbad’s long-standing Elm Avenue that was changed to Carlsbad Village Drive--and lesser traveled roadways--a portion of E Street in Encinitas that is now named Cole Ranch Road.

Street names are sometimes changed to accommodate growth or new highway construction or sometimes because property owners want to honor a relative by naming a private street after them. Other times residents simply do not care for an existing street name.

When a property owner wants to initiate a name change, they can apply to a city or county planning department. The fee is usually $100 or so and most of the neighbors must agree to the change.

David Turner and his wife, Queenta, have lived on Valley Drive in Vista for nearly a decade. In 1990, when city officials opened a fire station on the street near Monte Vista Drive, a portion of the road was realigned. The stretch of road where the Turner’s live was re-engineered into a cul-de-sac to better control the area’s traffic flow.

Six months ago, city officials told Turner and his neighbors to choose from three street names, one of which would replace their section of Valley Drive. The first week in January they were told Fireside Lane was the winner. New signs have not yet been installed, which is fine with Turner and a few neighbors, he said. They are anything but thrilled with the new choice and intend to make their voices heard at City Hall.

“It’s great that we have a cul-de-sac,” Turner said. “We think it’s safer that way. But we didn’t have much input as far as the name goes. We would have preferred something like Valley Court,” to retain a portion of the former name.

Getting people to agree on a street name is difficult at best, said David Shaw, a Vista planning staffer who handles about six name-change requests a year.

“It’s a pretty controversial thing when it happens,” Shaw said. “A lot of people don’t want their addresses changed. It’s a lot of hassle for homeowners. It’s like they move without moving. They didn’t have to pack any boxes, but they have to change their address and their mail and their checks with the bank. They have to tell all of their friends. Even stationery all of a sudden no longer has the correct address.”

Renaming streets often occurs out of necessity when streets are expanded or realigned. Older segments of roadway are renamed, usually with the word “old” in it, to differentiate between the new section. This is intended to reduce confusion for motorists and emergency services such as police and fire departments that may have to quickly locate a specific place in dire situations.

In Poway last year, a quarter-mile stretch of Community Road between Aubrey and Norwalk streets was changed to Old Community Road to distinguish between the original and the newly constructed sections, said Oda Audish, a Poway planning staffer.

The same thing occurred in Escondido in 1990 when a portion of Via Rancho Drive was realigned and became Old Via Rancho Drive, said Mary Vivanco, an Escondido planner.

Street names in Encinitas are rarely changed, according to Tom Faulkner, a public works engineer. But when they are, it’s usually initiated by property owners and not due to road reconstruction.

A portion of E Street in Encinitas between 5th and 12th streets was changed to Cole Ranch Road a couple years ago to honor a long-established Olivenhain family that still resides there.

Cole Ranch Road resident Norman Dresser said he welcomed the name change because it pays homage to a family that played a role in the area’s history.

“E Street never meant anything to me,” Dresser said from his home recently. “The Cole family are pioneers in this area. Their family has been here since the original colony of Olivenhain formed about 100 years ago. It’s significant in that the roots of the community are being expressed through the name of the road.”

Simply not liking a Carlsbad street name was the impetus behind one family’s effort to change Gozo Place to Las Brisas Court in 1990.

After the couple moved to the pricey La Costa neighborhood in 1989, they petitioned the city’s planning department to change the name.

Karen Zerlaut was one neighbor who objected to the change.

“We live in an area with English Tudor-style homes and the new name just didn’t seem to fit,” said Zerlaut, who has lived at her address for 12 years. “We thought if we change the name at all we should have something British sounding like Coventry Place.

“I didn’t mind the name Gozo Place. It was a short, easy name. So what if it sounded like bozo. You grew to like it. I knew gozo meant joy in Spanish. I thought it was a nice name to have.”

It is not common for Oceanside street names to be changed, according to Bob Johnson, a city planner, but not unheard of either. Sunrich Country Road in the Sunrich Country subdivision (on the east side of town north of Oceanside Boulevard) was changed last year.

After Oceanside planners realized the street would one day be expanded southward to Melrose Avenue--and away from the subdivision it was named after--it was changed. The new name: Sagewood Lane. The site is still under construction and without residents, so the name change generated little emotion.

On the other hand, down the road in Carlsbad plenty of emotion was attached to the decision to change Elm Avenue to Carlsbad Village Drive.

The mile stretch of roadway from Interstate 5 to the beach has been considered the city’s main drag for years. A number of businesses line the road, including fast-food restaurants, commercial banks and mom-and-pop stores.

Although the City Council approved the change back in 1987 to give the area “a larger community identity” officials said, it was not until this past summer that new signs were installed.

Increased costs to the California Department of Transportation to design and install new signs along Interstate 5 was partially blamed for the four-year delay, according to Van Lynch, a Carlsbad planner.

