Welcome to Gilroy
– garlic capital of the world, home of Bonfante Gardens, gateway
to the valley for eastbound traffic through Hecker Pass, home of
the famous south valley Outlet stores and the coming Super Wal-Mart
giant store – now has another feature to highlight, and that’s what
I’ll call the
”
Great Wall of Gilroy
”
.
Welcome to Gilroy – garlic capital of the world, home of Bonfante Gardens, gateway to the valley for eastbound traffic through Hecker Pass, home of the famous south valley Outlet stores and the coming Super Wal-Mart giant store – now has another feature to highlight, and that’s what I’ll call the “Great Wall of Gilroy”.
As a work-in-progress being erected on the west side of Santa Teresa Boulevard and running north from First Street a distance of some 1.2 miles to its termination point, (and as I count, consisting of about 108 sections over this distance) I suspect the Wall is a sight for sore eyes if you happen to live on its residential side.
Toping out at an estimated 15 feet high, it raises some interesting thoughts. Like, pity the poor home occupants whose homes now butt against this wall on their property’s east side. They can now say goodbye to feeling the rays of the morning sun, as the ground floors of their homes are now encased in shadows, I’m guessing until after 9am all year around.
Now maybe some of these folks like even more isolation from the noise of traffic on Santa Teresa, but in my view, cutting out the morning sunlight is a bad trade-off. Let’s just hope that no one who lives in the shadows of the Wall sue the city for emotional stress due to high-wall induced claustrophobia or depression induced by prolonged morning shadows.
It wouldn’t surprise me if some greedy lawyers aren’t already pondering their potential profits over such lawsuits. Another factor to consider is what the Great Wall will do to property values for these homes. Granted that some folks will still be content to live so close to a busy street, a 15-foot wall standing in your backyard, as close as an estimated five feet away from some of these homes, still makes for non-prime property.
And at the same time, the question arises as to why the residents on the east side of Santa Teresa don’t have walls as high as the new Great Wall of Gilroy on the west side. Maybe it’s because the different housing tracts that built homes along Santa Teresa were not required by the city to construct sound walls that conformed to a common design. Maybe just having a wall in place with a minimum height was the only issue the city was concerned about then, and it appears that the west side residents only have to deal with walls that are 8 to 10 feet high.
So now we’ve not only got multiple designed sound walls running along Santa Teresa but walls of different heights as well. Does it really matter in the scope of Gilroy esthetics? Apparently not.
But more than the Wall for noise suppression, I think the bigger issue will be the traffic volume and speed that will flow on the widened Santa Teresa after construction is finished. Local speeders will have the opportunity to race between traffic signals for some 1.2 miles northbound before having the two-lanes merge into one lane, while southbound speeders might be able to clear the intersection at First Street and Santa Teresa before having to hopefully slow down.
Speaking of northbound traffic, after the two lanes on Santa Teresa merge into one lane, traffic will now be stacking-up at Sunrise Dr. where the city is installing a new traffic signal. I’ll guess this signal will finally give better traffic flow for northwest quad residents who’ve had to wait at Sunrise Drive for Santa Teresa traffic to clear before turning.
Since Santa Teresa is the major westside north-south street to move traffic through Gilroy, it seems to me that the local traffic problem will now be pushed north of Sunrise Drive all the way to Fitzgerald Avenue, where the street is still a narrow one lane on each side, and also one lane on each side of Fitzgerald Avenue eastbound to the freeway. But apparently these forthcoming traffic jams will be something that the county will need to solve since they ‘re outside of Gilroy’s city limits.
One last thought about the Great Wall: Gilroy now has the opportunity to earn some extra revenue by renting out the 108 wall panels to advertisers. This would certainly add an even more unique feature to our fair city.
