Future of Corona del Mar eases down the road

June Casagrande

Now that the city has decided it will take over Coast Highway in

Corona del Mar, the biggest hurdle to the Corona del Mar Vision

beautification plan has been leveled. But now what had been the

second-biggest hurdle is looking more enormous by the minute.

The $12-million plan only has about $600,000 set aside in the city

budget and another $40,000 pledged from the business community. A

five-year plan for city funding will cover about $2.5 million only if

the City Council approves funding each year.

Thus, the best-case scenario is a $9.5-million shortfall.

“One of the first things we’ll be doing now is looking for money

from state and federal funding sources,” said Ed Selich, a city

planning commissioner who has been helping push for the Vision plan

in a volunteer role for years.

But while the distant future holds much uncertainty for the plan,

the shorter term is much more likely to produce some results, albeit

preliminary ones.

The $600,000 set aside could go to work as soon as this fall,

paying for new medians and landscaping on Coast Highway in Corona del

Mar. Vision, a plan of the Corona del Mar Business Improvement

District, calls for replacing medians that are just painted lines

with elevated, landscaped islands complete with electrical wiring and

irrigation lights and flowers.

It’s one small step on what continues to prove a very long and

arduous journey, but it’s a step that appeared next to impossible

before the City Council agreed to take ownership of Coast Highway

just two weeks ago.

“We’ve been trying for two years to get the permits under

Caltrans. It’s been unbelievable,” Selich said.

Caltrans told the Corona del Mar business community that if it

wanted to remove the painted medians, the new ones in their place

would have to be 2 feet narrower. Instead of two 11-foot-wide lines

on either side of Coast Highway, this could have meant one 11-foot

lane and a 13-foot lane. It could also have meant two 12-foot lanes,

but no one was talking about re-striping the highway.

MORE THAN JUST BEAUTY

The plan was renamed Corona del Mar Vision after its first name,

Corona del Mar Vision 2004, proved to be a misnomer: No way was the

work going to be done by the end of this year, leaders decided.

The plan is actually an extensive program for not just

beautification, but improved pedestrian safety.

Crosswalks with flashing lights, like some in Laguna Beach, are a

central element to the plan. At least some lighted crosswalks are

funded by the $600,000 already in hand, and work to install them

could also begin this fall, City Manager Homer Bludau said.

When more money is in the bank, the next step will be to replace

street light poles with decorative ones. Then comes the street

furniture: new benches, trash cans and bus shelters. After that, the

plan calls for new entry monuments, signs welcoming visitors to the

village of Corona del Mar. Resurfacing sidewalks with a

yet-to-be-decided decorative surface will be the finishing touch.

Some city work planned for the stretch of highway that’s not part

of the Vision plan could also begin this year.

Most notably, the city will have jurisdiction over the

streetlights so it can synchronize their timing. The signal situation

is a little convoluted, Bludau explained. In a number of

intersections, the north-south signals are owned by Caltrans because

they’re actually on Coast Highway. At the same intersections, though,

signals at cross streets are owned by the city. Thus, in a poignant

metaphor for the entire situation, sometimes the city says “go” and

Caltrans says “stop.”

The city has long taken on the expense of sweeping the street,

which it will continue to do.

A DIVIDED VILLAGE

Council members had struggled with the decision of whether to take

ownership of the highway between Newport Coast Drive and Jamboree

Road for reasons of, what else, money. Caltrans was offering to give

the city $3.5 million to cover the costs of maintaining the highway.

Some city leaders felt that, if the city was going to take on the

expense and liability of owning the road, they should get a lot more.

In the end, it was a near-unified voice of the local business

community that sealed the deal.

“Caltrans just doesn’t care about us as we care about ourselves,”

John Blom, chairman of the Corona del Mar Business Improvement

District, told council members. “That highway divides our city right

in half and it prevents us from being a village.”

* JUNE CASAGRANDE covers Newport Beach and John Wayne Airport. She

may be reached at (949) 574-4232 or by e-mail at

june.casagrande@latimes.com.