Saratoga News

Gateway district could make good use of promised funds

By Sarah Lombardo

There's a good chance Saratoga's gateway district could receive funding sometime in the next year for much-needed improvements. Interim City Manager Larry Perlin said money could be approved by the state as early as 1998.

"And if it is, there's a chance we could be looking at a 1998-99 or 1999-2000 project," he said. Usually, state transportation improvement program (STIP) grants take several years, Perlin said.

The area, between Prospect Road and the railroad tracks on Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road, was the subject of a task force in 1996 composed of business owners and area residents. After several months of meetings, the group made recommendations to the City Council in the summer of 1996 about what improvements should be made to make that area of the city more appealing. The suggestions included such things as installing a traffic light at Seagull Way and Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road, extending sidewalks and curbs, installing medians along the road and even changing the road's long, cumbersome name to something shorter.

But that's a far as the project got.

"It was put on the back burner pending funding," Perlin said. "The money has been diverted from our project on two separate occasions. We're just waiting to get our share of the funding."

The city could receive about $800,000 from the state for streetscape improvements, such as medians and improved railroad crossings. "The remaining money would be used to improve Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road to ready it for relinquishment to the city [from the state]," Perlin said. Before Caltrans can give the road, which used to be old Highway 85, to the city, it must bring it up to certain standards, which include the installation of bike lanes, paths, handicap ramps and berms, Perlin said.

Businesses in the gateway district said the improvements can't come too soon.

"We've been down here for years and years and we've been promised improvements and nothing ever comes of it," Carl Orr, owner of Colour Shoppe Draperies and Interiors on Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road, said. Orr, who was part of the 1996 Gateway Project Task Force, said the area is so bad that many people mistake it for another city. "I have clients all the time who don't realize we're in Saratoga, and they live here. It's kind of embarrassing. ... I don't know if [the project] would improve business, but it sure would improve morale."

Dick Wood, chairman of the Business Development Group's TEAM Saratoga, said that, because many of the stores in the area are set back from the street and were created at different times, the area lacks the cohesiveness that might improve business in the shopping district. "It has not been a planned community," he said.

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