GILROY
– Sometimes people have to take a step backward before they can
make progress. The same can apparently be said for streets.
If it weren’t for the orange pylons, parts of Monterey Street in
Gilroy would resemble a war zone these days.
GILROY – Sometimes people have to take a step backward before they can make progress. The same can apparently be said for streets.
If it weren’t for the orange pylons, parts of Monterey Street in Gilroy would resemble a war zone these days. But come summer, Gilroy’s historic downtown street will be much improved. Antique-style street lamps, decorative sidewalks and trees will line, parts of, Monterey Street.
Nonetheless, the months of digging, jack-hammering and paving are taking its toll on the patience of downtown business owners.
“It feels like it’s taking forever down here,” said Dave Porcella, owner of Porcella’s Music and Accessories between Sixth and Seventh streets on Monterey.
Work hasn’t taken forever, but it has taken longer than the city expected.
While installing a median along Monterey Street between Sixth and Seventh, work crews hit an unexpected layer of cement – a 70-year-old remnant of old Highway 101. They also broke a few gas pipelines along the way and spent extra time stabilizing the earth under the old layer of concrete.
“There are unexpected things that can happen every day,” said Al Signorotti, a city engineer. “That’s what you get when you’re dealing with an older street. It adds money and time to the project.”
Resurfacing will occur late next week on the northbound lanes, then work on southbound lanes will begin, the city said.
Business has been good, Porcella says, but it hasn’t come easily.
“I’m doing what I need to be doing to keep people coming in, but I don’t want to be inconveniencing my good customers.”
Store owner Jim Lemos feels even worse.
“My business went down 80 percent from what it did before all this started. I’m discounting prices trying to make three fast nickels instead of one slow dime,” said Lemos, who owns JJ’s Paintball Supplies. “If we weren’t as popular as we are, we would have starved to death.”
Some time in May, Signorotti said, the section of Monterey Street between Sixth and Seventh will be complete. The $1.24 million effort is the second phase of the downtown streetscape project – Gilroy’s most high-profile revitalization effort.
In theory, the beautified streets – along with an economic stimulus package for merchants to improve their buildings – will turn beleaguered downtown Gilroy into the place where locals come to shop, dine and get the small town intimate feeling that’s so vacant east of town at the big box retail complexes and Gilroy Premium Outlets.
In 2001, the same work was done along Monterey between Seventh and Eighth streets.
But as this second phase chugs along, merchants are beginning to question the city’s approach to main street beautification. The third phase of the project – from Sixth to Fourth streets – has no funding, and no known timeline.
The current phase of the project was supposed to be done this week. And now as the final design becomes more clear, merchants are noticing certain details they didn’t before.
Porcella and Lemos don’t like the parallel parking areas which are replacing the diagonal ones, since less cars will fit on the street. They also believe the center median is too large. These items, they say, will make it hard on larger trucks to unload goods and pass through.
“They’re taking half our parking spots away,” Lemos said. “They’re trying to make this like Morgan Hill.”
For city officials, shop owner frustration is understandable. It comes with the territory of trying to improve a downtown that pales in comparison aesthetically with Bay Area downtowns like Morgan Hill, Los Gatos and Mountain View.
But the city also says shop owners had ample opportunity to comment about the street design.
“It wasn’t like this was a staff level decision,” traffic engineer Arlynn Bumanglag said. “There were numerous meetings. We got community input about what people would like to see downtown.”
Porcella says he attended some of those meetings, but felt his ideas did not get received well.
Although the city isn’t pleasing everybody, it is trying to make the most out of the situation. Instead of doing nothing while waiting for monies to come in for the third phase, city crews have made the curbs at Third and Fifth streets wheelchair accessible.
It is also spending $20,500 to re-pave Monterey from Third to Sixth street – an idea the Downtown Association (formerly the Gilroy Downtown Development Association) pushed for in recent months.
“This will be a huge aesthetic improvement. This is something that hasn’t been done in 10 years,” said James Suner, president of the Downtown Association. “I think that’s a positive step.”
