Center for seniors in need of a city hand

Deirdre Newman

The city’s community objectives are like a huge to-do list, and

tonight one of the items on the list will be crossed off: the

decision on whether the city should take over the senior center.

The objectives, established in 1995, serve as clearly delineated

blueprints that the community can use to measure the city’s

performance and progress.

The council also will get an update on other priorities still

being worked on, such as improving 17th Street and analyzing the

rezone of the Westside bluffs area.

When the Costa Mesa Senior Center was struggling financially last

year, center officials asked the city about the option of its taking

over operations of the center, City Manager Allan Roeder said. The

center was having trouble providing essential maintenance services,

such as heat, and city crews came to the rescue, getting the

situation under control and doing a lot of refurbishing and

landscaping, Roeder said.

After city staff members did a study of the feasibility of taking

over center operations, they suggested that the city take over only

management and maintenance of the building.

The priorities for improving 17th Street include enhancing

intersections on the street, finding creative ways of improving

traffic through the downtown area and creating a plan to increase

walkways linking access to the Courtyards and Triangle Square.

“When you’ve got 100,000-plus vehicles on Newport Boulevard, it is

anything but pedestrian-friendly,” Roeder said. “We’ve looked at

grade-separated structures and it will be part of further study and

analysis tied in with the environmental work being done on Newport

Boulevard.”

Finally, the Westside Revitalization Oversight Committee is

exploring a residential overlay zone for a portion of the

industrially zoned bluffs. The committee is slated to give its final

report and recommendations to the Redevelopment Agency in August on a

host of issues, including rezoning. There is divided opinion about

whether to rezone the bluffs, and if so, how much to rezone,

committee member Mike Berry said. He believes any overlay area has to

be fairly large.

“When it’s an overlay, you have to have enough area to attract

some people,” Berry said.

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers Costa Mesa. She may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at deirdre.newman@latimes.com.