Costa Mesa’s rogue crosswalk quickly disappears
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Good morning. It’s Wednesday, July 19. I’m Carol Cormaci, bringing you this week’s TimesOC newsletter with a look at the latest local news and events.
Did you the see the story about the rogue crosswalk that someone boldly painted across Wilson Street in Costa Mesa last week? Likely in the hopes city officials would get the drift that pedestrian safety was at issue there, a guerrilla effort was quietly undertaken by someone with an almost but not quite steady hand to create a facsimile of the real deal.
We found out about the unofficial crosswalk when Daily Pilot reporter Sara Cardine was scrolling through local Facebook postings. Someone bemused to have come across the utilitarian artwork near Wilson Park had snapped a photo of it and posted it to the social media site.
Cardine’s first call went out to Costa Mesa’s spokesperson, Tony Dodero. He confirmed the Police Department had taken a report and said plans were in the works for the crosswalk’s removal.
“We are looking at ways to clean up the markings that someone put on the road,” Dodero told the reporter on Thursday. “It’s definitely going to get cleaned up.”
It’s interesting the city would be in such a rush to get rid of it. A crosswalk at that location has been on the city’s wishlist, Cardine reported, for years.
“In May 2022, the Costa Mesa City Council approved spending nearly $2 million on a Wilson Street Improvement Project, from Newport Boulevard to Placentia Avenue, that includes a series of traffic calming measures designed to help stack the transportation deck in favor of pedestrians and bicyclists,” according to her story, and “a new crosswalk with a high-intensity activated crosswalk signal that would display flashing red lights to passing motorists near the entrance of Wilson Park was roundly approved by council members.”
During the discussion of the agenda item at that City Council meeting, Councilman Manuel Chavez noted the danger to pedestrians at the very place the crosswalk artist painted his or her temporary masterpiece.
““There really is no safe way to cross the street from south of Wilson to north of Wilson,” Chavez told his council colleagues at the time the vote was taken. “I see many kids have to jaywalk to go to that park, to the point where they almost don’t even use the park, because the traffic just goes too quickly. So I’m really excited to see that improvement.”
And so, the City Council on a unanimous vote approved a $1,795,390 bid from All American Asphalt to implement a bulk of the improvements. The work is funded by a $600,000 community development block grant, $435,000 in gas tax revenue and an allocation from the city’s capital improvement budget. Public Works Director Raja Sethuraman said then the city was on a tight timeline to spend the CDBG funds.
Dodero told Cardine last week the delay in getting the crosswalk improvement in was was related to procurement of equipment associated with the signal, estimating it could arrive in the next three to four months.
Longtime Costa Mesa resident Flo Martin told Cardine she was “tickled pink” when she encountered the illicit crosswalk last Tuesday night. “I thought, this is so cool. Someone had guts and must have done it literally overnight.”
It was Martin’s futile hope the city wouldn’t spend extra money sending out workers to make the crosswalk disappear before it could be replaced officially. “I would hope they leave it as is and put up some kind of A-frame type yellow barriers in the middle turn lane as a caution,” she said.
Instead, by Friday it appeared to have been blackened out.
MORE NEWS
• A construction bid for a $4-million solar-powered barge-like contraption that will snare trash from Newport Bay was approved last week by the Newport Beach City Council, according to this story by my Daily Pilot colleague, Lilly Nguyen. In a 2017 story on plans to make the Newport Beach Trash Wheel a reality, a reporter aptly described its appearance as a “cross between a steamboat and a conch shell.” Brea-based Jilk Heavy Construction was the winning bidder this month, out of just two bids received by the city. The other bid, for $6.55 million, came from CJW Construction in Santa Ana.
• A millipede spotted for the first time in April 2018 at Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, near Lake Forest, by naturalists Cedric Lee and James Bailey, has been named the Los Angeles Thread Millipede. According to this L.A. Times article, the new species, found in both Orange and L.A. counties, “boasts 486 legs and a toothy, Predator-style head. It has the greenish translucence of a glow-in-the-dark toy in daylight and weaves through the soil as elegantly as an embroiderer’s needle.”
• Passenger trains resumed full service through San Clemente this week after rails had been closed for several weeks due to a landslide. A temporary 250-foot-long barrier was put in place to protect the tracks from any future falling debris from a landslide at Casa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens. The wall stands 12 feet high and is secured with pile beams dug 32 feet into the ground. According to Metrolink, the project is expected to cost between $5.5 million and $6 million.
• Three probable cases of mpox were reported in the county last week, according to a message posted to the O.C. Health Care Agency’s website on Friday. The virus has so far largely affected gay and bisexual men in the U.S. It is not a sexually transmitted virus, but close physical contact is the primary mode of infection. For more on mpox in Orange County visit www.ochealthinfo.com/mpox.
PUBLIC SAFETY AND COURTS
• A former La Habra police chief, Alan Hostetter, was convicted Thursday of joining the riot at the U.S. Capitol with a hatchet in his backpack and plotting to stop Congress from certifying President Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth told Hostetter that no reasonable person — let alone a veteran police officer — would believe that it was legal to use mob violence to obstruct Congress. “Belief that your actions are for a greater good does not negate consciousness of wrongdoing,” Lamberth said. Hostetter is scheduled to receive his sentence in October.
• Republican Reps. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene are suing the cities of Anaheim and Riverside, as well as several advocacy groups, alleging they conspired to infringe on their free speech rights by pressuring venues to cancel a rally in 2021.
• A brush fire broke out in the area of South Peak north of Camino Del Avion in Laguna Niguel at about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, prompting the O.C. Sheriff’s Department to put road closures in place on Beacon Hill and Ridgeway Avenue. As of our deadline, there had been no injuries or structural damage and no evacuations had been mandated by fire officials.
