Gilroy
– Narrow and cracked sidewalks and the much-reviled snaking
median along Monterey Street will become a thing of the past with
the aid of a $2.5 million grant, awarded Wednesday to Gilroy by the
Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
Gilroy – Narrow and cracked sidewalks and the much-reviled snaking median along Monterey Street will become a thing of the past with the aid of a $2.5 million grant, awarded Wednesday to Gilroy by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
MTC spokesman Randy Rentschler confirmed the award as part of $18.4 million doled out by the regional agency in this round of grants.
The monies will allow the city to revamp sidewalks on both sides of Monterey Street between the Fourth- and Sixth-Street intersections. Improvements will include 10-foot-wide sidewalks, decorative lamp posts, and tree plantings – a continuation of upgrades along Monterey that began two years ago.
“Oh, God that would be so wonderful, so people-friendly,” said Karen Covington, manager of Garlic City and Tea, at the corner of Fifth and Monterey streets. Covington, who has worked in downtown for the last 20 years, hopes the change will encourage businesses to move back into the area. “I really like working downtown,” she said, “but I know that presently it’s not really inviting. My customers want it too. They want to come to an environment that looks really good and booming.”
Mayor Al Pinheiro, who has made downtown improvements a centerpiece of his agenda, was ecstatic upon hearing news of the grant yesterday evening.
“Yeah!” he yelled triumphantly. “It’s just another one of those needed things for our downtown that we’ve been waiting for. It is just awesome, awesome, awesome. …This is really what it’s all about. Now we can turn to the landowners and tell them that in front of their front door, they’re going to have a nice setting.”
In addition to sidewalk improvements, the grant will help rid Monterey of the winding median – a source of annoyance for many.
City Councilman Russ Valiquette coined his own name for the road design many years ago.
“I’ve never liked that median,” he said. “Thirty years ago when I came to Gilroy I noticed the ‘snake trap.’ I’ve never been in a downtown before that had that.”
The grant money arrives as the city moves forward with major plans for the downtown area. In the next few years, dozens of new businesses and apartments will crop up along the Monterey Street corridor, along with a major 200-unit housing project at the old Cannery site on Lewis Street and a new cultural arts center at Seventh and Monterey Streets.
“This is part of our larger program to fund pedestrian-friendly, bike-friendly programs that under normal circumstances would get looked over,” Rentschler said. The MTC administers federal money for regional transportation needs in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.
“It used to be that with federal money you could only build highways,” he said. “Over time, we’ve been able to change these rules to use transportation monies for other uses. ”
The agency created TLC in 1998 and tripled annual funding for the program to $27 million three years ago. Competition for funding remains fierce despite the additional support, according to Rentschler, who said grant requests this time around totaled at least $55 million.
“We were at least three times oversubscribed,” he said. “We have a whole list of [cities] that did not get funding that were close.”
Gilroy officials grew nervous in the last year about their chances to win the grant, according to Valiquette. They already suffered one disappointment in Nov., when city officials learned they would not receive a $14 million library-construction grant during the final round of state funding for such projects.
“This is Christmas come a few days early,” Valiquette said.
Pinheiro expected to meet with city staff this morning to discuss plans and a timeline for construction.
The city has already spent about $3 million for sidewalk and street improvements along Monterey on the two blocks between Eighth and Sixth Streets, according to Pinheiro. Plans call for upgrades north along Monterey all the way to the intersection with Leavesley Road, although Pinheiro said the work after Fourth Street is “minimal.”
Even with the grant money, the city will have to come up with about $500,000, possibly from its reserve, to finish the improvements.
For Pinheiro, making up the difference is a whole lot different than raising all the money.
“This is the kind of problem I’d like to have,” he said.
