Patience at Risk as 101 Artery Surgery Begins

Work began Monday on the largest road construction project in city history, a $15.3-million job to rebuild one of the city’s most clogged and complained-about intersections--the Ventura Freeway interchange at Victoria Avenue.

When all is said and supposedly done 18 months from now, Security Paving of Sun Valley will have converted two-lane Valentine Road into an eight-lane artery leading to new onramps and offramps near Ivy Lawn Cemetery.

New overpass bridges will be built. And where 66,000 cars per day now cross underneath the highway on six-lane Victoria Avenue, three lanes will be added.

Someday, city officials vow, traffic here will flow smoothly and all will be forgotten.

Just not yet. And probably not any time soon.

“Just like anything else that you really want in life, sometimes you have to go through pain and inconvenience to have something better for many years to come,” Mayor Jim Friedman said. “Kind of like plastic surgery.”

Some of the first work motorists will see is the construction of the new overpass bridges.

Through August, construction crews will build a temporary steel girder bridge to fill the gap that now exists between the northbound and southbound lanes of the overpass.

Freeway traffic will be diverted onto the new median as the new southbound bridge and, later, the new northbound bridge are built.

Concerned about guests at a nearby motel, crews will confine most of the work to daylight hours. City officials will make a few exceptions, however, including later this month when the Victoria underpass will twice be closed overnight, from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m., to erect the pilings for the temporary bridge.

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The dates for the closure have not been set.

“It’s either that or having one lane closed in each direction for a long, long time,” said city Traffic Engineer Nazir Lalani. “Two days of pain is better than prolonged, extra pain during the day.”

Lalani said several residents suggested the interchange be closed for three straight months so that all the work could be completed at once.

“We could do that,” Lalani said, “but unfortunately, we’d put a whole lot of people out of business, and that’s not an option.”

They are business owners like Jim Salzer, who in 1972 with his wife, Nancy, built Salzer’s Records and Salzer’s Video stores on the south side of the interchange along Valentine Road.

Twenty-six years ago, there was hardly any traffic, save for what came in and out of a few nearby gas stations.

Then came construction of the Ventura County Government Center on Victoria Avenue in 1976, and in the years since, rapid housing and residential growth on the city’s east end.

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The interchange project will see a “New Valentine Road” built to bend south of its current route by about 200 feet, cutting right through what is now Salzer’s parking lot and storage garage.

Construction around Salzer’s business is expected to be heaviest between September and February.

And knowing what most drivers do--that there is no good way around so many months of road construction--Salzer has decided to make the best of things.

Though he expects many of the video store’s older customers will shy away during construction, Salzer is sure the record store’s loyal band of young customers will brave the traffic and keep supporting the store.

And to offer those customers a little encouragement, Salzer is planning special marketing and promotional events, from booking bands to perform inside the store to offering free pizza and soda during Friday and Saturday night “happy hours.”

With a new record store parking lot just up Valentine from where the old one sits, Salzer also plans to remodel the interior and exterior of both the video and record stores, adding 6,000 square feet to the latter.

“What we’re trying to do is just create a lot of energy,” Salzer said.

When work on the south side of the freeway is finished, work on the north side will begin. The most noticeable project will see the traffic signal at Walker Street moved about a dozen yards to improve traffic flow.

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In 2000, city officials plan a separate, $2.5-million project to widen and lengthen the northbound onramps and offramps.

Meanwhile, as the first project progresses, city officials promise regular updates through the media and message signs that will warn motorists of probable delays.

Although slowdowns on the freeway are expected to be minimal--traffic will still run three lanes in each direction--the same can’t be said for Victoria, officials say.

“Victoria is basically going to be impacted for the majority of the duration of the project,” said Glenn Hille of Boyle Engineering, the firm hired by the city to manage the construction project. “The goal is before the holiday season of 1999.”