While dozens of Carlsbad merchants with businesses on and along the roadway protested the name change mainly due to the more than $100,000 cost to taxpayers, just as many favored it, Lynch said.

Beth Puente, owner of World’s Fair, a gift store on Carlsbad Village Drive, supported giving Elm Avenue a new name. She agrees with city officials that a sense of community can spring from a street name.

“I think the name change helps Carlsbad have more of a center of sort,” said Puente, who manages the 6-year-old shop. “I think a lot of people equate it with La Jolla Village Drive, which is a successful commercial area.”

The biggest problem Puente encountered with the name change was confusion with the telephone company. New street signs were installed nearly six months behind schedule and six months after the phone company had changed Elm Avenue to Carlsbad Village Drive with the telephone directory service.

“Customers would call information and had no idea Elm Avenue no longer existed,” Puente said. “We also changed our business cards six months before the city finally had the new signs installed. But it wasn’t a big deal for our business. Our traffic is walk-in or customers who already know we exist. It’s not a business most people would look up like a dentist.”

Even with the new signs in place, some still find the name change hard to swallow.

Cal Furukawa, who has owned El Camino Pharmacy on the street near Interstate 5 for 15 years, disagrees with merchants like Puente that the change was for the better. He said customers, who aren’t aware of the name change, become angered when looking for his shop on Elm Avenue.

“Lots of people still look for Elm Avenue,” Furukawa said. “They tell me they have to stop some place and call on the phone to find out where we are. It’s annoying for them.”

It wasn’t so much the additional cost of purchasing new pharmacy labels, stationery and business cards that bothered Furukawa, a long-time Carlsbad resident. To him, when Elm Avenue was transformed, a piece of the city’s history also disappeared.

“Several years ago we could always tell where Carlsbad was from the highway or the beach,” he said. “The sign ‘Elm Avenue’ on (Interstate) 5 and the big red roosters on top of the Twin Inns Restaurant (now Neiman’s Restaurant) on Carlsbad Boulevard were landmarks. Now the roosters are gone and Elm Avenue is gone.”

Like Furukawa, Joann Bianchi, owner of Village Hair Line on Carlsbad Village Drive, feels the city lost an essence of its past with the name change.

“I don’t find that the (new) name has given the area more of a flair,” said the hair salon proprietor. “I think Elm Avenue was part of the city’s heritage. It should have been kept as part of the heritage.”

Craig Bauer is also among the residents who didn’t want to see Elm Avenue retired. The change disrupts the flow of tree-named streets, and the money spent in changing signs would have been better used elsewhere, he said. In something of a silent protest, Bauer and a friend got together and had 30 or 40 license plate holders printed with the message, “Locals Say Elm.” They distributed the holder at cost ($6.50 apiece) to like-minded friends.

Controversy over renaming streets certainly is not limited to North County.

The San Diego City Council’s decision a few years ago to rename Market Street downtown to Martin Luther King Jr. Way to honor the slain civil rights leader caused a community uproar. Merchants and San Diego residents protested the change, saying it would cause confusion to rename a long-established street and it would hamper business for shopkeepers. Civil rights advocates accused those against the name change of racism for not wanting to honor King. The council eventually reversed its decision and the name was changed back to Market Street.

There are a few other ways besides a new street name in which folks who haven’t moved an inch can end up with new addresses.

Growth and development in North County not only means that new streets are coming into existence, but so are ZIP codes. When a city’s population swells, post offices are forced to “split” ZIP codes, said Dick Cornell, Oceanside Post Office general clerk.

Last year, a third ZIP code was added in Oceanside to help sort the flood of mail already handled by the post office, Cornell said. That meant that half the Oceanside residents with the ZIP code 92056 kept it while half changed to 92057.

For decades Carlsbad had only one ZIP code, 92008, until 1987, when postal officials added a second code, 92009, and a third number solely for post office boxes, according to Hank Curtis, general clerk at Carlsbad Post Office.

“There’s no set rule to changing ZIP codes,” Curtis said. “It depends on demand. Officials leave ZIP-code numbers open in areas that they expect growth but even then they have to sometimes add new numbers.”

Sometimes it’s not the street name or the ZIP code that changes in an address, but the house number.

Occasionally residents seek to change their numerical address, according to Audish of the Poway planning department.

“Sometimes it’s a religious issue with them,” she said. “Some Far East religions that are into numerology cause people to change their address. If the address adds up to something those people might not want, they try to change it.”

Sometimes, the reason is less spiritual.

Audish recalls the case of a family that had an entry monument for their home cast in bronze--but it had the wrong street number on it. They asked to have the address changed to match the mistake.

“It would have cost them more to recast the sculpture than to change the address with the city,” Audish said.