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Residents will soon have access to greener paths
By Sam Scott
A green highway soon will be running through north Sunnyvale.
City Council on May 2 awarded a contract to landscape a four-acre swath of land from Lawrence Expressway to Fair Oaks Avenue.
Curtis Black, director of parks, said the 60-foot-wide corridor will have a lighted pathway, periodic benches, flowers and grassy areas.
"You wouldn't want to play a game of football," he said. "But you could play catch there."
The section will form part of a 1.5-mile green way, spanning across the city. A section east of Lawrence was completed several years ago and another section west of Fair Oaks is in progress.
Black said by the end of this summer, people should be able to bike or jog the width of Sunnyvale on the path.
The land sits atop the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct, which flows through the northern half of the city. Black said the city negotiated to use the land with its owner, the San Francisco Water District.
The move restarts a project halted when the previous contractor, the James R. Clark Company, abandoned the project with only two-thirds of the work completed.
Mark Dettle, the city's assistant director of public works, said the company started work in January 1999 and stopped abruptly in August. He said the new company, Watkin and Bortolussi Inc., would begin work within 30 days of council's action and likely be done in four to five months.
That company is already at work on the section of the park that runs to Orchard Gardens Park from Morse Avenue.
Councilman Fred Fowler, who lives near the path, said he was pleased to have the project back in motion.
"I'm delighted," he said. "By the end of this, we're going to have a wonderful green walkway from one side of the city to another."
He said the land had been an eyesore for the Lakewood Village area.
"It was a problem for the neighborhood for a long time," Fowler said. "It was a place that was knee-high in weeds, where trash accumulated, where kids went to do things they shouldn't, where homeless found a place to be." He said the landscaping project would turn a lemon into lemonade.
The failure of the previous contractor to complete the work cost the city time, but no money. Dettle said all companies that work for the city are insured. Financial responsibility for completing the $600,000 project fell upon Frontier Pacific Insurance Company, the bonding agent.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