• An orthopedic surgeon from Irvine was sentenced Friday to 33 months in federal prison for accepting more than $315,000 in bribes and kickbacks for performing spinal surgeries at a now-defunct Long Beach hospital whose owner was imprisoned for committing workers’ compensation insurance fraud. David Payne, 65, was also fined $20,000 and ordered to forfeit $316,597, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
• A man and woman were rescued from a Seal Beach jetty Sunday night after they abandoned their sinking boat offshore, authorities said Monday. The Orange County Fire Authority was notified at 9:27 p.m. Sunday about a potential ocean rescue, Capt. Greg Barta told City News Service.
• A 48-year-old former Orange County girls basketball coach was convicted yesterday of 21 felony counts of sexually assaulting six of his players over several years. Carlos Francisco Juarez coached for club basketball teams as well as at Mater Dei, Aliso Niguel, Tustin and Costa Mesa high schools, according to the City News Service report on the convictions.
BUSINESS BUZZ
• A bulldozer arrived bright and early on a recent morning to begin demolishing an 87-year-old building on Balboa Island to make way for Arc Balboa Island Restaurant. The restaurant’s proprietors, Newport Beach Mayor Noah Blom and his wife, Marin, had hoped to preserve the original cottage-style structure, but it was in need of too many repairs to make it salvageable. The project at 224 Marine Ave. was given the green light by the Planning Commission earlier this year.
• Bringing an end to a second wave of union walkouts, hospitality workers who manned picket lines at a dozen hotels in Orange and L.A. counties for five days last week returned to work Saturday, City News Service reported. Labor talks with hoteliers were scheduled to resume yesterday. “More strikes and other actions by hotel workers could take place at any time,” union leaders warned.
• Irvine-based Taco Bell’s quest to “free” the use of the phrase “Taco Tuesday” was successful, it was reported yesterday, when its rival Taco John’s surrendered its Taco Tuesday trademark. The news was first reported in the Wall Street Journal, then picked up by other news outlets, including the L.A. Times.
• A California appellate court ruled that Disneyland has illegally evaded a living-wage law passed by Anaheim voters in 2018 that could boost pay for Disneyland Resort workers to nearly $20 an hour, reports L.A. Times staff writer Gabriel San Román.
• A former Ace Hardware site at 18102 Culver Drive in Irvine was unveiled Tuesday as the first-of-its-kind co-located dental and medical office, a joint venture of MemorialCare and Pacific Dental Services.
LIFE & LEISURE
• Laguna Beach will honor a public servant of its past by changing the name of Top of the World Park to William M. Wilcoxen Park. The idea came before the City Council for consideration Tuesday after two Laguna Beach High School students brought the proposal to the city’s recreation committee in February. The late Wilcoxen was known for his environmental stewardship. He served on the City Council and as a member of the Laguna Beach Unified School District’s board of education and died in 1997 while vacationing in the High Sierra.
• National Mac and Cheese Day for Make-A-Wish Orange County and the Inland Empire was marked last Friday with two Newport Beach city officials taking part in a contest to see who could consume the most macaroni and cheese in a three-minute period at Cappy’s Cafe. The restaurant has a practice of donating $1 for every kid’s meal sold to the local Make-A-Wish organization. Newport Mayor Pro Tem Will O’Neill bested Mayor Noah Blom in the chow-down event by devouring the contents of two bowls to Blom’s meager one-bowl accomplishment.
SPORTS
• Vanguard University will join the Division II ranks of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn., school officials announced Thursday. The transition will come with an initial three-year provisionary period.
• Huntington Beach High School baseball player Ralphy Velazquez was called as the No. 23 overall pick in the 2023 Major League Baseball draft. Sitting on a couch in a living room jam-packed with family and friends, Velazquez rose to his feet and was given several congratulatory hugs, as a sea of cellphone cameras documented the moment, reported my Daily Pilot colleague Andrew Turner. Velazquez became Huntington Beach’s third first-round pick in coach Benji Medure’s time with the program, joining Hank Conger (25th overall to the Angels in 2006) and Nick Pratto (14th overall to the Royals in 2017).
• Did you know Orange County is represented on the U.S. 2023 Women’s World Cup roster? Indeed, the team includes forward Trinity Rodman, whose hometown is Laguna Niguel. The 2023 Women’s World Cup, which kicks off in Australia and New Zealand on Thursday, will be the largest ever, with 32 teams playing 64 games over a month.
CALENDAR THIS
• Orange County Museum of Art Family Fun Day is set for this Saturday, July 22, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., in a drop-in program designed for kids ages 3 and up. Live steel drum music and art activities will be hosted outside on the Upper Plaza located on Level 2. Free. OCMA is located at 3333 Avenue of the Arts in Costa Mesa.
• Looking ahead to next month, tickets are on sale now for the Newport Beach Summer Garden Party at Sherman Library & Gardens. The fundraising event, sponsored in part by South Coast Plaza, takes place from 4 to 7 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 26. There will be a garden party hat contest, bouquet bar, supper prepared by Executive Chef Jessica Roy, silent auction, raffle and live music. Tickets are $60 for Sherman members and $80 for nonmembers. Sherman Library & Gardens is located at 2647 E. Coast Hwy. in Corona del Mar. To purchase tickets or for more information visit thesherman.org or call (949) 673-2261.
KEEP IN TOUCH
Thank you for reading today’s newsletter. If you have a memory or story about Orange County, I would love to read and share it in this space. Please try to keep your submission to 100 words or less and include your name and current city of residence.
I appreciate your help in making this the best newsletter it can be. Please send news tips, your memory of life in O.C. (photos welcome!) or comments to carol.cormaci@latimes.com.
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