Redevelopment Backers Offer Improvements List

City Administrator Charles W. Thompson and city planners say that drawing redevelopment borders along Beach Boulevard would allow Huntington Beach to make long-needed public improvements that include:

- Traffic improvements that the Orange County Transportation Commission has recommended, but that state, county and federal transportation funds have not been provided for.

- The addition of gutters, sidewalks and curbs on long stretches of the state highway.

- Undergrounding of utilities throughout the corridor.

- Building storm drains, water and sewer lines.

- Sprucing up the landscaping.

- Adding street furniture such as benches.

- Consolidating undersized properties along the route, or about 20% of the parcels that are considered irregularly shaped for more lucrative development.

Lisa Mills, the county transportation commission’s manager of highway and transit programs, said studies show that traffic is expected to increase to about 70,000 cars a day in the year 2005 on Beach Boulevard. Mills, who had not reviewed the redevelopment project area plan, said those figures were compiled “assuming some growth in the area, but prior to the redevelopment plan. . . .”

The commission’s recommendations, accepted by the City Council in February, include:

- Synchronizing all the signals.

- Outlawing parking on Beach Boulevard itself.

- Restriping the pavement to add a lane in each direction.

- Bus turnouts at all the major intersections. (There are only a few such turnouts now.)

- Widening intersections at Edinger, Warner and Ellis avenues to add extra turning lanes.

- Fixing pavement along the boulevard.