Gateway will get its facelift: City Council approves area master plan

Neighbors, businesses voice their approval

Completion in spring '03

By Oakley Brooks

To cheers from gathered neighbors and business owners, the city council approved a broad scheme for sprucing up the Saratoga-Sunnyvale Avenue business district between Prospect Avenue and the Union Pacific railroad tracks--an area known as the Gateway Region.

There was little debate and a unanimous vote in favor of the plan March 20, following years of funding stalls and neighborly disagreements surrounding improvement to the area.

The city now expects to request bids for new medians, sidewalks, landscaping and a city entrance sign by August of this year.

City officials say the $2.8 million project could be completed by spring 2003.

Most of the schematic presented to the public at a city open house in January--a narrower roadway lined with new oak and flowering trees, punctuated by improved crosswalks and intersections--remained intact in the final plan approved by the council.

One major change involved cutting away the proposed median between Kirkmont Drive and Seagull Way. That was in response to area shop owners' complaints that access to their stores would be reduced by preventing left turns on that section of roadway.

Taking out the median was seemingly one of the last pieces of the Gateway improvement puzzle, quelling some late opposition to the project.

"You have existing businesses that weren't taken into consideration," said Zoe Alameda, who sat on a Gateway improvement task force and owns the Saratoga-Cupertino Funeral Home. "Now, I think this has been a very successful project."

Discontent over the area dates back much farther than recent squabbles over improvements.

Since early 1996, a task force has been meeting to try to improve the area, where potholes and sterile parking lots show signs of neglect or indifference. Business owners often quipped that shoppers mistook the area for Cupertino or San Jose, because its condition didn't match that of the rest of Saratoga.

But funding shortages and high turnover in city staff delayed the project, and neighbors often couldn't agree on a suitable remedy for the area.

The city will now fund the project entirely with money from Caltrans and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority. And at the direction of Public Works Director John Cherbone and hired consultants, the city put together a design with much public input over the last year--a process that itself drew rousing applause before the city council's approval March 20.

There are still some issues for the Gateway task force and city staff to sort out.

The current project list doesn't contain a new stoplight at Kirkmont Drive, although the signal and an accompanying crosswalk are a key component of the area's redesign.

Cherbone said he would wait to see if bids on the project came in low in August, before scrambling for funding for the light.

Council members also wondered how commuting Saratogans might react to the narrowed roadway and new bike lanes--designed to reduce speed in the area. Councilman John Mehaffey said the city might have to conduct a public relations campaign to ease the transition.

"We're going to catch some flak from the rest of Saratoga, which likes their 45-mile-an-hour expressway through there," Councilman Mehaffey said.

But even with the wrinkles to be worked out, Gateway neighbors stood behind the plan.

"I don't think we're done, but we want this project to move ahead," said area homeowner Jack Mallory. "Hip, hip, hooray."

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