PALM DESERT VISION SAN PABLO
The City’s newly updated General Plan identifies San Pablo Avenue as a key area for transformational change to facilitate the creation of a downtown/city center. The mile-long corridor connects shopping, restaurants, and other commercial services at El Paseo and Highway 111 with residential neighborhoods and The Civic Center including Civic Center Park, City Hall, College of the Desert, and eventually the CVLink.
Conceptual plans for the corridor call for a “road-diet” that would remove one vehicle lane in each direction on San Pablo and add enhanced walkways and buffered bike and golf cart lanes.
In May of 2016 the city set up a mock Vision San Pablo for 6 weeks. The city striped San Pablo reducing the road by one lane in each direction. They set up golf cart, bike and pedestrian lanes and created a round about at San Pablo and San Gorgonio. They brought in large boxed trees to line the center island and asked the community to use it and give feedback. The responses were overwhelmingly positive and the city adopted Vision San Pablo into their Updated General Plan.
They are currently working on updating the construction plans and surveyors are working now with ground breaking expected this summer.
THE CORRIDOR PLAN
A central goal of the 111 Corridor Plan is to systematically evolve the physical design and functional characteristics of 111 to a 21st Century City Center Boulevard. The transformed 111 Corridor will provide an aesthetically cohesive, practically connected, safe and welcoming city center that emphasizes pedestrian activity and community life, balanced with and not dominated by high-speed automobile traffic. The 111 Corridor will become the city’s primary gateway as an iconic arrival point and a major hub for civic and commercial life and future developments in the Coachella Valley. In addition to 111 itself, the Corridor is supported by key districts and streetscapes.
The primary focus area
Approximately 1-mile of the 111 corridor between Highway 74 and Portola Ave. and includes seven cross streets, San Luis Rey, Larkspur, San Pablo, Las Palmas, Lupine and Sage. These areas are targeted to implement the city’s new urban design standards designed to increase the flow of vehicular, bike and pedestrian circulation for future development and open spaces.
Second Focus is along San Pablo between El Paseo and Civic Center, with street-scape renovations and traffic calming which will bolster connections to the larger community and Civic Center. In particular, San Pablo Avenue will feature a future roundabout at its intersections with San Gorgonio Way. This will allow the City and future developers to introduce and incorporate active and passive open spaces such as the existing community gardens and other public frontages.
Third Focus is San Alessandro, to incorporate several vacant lots that will be linked and transformed into a “Woonerf” District, which is a walkable flexible-use arts district pioneered to integrate live-work developments with the surrounding community and bolster cultural institutions and businesses.
Want to see more of what’s cook’n in Palm Desert and the New Updated City Plan, drop me a line, I’m happy to provide a copy of the whole report. Cathi(at)DesertAreaHomeFinder(dotted)com.
