“Gift?”

Before we begin, let’s first acknowledge that Cypress doesn’t loath Los Al. They did this to their own community when they put Shaw Carpets in on Valley View.  This is not a personal affront to New Dutch, Carrier Row and Apartment Row.

Now a few things of note.

1. The development is over two times as large as Shaw Carpet.
2. Based on the diagrams (see right), it looks like there are about 300-350 truck bays.
3. Based on the diagrams all access and egress is via Katella.
4. Based on the diagrams they will be unable to exit East on Katella without

• a)  A light on Enterprise
• b)  A light on the most eastern access

In order to put a light on the most eastern access to the property (right next to the hotel! I’m sure they just can’t wait for late night trucking past their guests) that would allow left turns into the property they would require that the Ticonderoga westbound turn on Katella be eliminated (to allow the trucks a turn lane). This would leave westbound traffic that wanted to turn into Carrier Row the only option of going to Enterprise and then heading back to the east (all that traffic going past Mrs. Poe’s home).  It would also mean that all the homes that were using Ticonderoga to exit westbound on Katella would also have to now use Enterprise.

An alternative that has been mentioned is to create a new access point through the wall between Bunkerhill and Ranger (or at the east end past Bunkerhill). The first suggested access point would be at a point across from the most eastern access for the property and would be able to share the controlled signal. The “end of the wall east of Bunkerhill” option would be uncontrolled.

While both options allow access and egress, they would both place all the traffic on the two lane access road that can’t handle two cars and parking on both sides comfortably now. This would mean that the access road option would eliminate parking on at least one side of the road. Additionally, the eastern most option would make it difficult for the Bunkerhill residents to egress (unless there was a stop sign on the access road before Bunkerhill heading east).

In no alternative does the drawing show any egress to or from the property to the north. There is no northern east-west street in the plan that ties to either Lexington or Walker north of Katella. That means that the intent is to have 100% of all the new traffic on Katella.

What we Los Alamitos residents can’t do is agree to anything that throws 100% of the traffic on Katella (that includes all the employee traffic as well as all the truck traffic).    I don’t see us agreeing to add even more traffic to Katella considering that the hospital’s specific plan eats up almost all the available traffic between the 605 and Bloomfield.

Yeah, there is traffic availability to add more between Bloomfield and the proposed terminal, as long as the traffic magically disappears at Bloomfield.

Unless the members of City Council are somehow being drugged, there is no way that the City Council will NOT fight the proposal as it stands now.  It already takes three to seven light changes to get from just East of Laurel Park to the 605 during the afternoon rush hours and I just can’t see the City agreeing to stretch that to 7-10 light changes and traffic backed up to Lexington.

But then again, who could have anticipated Troy Edgar bringing back the light on Enterprise and Katella after he met with the property owners at a Chris Norby fundraiser at the Race Track last summer?

Next Tuesday’s “Open House” meeting is going to be what we call a “snow job.”   That means that there will be lots of promises that sound nice, but that is all.

Remember that this piece of property was originally zoned so that it could only be used for a Church, Golf Course, Park, cemetery. and not much more.  A zoning that could only be changed by a vote of the people of Cyperss.

Then the people were told that the plan was, if they voted for it, to put up an elder care facility. But once the onerous zoning was changed, there is no requirement that the zoning can’t be changed by the City of Cypress to anything else that they want.

So, the bait-and-switch was to change the zoning for one thing, and once the city was no longer under the restrictive zoning, they could change it any way they wanted. And amazingly, just as had been predicted by us silly Los Alamitos people to our Cypress friends who said “They won’t do that.” That is just what they did.

Remember when Costco was coming in during the negotiations with Cottonwood and the Los Al side said that they didn’t want Costco trucks coming up and down Katella. Cypress promised that they would have all Costco trucks use Walker. Well that promise was worth the paper it wasn’t written on.

Our city’s stand should be simple. After a five lane road (two lanes east and two lanes west with a median turn lane) has been built north of Cottonwood Church running east-west from Walker to Lexington, and after Lexington north of that road is extended to  Cerritos as a four lane road, then we can start discussions to any changes to the configuration of Katella.

Until the road is in, paved, lighted and open, there can be no discussions to any changes or the configuration on Katella that make any changes to traffic control on the LART (Los Alamitos Race Track).

No promises made. No “We will get to that.” And if we in Los Alamitos have learned anything from the LAMC Specific Plan, there will be no “It’s on the plans and first we have to do A, B and C and then we will do what you want.”

Simple. First a five lane road bisecting the LART north of Cottonwood Church’s primary building heading east-west and connecting Walker and Lexington must be in, paved, lighted and open for public traffic BEFORE any negotiations can be started on any changes to configuration on any portion of Katella between Lexington and Walker as it affects the LART.