www.montereycountyweekly.com march 9-15, 2023 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 15 installed in front of several restaurants. “It’s one of the best things that ever happened to our downtown,” says Rick Johnson, who served for 22 years as the executive director of the Old Monterey Business Association, as well as the Lighthouse Business District, until he retired last summer. “It gave not just the opportunity to sit outside, but it created an energy on the street. People always want to be where they see people, and that was a great opportunity for downtown.” The increase in energy along Alvarado is evident on a daily basis. Pedestrians stroll up and down both sides of the street, with numerous restaurants and shops to visit, in almost every kind of weather. It’s not difficult to walk across the one-way, tree-lined street. Parallel parking is available, although it’s more plentiful in nearby parking garages. With crosswalks and bump-outs, it’s not a street where drivers consistently speed. It closes to traffic on Tuesday afternoons for the popular farmers market and on New Year’s Eve for First Night Monterey. It is the true definition of a street, a destination where people shop and meet—it’s not the fast way to get to somewhere else. Monterey’s Community Development Director Kim Cole says most of what the city envisioned for downtown when the plan was adopted in 2013 has come to fruition, including renovating the bookends of the street— the Monterey Conference Center at the north end and Cooper Molera Adobe to the south. It helped bring Monterey’s downtown out of the Great Recession of 2007-2009, which reverberated for several years among municipal commercial districts like Monterey’s downtown. Today there are few commercial vacancies. “We were able to get businesses excited about outdoor seating,” Cole says. To encourage buy-in, the city relaxed its rules about adding seating to sidewalks adjacent to the street, leaving a pathway for passersby. Alvarado Street Brewery was the first restaurant to jump in, followed by a few others. The improvements were all funded by businesses. “Outdoor seating definitely made it more pedestrian-friendly,” Cole says. “It made you feel like you are part of an active, vibrant downtown.” As Alvarado continues to evolve as a downtown destination, there is in the downtown plan a goal of one day turning Alvarado into a two-way street. That plan was set aside by the last Monterey City Council to focus on spending to upgrade city infrastructure like sewers and sidewalks. That wasn’t the only idea for Alvarado, however. “There was a lot of discussion about shutting down traffic altogether on Alvarado,” Cole remembers. Research shows that to be a success in transforming from a street to a pedestrian thoroughfare, the street in question already must be successful as a destination; the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica is one example of that, or State Street in Santa Barbara. Alvarado had a ways to go before it reached that level of success as a destination. Where Alvarado succeeds as a destination for shopping, restaurants and entertainment, Lighthouse Avenue can’t help where it lands geographically, as one of two ways in and out of Pacific Grove. With an estimated 37,000 cars each day zooming through post-pandemic shutdowns—the highest number pre-pandemic was 56,000, with an average of 50,000-54,000 daily, or 80 percent of the 70,000 daily vehicle trips on Highway 1—it labors as an effective transportation route, let alone a welcoming destination for pedestrians. “Lighthouse is not a walking street, it’s a drive-by street,” says Kelly Sorensen, owner of On the Beach Surf Shop. The store has been located at the corner of Lighthouse and Prescott Avenue since 1993. The highly traveled road during rush hours and weekend tourism traffic presents both opportunity and challenge. “It hinders [business] a little bit. That’s 30,000-plus cars per day at our doorstep, but there’s a deterAbove: Monterey Engineering Assistant Marissa Garcia monitors the city’s intersections from her office at City Hall using an artificial intelligence software program called SCOOT. It’s connected to traffic lights that adjusts their timing in real time. Opposite page: A pedestrian crosses Lighthouse Avenue, a classic stroad. Daniel Dreifuss Daniel Dreifuss
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