17th Street project prompts new grass-roots group

Andrew Glazer

COSTA MESA -- Residents and business owners who believe East 17th Street

should be friendlier to pedestrians -- and not a six-lane highway as the

city and county have planned -- formed a grass-roots group after meeting

with city traffic engineers Tuesday.

“This is the Rodeo Drive of Costa Mesa,” said Dan Perlmutter, who owns

several properties on the east side of 17th Street, including the

shopping center that is home to health food store Mother’s Market and

Kitchen.

“And on Rodeo Drive, you can walk around and sit down at patios and you

don’t have to worry about getting killed by cars going 60 miles an hour.”

The East 17th Street Merchants & Community Assn. will meet for the first

time Monday. The group’s organizers said they expect 35 to 40 people to

show up, but they do not yet have a membership list.

Some of those who have already joined the new group have already been

involved in the project as members of a committee formed by the City

Council in January, in an effort to include businesses and residents in

the East 17th Street planning process.

Perlmutter said the new association will provide an additional voice at

City Council meetings opposing additional lanes.

The council-formed committee has met with city transportation officials

each month, reviewing -- often with raised voices and table-banging --

options for the street.

Suggestions have included leaving it as it is; creating a six-lane

roadway from Orange Avenue to Santa Ana Avenue; and adding turnouts for

buses.

The committee has overwhelmingly favored options that don’t require the

city to encroach onto public walkways and landscaping to make way for the

freeway.

But Peter Naghavi, the city’s director of transportation services, said

Costa Mesa must do something significant to improve traffic flow. And if

the City Council chooses not approve a six-lane thoroughfare, it could

lose up to $4 million in county grants for traffic improvements.

“This [committee] is only concerned with their own issues,” said Naghavi.

“Not the community as a whole.”

And Naghavi said widening East 17th Street could only help local

businesses. But he said he is willing to hear the committee’s suggestions

of how to do so.

“A driver who wants to go to a certain shop might try three times,” he

said. “But if it’s too difficult to get there, they’ll try another

shopping center the fourth time.”

Naghavi said he expects the City Council to make a decision in August.

The council will use a report prepared by the city’s transportation

engineers, which will include suggestions from the committee, to make its

final decision.