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Repaved streets, redone Pier Avenue among the goals for new city council
by Robb Fulcher
The city council has decided to train its long-range sights on beautifying upper Pier Avenue, revitalizing the PCH and Aviation Boulevard business areas, and redoubling efforts to repave city streets.
The council, in a wide-ranging goal setting session on Thursday, also decided to focus upon a number of beautification efforts that would buff up high-profile areas such as the greenbelt parkway that bisects the town.
The council decided to pick up a sluggish, mostly dormant plan to turn the hilly part of Pier Avenue into a semblance of its western terminus, the popular Pier Plaza promenade, which was opened in 1997. The council discussed dotting upper Pier with palm trees, adding landscaping, and widening the sidewalks.
"It would make it a continuation of lower Pier," Councilman John Bowler said. "It would put us on the map."
Unlike lower Pier, upper Pier would remain open to automobile traffic.
City Manager Steve Burrell said he will explore possible funding sources for the project. On lower Pier, about one third of the cost of the overhaul was born voluntarily by the property owners.
The council also decided to appoint a task force to help determine how to overhaul the PCH and Aviation business areas, which were widely discussed during the city council campaign leading to the November ballot.
A number of candidates said that efforts are needed to provide more parking, to beautify the areas and to attract more businesses to locate there.
The majority of the council pooh-poohed the notion of a second parking garage for downtown Hermosa. The subject was raised by Bowler, who was noncommittal. Only Councilman J.R. Reviczky would even go so far as to say that a second structure "may be something we would have to look at in the future."
The council agreed to install attractive, prominent roadway signs telling visitors they are entering and leaving Hermosa Beach.
"You're coming to this beautiful beachfront community and you don't even know where you are unless you live here," Mayor Julie Oakes said. "We want people to enter and realize they are in Hermosa Beach, and exit knowing that they've left a wonderful place."
The council decided to seek greater consistency in the signs and benches in parks, on the greenbelt and out on the pier, opting for wood instead of metal signs throughout.
Reviczky managed to revive his periodic push to create a Public Works Commission that would, in part, oversee such aesthetic matters. Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach have public works commissions. ER