IRVINE : Gates Prompt Street Renaming

Concordia might look like any of the other roads that wind through the Turtle Rock neighborhood near Christ College Irvine. But according to the city, the road’s name violates the city’s street naming and numbering resolution.

So the city plans to rename one portion of the street Concordia East and the other Concordia West. The move was approved last week by the City Council.

City officials requested the change because two security gates prevent motorists from driving the length of the road, which runs between Turtle Rock and Ridgeline drives. The city sign resolution states that whenever a portion of a street is blocked to through traffic, each of the two segments “shall bear different names.”

Officials said the security gates represent an impediment, and, as a result, the street’s name should change at the gates.

The “street name change will help eliminate confusion to emergency vehicles, delivery services, visitors and the public . . . who could easily assume by entering Concordia at Ridgeline (that) they could drive through to Turtle Rock,” a city memo on the plan stated.

Neither the Orange County Fire Department nor the Irvine Police Department objected to the plan. Edward Figueroa of the U.S. Postal Service’s Santa Ana district office did send the city a letter warning that the name change could cause customers to incorrectly address letters, creating “delays in delivery.”