Bristol Street freeway offramp closes today...

Bristol Street freeway offramp closes today

The Bristol Street exit off the northbound San Diego Freeway will

be closed today until Nov. 15. Officials recommend MacArthur

Boulevard as a detour for the northbound San Diego Freeway and

southbound Costa Mesa Freeway motorists.

The new Bristol exit opening Nov. 15 will split into a new Avenue

of the Arts offramp as well as a Bristol exit. Motorists will exit

off the San Diego Freeway before it meets the Costa Mesa Freeway,

greatly reducing congestion.

The Bristol exit will reopen before the heaviest holiday shopping

season around Thanksgiving and will benefit South Coast Plaza

businesses as well as the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

The closure is part of the San Diego and Costa Mesa freeways

improvement project developed by the Orange County Transportation

Authority (OCTA), the California Department of Transportation

(Caltrans) and the city of Costa Mesa.

The entire project, begun in October 1999, will include carpool

lanes that connect directly from the San Diego to the Costa Mesa

Freeway, a new Avenue of the Arts offramp and a new Anton Boulevard

onramp. Construction will continue until 2004.

A transportation hotline has been set up with current status,

closures and opening schedules. For information, call (800) 724-0353.

Mortgage company to sell $3 billion in bonds

A subsidiary of Impac Mortgage Holdings Inc., a Newport Beach

mortgage company, has filed to sell as much as $3 billion in bonds.

IMH Assets Corp. submitted the filing to the Securities and

Exchange Commission on Thursday. Once approved, IMH Assets can begin

selling the bonds on the open market.

The securities, which are known as collateralized asset-backed

bonds, are sold using mortgages the company buys as collateral.

The terms of the bonds will be decided later, but none can extend

beyond a 30-year time limit, according to the filing, which was

posted on the SEC Web site.

Impac is a mortgage finance company that buys what are known as

nonconforming loans -- mortgages that require less documentation of

income to be approved. IMH closed Thursday at $10.88 in American

Stock Exchange trading, off 11 cents from Wednesday’s close.