Gilroy
– It is imperative for firefighters and paramedics to know the
names of city streets so they can find them in emergencies without
wasting precious seconds, but in rapidly growing Gilroy, personnel
at the city’s newest fire station haven’t yet memorized the names
of the new streets springing up nex
t to them off Sunrise Drive.
Not long ago, firefighter/paramedic Heinz Maibaum remembers a
call about a construction worker who got hit in the head. Neither
he nor his partner, Capt. Moe McHenry, recognized the street.
Gilroy – It is imperative for firefighters and paramedics to know the names of city streets so they can find them in emergencies without wasting precious seconds, but in rapidly growing Gilroy, personnel at the city’s newest fire station haven’t yet memorized the names of the new streets springing up next to them off Sunrise Drive.
Not long ago, firefighter/paramedic Heinz Maibaum remembers a call about a construction worker who got hit in the head. Neither he nor his partner, Capt. Moe McHenry, recognized the street.
“We said, ‘What street’s that?'” Maibaum said. “Luckily they gave us a cross street.”
The cross street was Sunrise, which meant the accident was just down the block from the new firehouse.
“We kind of said, ‘OK, let’s head down Sunrise and see what we get,’ ” Maibaum said.
As it turned out, they found the accident just fine. Workers in new developments don’t expect emergency workers to know all the streets, so they post someone on a main street to meet the ambulance, according to Sunrise Capt. Gil Horta.
“It’s a never-ending thing, every time a new development goes in,” said Horta, a 25-year veteran of the Gilroy Fire Department.
In fact, the city fire and police departments are among the first to know the names of all new streets. Each of these three departments has a representative on the city’s Street Naming Task Force, which assigns names to smaller streets.
The Street Naming Committee – a more eminent city board – recommends names for larger streets, which must be approved by the city council.
The new roads off Sunrise have a Southwestern theme. Green signs are already installed for Hopi Lane, Laredo Way, Rio Grande Way and – breaking the trend – O’Keefe Court. Zuni Lane and Pueblo Court still await signage, but they also have no completed houses as of yet.
This is a natural continuance from the Old West theme of the streets north of Longmeadow Drive, with such names as Rodeo, Apache and Durango.
The Street Naming Task Force makes a point of not devising its own name ideas or soliciting ideas from the community; a developer should be able to suggest names for the streets it builds on, Durkin said.
Nevertheless, task force members do ask that the names follow certain guidelines. New names shouldn’t sound too similar to others in south Santa Clara County, and no name can have more than 12 letters (not including “Street,” “Drive,” “Court,” etc.).
The city asks developers to continue themes in existing neighborhoods or come up with new themes for new neighborhoods. Themes can help emergency workers find obscure streets on a map, Durkin said, but finding “Periwinkle Drive” would be confusing if there were three neighborhoods with flower themes.
The city asks developers to present a list of names when it presents its tentative map for the building project, Durkin said. All streets must be named before the city council approves a final map.
A developer like Western Pacific would generally submit twice as many names as it needs, and task force members would help whittle down the list, according to Durkin.
“We eliminate the ones that are too long and the ones that don’t seem to fit the character of the area,” she said.
Sometimes, however, the task force approves names that its members dislike, simply because they didn’t have enough good alternative suggestions.
One of the task force members is Albert Signorotti, in charge of updating the city’s maps. Companies that make maps for the public, such as Rand McNalley and the American Automobile Association, call the city once a year to get the new streets.
Western Pacific appears to be nearly done, but the Southwestern trend will continue when the Arcadia development firm starts building the next round on the north side of Sunrise. According to a new AAA map, future names include Desert Bloom, Coyote Moon, Desert Sky, Dream Catcher and Dancing Wind.
“I think they’re cool,” Gilroy AAA employee Javier Cuevas said. “I think it shows a brighter side to Gilroy.”
Neighborhood themes
British airs:
Victoria Drive, between West Tenth and Luchessa, is the spine of Gilroy’s New, New England district. From the great queen’s street spring Kings, Kensington, Hastings, Sussex, Stratford and Churchill places. London, Thames and Hyde Park drives are also nearby.
Northeast U.S.:
As students walk north from Gilroy High School, they can study early U.S. history as they stroll by Plymouth and Valley Forge drives and Ticonderoga Court. For geography, they can try to locate Chesapeake, Nantucket, Trenton and Utica – all while working to get into Harvard, Dartmouth and Georgetown, which also have streets named after them.
Fowls flock to the Northwest Quad:
The bird names range from fierce raptors like Peregrine, Kestrel, Falcon and Goshawk – plus Eagle Hills, Eagle View and Eagle’s Nest ways – to the more docile Blue Heron, Quail Walk, Swallow Finch and Pheasant.
