STANTON : Residents Riled Over Super-Street Project

Some residents are bristling at the prospect of Katella Avenue being turned into a “super-street,” saying the road widening would eat up their parking spaces and lower their property values.

A dozen angry residents of the Bradford Homes townhouses on Katella Avenue heard Orange County Transportation Authority officials describe the super-street plan during a City Council meeting Tuesday.

OCTA officials presented the preliminary plan to widen Katella Avenue from four lanes to six to improve cross-county traffic flow. The project would include the stretch of Katella Avenue from the San Gabriel River Freeway in Los Alamitos to Tustin Street in Orange.

Mayor Sal Sapien had to admonish residents in the audience several times after they shouted out questions.

The council, if it chooses to accept OCTA’s design plan, will have to apply for Measure M funds, derived from the half-cent sales tax approved by county voters in 1990.

The OCTA plan calls for widening Katella Avenue mostly through re-striping lanes and eliminating on-street parking, said Rob McCann, an OCTA consultant. The Katella Avenue intersections at Knott Street, Western Avenue and Beach Boulevard would have to be greatly widened to accommodate two left-turn lanes, a right-turn lane and three through lanes in each direction, he said.

Though McCann said property values on Katella Avenue would not decrease because of the project, some residents were skeptical.

“The market value is what determines the selling price, not (the OCTA plan),” Terrence La Fleur, who lives on Katella Avenue, told the council. “Can we have realtors involved in this?”

A sound barrier could be built to protect houses from traffic noise, but that idea wasn’t very popular.

“With a high barrier, I’d feel like I’m in one of those futuristic movies where everybody’s shooting people,” said Mike Kury, who also lives on Katella Avenue. “I don’t want a wall in front of my house.”

Councilman David John Shawver told OCTA officials that he was concerned about access to the Lucky grocery store at the intersection of Knott Street and Katella Avenue. He said the OCTA plan calls for a median that would prohibit left turns into the store and asked McCann to rethink that idea.

Shawver told McCann and J. Michael Baron, OCTA’s transportation analyst, that he has bad memories of the widening of Beach Boulevard, the first super-street project, which runs through the heart of the city. Shawver said the council had asked for changes in the design, but they weren’t made.

“They promised us this and promised us that, and then they didn’t do it,” Shawver said.

The county Planning Commission and the County Board of Supervisors will hold public meetings this fall to consider the Katella Avenue super-street plan before it is finalized.