Costa Mesa Shopkeepers Hail Wider-Street Defeat

After a nasty feud with Costa Mesa officials, business owners along 17th Street succeeded in stopping a plan to widen the road--even though it meant that the city turned down nearly $5 million in county transportation grants.

The money would have been used to add more lanes to the street, which the business owners likened to making Rodeo Drive into a freeway. The proposal called for turning the four-lane street into a six-lane thoroughfare, but after months of campaigning by business owners and area residents--including presenting the council with a petition with 10,000 signatures--the city shelved the plan.

Even though the result was the loss of a county transportation grant, the shop owners are ecstatic. They say they would rather have slow traffic than have their shopping street turned into the likes of Harbor Boulevard.

They also weren’t happy with the prospect that the widening might have taken as long as two years to complete, hurting sales.

Although the project was rejected, local activist Doug Bader said that a future City Council could take up the widening project again. A six-lane 17th Street is part of the city’s Master Plan.

“We’ve never been able to change the Master Plan. So there’s an amnesia for each generation” of council members, said Bader, who lives near the street and works there at Eco Hub, an umbrella organization for 10 environmental groups. Every six years for at least 20 years, he said, the council has considered widening the street.

Bader hopes to get business owners to back street beautification as a way to discourage future widening proposals. He also wants to promote changing the city’s Master Plan so the street will never be widened.

Peter Naghavi, the city’s director of transportation services, said the widening project is necessary. Within five years, 17th Street will reach its capacity of 37,500 vehicles a day.

Indeed, traffic on the commercial strip is often slower than the pace of a pedestrian.

But that’s the way the merchants say they like it. So they are having a party Saturday to celebrate their victory and hope it will remind the city leaders to never consider the project again.

The event, which runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., will include food, music, a pumpkin patch, clowns, pony rides and a petting zoo. There will also be a blood drive for victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.