Detour on Prosperous Road

Sometimes success is not such a good thing. El Toro Road in Lake Forest is a case in point.

When it first opened about 25 years ago, it quickly became a major thoroughfare in South County. Stores, operated by chains and sole proprietors, movie theaters and restaurants opened along its route.

It’s still a major thoroughfare, but maybe it became too major.

Today there is too much traffic for the street, as it is, to handle. Through the years, that traffic volume drove many shoppers away, which drove many of the businesses away too.

What’s left are empty storefronts, economic woes for landlords and the city treasury suffering from lost revenue--and the traffic-clogged El Toro Road running through all the red ink.

In many people’s minds, South County is still viewed as Orange County’s new frontier. Everything there is fresh, well-planned and prospering. So it comes as somewhat of a surprise, and a depressing fact of city life, to see that growth can take hold and cause the same urban ills in our newer areas that have beset the older, central cities of the county.

Lake Forest is fighting back.

The city is working on a design plan to redevelop the area and renovate underused shopping centers. It plans to spend $9.1 million to widen a three-mile stretch of El Toro Road east of the Santa Ana Freeway to help ease the flow of the more than 45,000 vehicles that pass through the city’s redevelopment area each day.

Traffic signals are being synchronized. Walkways added. New businesses are starting to move back.

It will take time for the area to regain the bloom and promise of its newness. But the fact that the need for redevelopment has come so soon is a sobering reminder of the vigilance and planning needed to keep urban ills from infecting our once-and-very-recent new frontiers.