Shopping Center Backers Decry Flier

Claims that the proposed Bixby Ranch Co. shopping center would increase traffic and hamper paramedic, police and fire protection services have supporters of the project crying foul.

At a recent City Council meeting, Councilman William Doane said the shopping center opponents’ fliers had implied that Leisure World residents in need of emergency services would be “trapped in ambulances on their way to the hospital.”

The opponents state in campaign literature that the project will result in “more delays for ambulances and other emergency vehicles.”

The Citizens Against Excessive Traffic are campaigning for Measure M, which would revert the Bixby Ranch Co. property on Seal Beach Boulevard from commercial to recreational/golf zoning.

Failure of the measure would mean the shopping center would be built. The Bixby Ranch Co. would then help fund the widening of the Seal Beach Boulevard bridge over the San Diego Freeway.

Phil Fife, chairman of the Measure M committee, said traffic on Seal Beach Boulevard is already heavy and that the shopping center would make it “horrifically different.”

Fife argues that Caltrans already plans to widen the bridge and that funds from the Bixby project are unnecessary.

“Nowhere is there a firm date on widening the road from the Bixby people,” Fife said.

Doane said the talk of less than adequate ambulance service is to “scare Leisure World people into thinking they are going to be stuck in an ambulance.”

“I’m very incensed that this thing has gone this far,” he said.

Supporters of the center inserted a flier into Leisure World’s Golden Rain News that states: “If you support faster and safer ambulance access to local hospital emergency rooms . . . then you oppose Measure M.”

Supporters have used a letter by Medix Ambulance Service owner Michael J. Dimas to boost their argument. Dimas favors a wider Seal Beach Boulevard bridge.

“A wider bridge is better sooner than later, but [the bridge] does not adversely impact our ability to provide service now,” he said.

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Alex Murashko can be reached at (714) 966-5974.