Wait Is Over; Alicia Parkway Connection Finally Opens

LAGUNA NIGUEL —  The assembled dignitaries couldn’t help being a little nostalgic at opening ceremonies for the Alicia Parkway extension on Thursday.

After all, plans for the road project were first drawn up in the 1970s, “when Jimmy Carter was President,” said Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach). “This shouldn’t have taken so long, but then again, it was worth it.”

After almost 20 years of delays, ranging from weather setbacks to squeezing land rights from the federal government, the traffic lights turned green for the first time at Alicia Parkway and Aliso Creek Road shortly after 10 a.m.

About 45,000 cars per day are expected to use the newly opened one-mile stretch of Alicia Parkway, which provides a straight link to Interstate 5 through Laguna Niguel. It is the last planned extension of a major surface street in coastal South County.

Impatient motorists had bombarded public officials with phone calls in recent months, wondering when the barricades would be removed between Aliso Creek Road on the south end of the parkway and Pacific Park Drive on the north. But their mood brightened considerably on Thursday.

“This saves about five minutes off my ride,” said Laguna Niguel resident Jeff Kowalczyk, who commutes daily to Culver City. “Sometimes, I feel like I live on (Interstate 5) and when I get close to home, taking that detour (around Alicia Parkway) gets pretty old and tiring.”

The completion of Alicia Parkway is also symbolic of the maturing of South County, said city and county officials.

“With all the infrastructure you see going in . . . it really highlights the fact that South County is coming into its own,” said Laguna Niguel Councilman Mark Goodman, who works for the Orange County Transportation Authority.

Most of the development in South County has taken place on the west side of Interstate 5 and “the growth left on that side of the freeway is pretty minimal,” said Goodman. He worked on the Alicia Parkway project for six years as a transportation aide for Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose 5th District includes much of coastal South County.

The road opening tells the public that South County “is going to be a force going into the next century,” he said. “Everyone is starting to come to that realization.”

The project’s long, winding path began in the mid-1970s when Alicia Parkway was put on the county’s master plan for arterial highways.

There it languished more than 10 years for lack of funding until the Aliso Viejo planned community began growing. Finally, a joint venture between the county and two large developers produced the financial backing needed to start construction two years ago.

But the task of building a one-mile stretch of road was stretched out by a seemingly never-ending series of delays and obstacles.

Before the first spade of dirt was turned, county officials had to dicker with federal officials in Washington who wanted to acquire the right of way on land next to the Ziggurat, a large federal office complex that houses the Federal Archives, the Immigration and Naturalization Services and the Internal Revenue Service.

After a year of negotiation, with help from Cox, the red tape was unsnarled. But there were more hang-ups waiting to plague the project: last year’s rainstorms, delays in getting utilities installed and the use of damp-fill dirt shipped in from a nearby lake that took longer to dry than expected.

Now that drivers can use Alicia Parkway without detouring, transportation officials expect less traffic on other major streets in the area, such as La Paz Road and Pacific Parkway Road.

“The quality of life around here is going to be much better,” Goodman said.