CITYSCAPE ROUNDUP:H.B. to host weekly street fairs

Two blocks of Main Street will be closed to auto traffic Tuesday for Surf City Nights, a weekly street fair with live entertainment, sidewalk sales, a farmer’s market, children’s activities and restaurant specials, according to city officials.

Main Street will be closed from Walnut Avenue to Orange Avenue starting at about 2 p.m. Tuesday, leaving Pacific Coast Highway open, said Nova Punongbayan, city economic development specialist. The street fair itself will last from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. It will be the first of 12 such closures in coming months, every Tuesday evening through May 12.

Parking for the festival will be free for two hours at one city lot, the Main Promenade Parking Structure.

The event is sponsored by the city, the Huntington Beach Downtown Business Improvement District and the Huntington Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau.

These fairs are not the only Main Street closures expected for this year, Punongbayan said. The city is also planning a few seasonal festivals in a similar street fair format later on.

For more information call the Economic Development Department at (714) 536-5542.

Residents resist plan to study rail extension

Some residents are angered by a proposal to connect 18 miles of existing Union Pacific freight line from Disneyland to the Huntington Beach coast, a plan that received an additional $250,000 this week from the Orange County Transportation Authority.

OCTA approved funding Monday for a study by each city that the proposed line would pass through, which would include Huntington Beach, Anaheim, Garden Grove, Westminster and Stanton. The line, which ends just south of Ellis Avenue, could be extended a number of miles through Huntington neighborhoods, concerning many residents whose homes it would be sailing past.

Huntington Beach homeowner Shari Noriega has been collecting signatures from a number of neighbors in protest of the project.

“This affects two and a half miles of residents from the Ellis deadline to the beach,” Noriega said. According to Noriega, a number of neighbors selling their homes have had to decrease their sale prices by tens of thousands of dollars.

“A lot of people don’t want to have it going in their backyard. Believe me I support that,” Mayor Gil Coerper said. There have to be some alternatives and “we’re going to look at them,” he said.

As of now, though, public transportation in Orange County is pretty feeble, Coerper said. This project could help encourage local economic growth.

“I think it would be great to have a rail system that you could jump on and go to Disneyland … without having to get in your car and find a place to park,” Coerper said. “That’s going to be the future.”

Look at the mass transit in San Francisco and New York City, Coerper said. The community needs to work together and study where it has worked and possible problems, “look at it and study it,” he said.

“People want to go to the beach,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about.”

Huntington Beach will head the study, funded by $30 million in Measure M funding for OCTA’s Go Local program. The existing rail line stops at Ellis and Gothard, runs north to Stanton and later joins the Anaheim Metrolink station.

For more information on Go Local visit www.octa.net.

Public forum focuses on shopping center site

Huntington Beach City Councilman Don Hansen has scheduled a community forum on March 7 to discuss the status of a shopping center at the northwest corner of Brookhurst and Hamilton streets.

The forum is scheduled to include a brief history of the site, information about future development in the center and a question-and-answer session.

Council members and staff will attend, according to a news release from the city of Huntington Beach. Property owners for the center have been invited.

The former site of a Ralphs supermarket is still owned by the company, according to the news release.

State legislature unveils gang-related initiatives

Along with other state legislators, state Sen. Tom Harman unveiled a wide-ranging package of legislation aimed at fighting street gangs Wednesday.

The cornerstone of the proposal is Senate Bill 657, written by Harman and Sen. George Runner of Antelope Valley. The bill has several parts: It provides matching grants to local agencies for gang prevention programs; it dedicates part of state lottery proceeds to suppressing violence at high schools; it allows identity theft and forgery to be counted as criminal gang activity; it increases funding for witness protection; and it enhances certain criminal penalties.

Another Harman-written law would require convicted gang members to register with law enforcement annually and when they relocate. Other laws in the package not written by Harman propose stiffer penalties for gang felonies committed in prison, global positioning system monitoring during probation for those convicted of gang-related offenses, and a minimum 10-year sentence for violent gang crimes.

“Gang activity is nothing short of domestic terrorism, and we must do everything we can to eradicate it completely,” Harman said in a news release Wednesday. “The well-being of our neighborhoods, the safety of our parks and the protection of our children are at risk.”