Knabe balks at move to rename Marina Freeway for Ballona Creek

Whether to rename a short strip of road turned into a long, winding debate at Tuesday’s L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting.

California 90, the Marina Freeway, doesn’t span more than two miles, branching off westward from the 405 Freeway and ending -- no surprise here -- in Marina del Rey.

In September, Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin proposed a resolution to encourage the state to rename the freeway after Ballona Creek, a waterway that the highway passes over. The wetlands are one of the few that remain in Southern California.

Instead of honoring the marina, a man-made structure, Bonin wrote in the resolution that he wanted to let people “connect the natural beauty around them with the name ‘Ballona, which would serve as an excellent reminder of what Southern California was once like.’ ”

But Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe raised a motion at Tuesday’s board meeting to oppose any name changes for the freeway, citing “unnecessary confusion for motorists.” He said that, though it’s important to honor the wetlands, “there are more appropriate ways to do so.”

At the meeting Tuesday, more than a dozen people -- nearly all wearing neon green shirts reading “Don’t Bulldoze Ballona” -- spoke in support of renaming the highway after the preserved land. Most talked about how much they supported the City Council’s vote in favor of Bonin’s resolution.

Knabe apparently didn’t know the council had already passed its resolution. So, after public comment ended, he said he would refer the item back to his office. His spokeswoman Cheryl Burnett said that Knabe would talk to Bonin and decide how to move forward.

The council had passed the item Oct. 30. Marcia Hanscom, executive director of the nonprofit Ballona Institute, said she was surprised to see any resistance from the county regarding the suggested name change. All 10 council members who voted on the resolution voted for it.

She was happy to see that Knabe removed the item from the agenda. “It’s time the county gives something back to Ballona,” she said.

The strip of freeway was once called the Richard M. Nixon Freeway, but was changed after the Watergate scandal. Supporters say the idea to call it “Ballona Freeway” originated from an op-ed article in the Los Angeles Times written by Patt Morrison five years ago.

“Instead of giving the freeway the name of a man-made feature -- the marina of Marina del Rey -- let’s name it instead after something that’s a reminder of California’s vanishing natural beauty: that rare and radiant fragment of landscape that shows us what coastal Southern California once was like,” Morrison wrote in 2008.

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Twitter: @karlamangla

soumya.karlamangla@latimes.com