CHICO — Brendan Ottoboni isn’t exaggerating when he calls the Downtown Chico Complete Streets Improvement Project a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for city engineers and the city where they live.
Director of the Public Works Department’s Engineering Division, Ottoboni is the point person for planning massive renovations of the streetscape to coincide with utility infrastructure upgrades. Sewer lines downtown date 70 to 100 years; replacing them entails ripping up roadways, at which point water and power lines also come into play.
The city could just repave streets as they are. But the City Council sees this as a chance to reshape transportation flow downtown. Ottoboni brought preliminary ideas to the council’s Internal Affairs Committee in December, then conducted outreach for input from downtown businesses and Chicoans who patronize them. Next up — “step 2 of 100 maybe,” Ottoboni said — will be further input during Tuesday evening’s council meeting.
“Not every project do we go through this level of public engagement to help define the scope of the work,” Ottoboni said Thursday afternoon in his city hall office. “But it’s an obvious one that merits that level of engagement. So we’ve gone through a robust period to get that feedback.
“We’ve listened — despite some of the accusations, we do listen — and the reality is it’s our downtown; it’s the heart of our community. If there’s one project that’s the most important that any one of us will work on in our lifetimes, it’s this one.”
Indeed, at a cost between $40 million and $60 million, this would be the largest capital project in city history, potentially double the current record-holder, a $29 million revamp approved for Bruce Road.
Councilor Tom van Overbeek, a downtown property owner who chairs the Internal Affairs Committee, supports the project. Businesses expressed concerns about access issues the work and end result could create, he said, prompting a shift in thinking over where to place a north-south bike lane. That’s among the items on which Public Works seeks direction.
“The plan is going to be changed incorporating that input,” van Overbeek said. “People have the idea that the city has made up its mind, that we’re going to do what we’re going to do, but that’s not true.
“The whole idea of the concepts — making it pedestrian-centric, calming traffic, having more bike infrastructure — none of that stuff has changed; it’s just how we express it that may need some tweaks.”
Which way
Tuesday, Ottoboni will ask the council how to proceed on five components: sidewalk vaults, street trees, bike lane buffers, connectivity from cross streets (Second, Third, Fourth) and features on the thoroughfares (Main and Broadway).
The latter has proven the most contentious. Councilors on the Internal Affairs Committee favored a two-directional bike lane on the east side of Main Street. The IAC preferred this to separate bike lanes on Main and Broadway. But businesses bristled about losing parking and the prospect of a barrier between the street and the sidewalk.
So, where would it go? The IAC asked Ottoboni to look at a bike lane on Salem Street; that presents challenges to connecting with a bike path set for the Esplanade, he said. Meanwhile, van Overbeek has shifted his focus to Wall Street, which has its own set of constraints — namely, the municipal center parking lot between Fourth and Fifth Streets and the Boys and Girls’ Club’s plaza between Sixth and Seventh.
“Salem or Wall — and Wall probably makes more sense — is better than Main,” he said, “and certainly the businesspeople are going to be happier about it. The overwhelming objection was, ‘We cannot lose any more parking downtown,’ because bulb-outs cost eight spaces and the outdoor cafes are eating up more parking.”
Ottoboni’s engineers haven’t assessed Wall but would if so directed. A big reason for the council’s involvement at this juncture is avoiding “scope creep”: ideas beyond the agreed-upon vision.
Councilor Addison Winslow, another IAC member, is not ready to abandon a bike lane (or lanes) on Main.
“I want everyone of all ages and abilities to be able to get downtown safely and comfortably without a car,” Winslow, who travels around town by bike, said Saturday morning. “I want downtown to be a better social center for Chico, to promote good development, and to bolster and extend the walkable environment of north downtown to the south and into all of the core neighborhoods.
“To keep Main Street car-oriented would completely disrupt connectivity of Chico’s bicycle network, discourage use of outdoor space and forfeit the prospect of tens of millions in state funding. We’re looking at a net loss of 1 out of 20 parking spaces downtown, most of which are south of the commercial core. On three blocks of Main Street, First to Fourth, parking is regularly well-utilized — and right now, on one of these blocks, every building is vacant.
“What we have on Main Street is not working, and we have a huge opportunity here to make it better.”
The two downtown thoroughfares span 82 feet from building front to building front. All the proposals would reduce Main and Broadway from three lanes to two, matching the traffic flow of other main drags such as the Esplanade, Park Avenue, East Avenue, even Highway 99. As for other elements … stay tuned.
