City hopes plan is one-way street to more foot traffic

Some merchants don’t see solution in adding dining patios to Santa Cruz Ave.

Hey Campbell, Los Gatos is getting jealous of your downtown.

All those wine walks, farmers markets and festivals drawing trendy crowds to downtown Campbell have its neighbor to the south cooking up ways to attract more visitors to the upscale shops and critically acclaimed restaurants at the foot of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

So Los Gatos is about to try something dramatic: It’s putting its main downtown drag on a diet.

Starting the week of July 8, the city is turning four blocks of North Santa Cruz Avenue into a one-way street, creating room for mini patios — complete with bistro tables and Adirondack chairs — in spots previously designated for parking.

The goal is to enliven the quaint downtown, drawing pedestrians to linger over coffee or ice cream in these patio areas, known as parklets.

“How can we make more of a destination than it already is?” Parks and Public Works Director Matt Morley said. “We want to make it more of a current type of downtown, with more activity on the sidewalks.”

For now, it’s only a four-month experiment. And it comes as the town grapples with worsening traffic congestion from beachgoers looking for a shortcut onto Highway 17, which turns Los Gatos streets into parking lots and deters visitors who might otherwise spend the day there.

While local business owners and merchants agree that downtown Los Gatos needs a shot of adrenaline, they’re not all convinced that this is the right solution.

“I like that they are trying to think outside the box,” said Dan Reineke, general manager of Loma Brewing Company, a popular brewpub on Santa Cruz Avenue. “But honestly, I think that this plan is not going to bring more people to Los Gatos.”

In February, the town council approved the plan to turn North Santa Cruz Avenue into a southbound one-way street between Bachman Avenue and Elm Street and construct seven parklets on both sides of the street. Each

parklet will sit atop two to three parking spaces and will be partitioned from the road by barriers.

The $225,000 project will also add a bike lane and create diagonal parking spaces to ensure that no parking is lost. No other streets will be made into one-way northbound lanes.

At the end of October, the parklets will disappear and the street will return to two-way traffic. If the project is a success, the town will consider long-term changes such as widening the sidewalks, Morley said.

Some business owners and residents are skeptical that the plan will do much to vitalize the downtown area or fix what they say is the real problem: beach traffic.

“I can’t tell you how often, especially during the summer months, I look outside the store and it’s complete gridlock,” said Laura Smithwick, general manager of Great Bear Coffee. Customers complain to her that they ride their bikes or walk to the grocery store instead of drive because the traffic means one errand can sometimes take hours in the car.

“I see downtown Campbell being way more lively and more of a go-to destination than Los Gatos,” she said. “Maybe avoiding traffic.”

Morley said the pilot program is not intended to solve Los Gatos’ traffic problem.

“We’re trying to peel them apart and view them as separate conversations,” he said.

And while some merchants and locals compare downtown Los Gatos to Campbell, town officials say Los Gatos isn’t trying to copy any other local hot spot.

“Los Gatos has its own identity,” said Monica Renn, the town’s economic vitality manager. “We’re not looking to emulate anybody or become anybody else.”

The two downtowns attract distinct demographics, said David Mac Gregor Scholes, who co-owns the boutique Redemption with his wife, Tammy. They have locations in both downtown Los Gatos and downtown Campbell.

“We don’t like to compare them. They’re two different places,” he said.

While Campbell has evolved in recent years, MacGregor-Scholes sees the new parklet program as a way to make Los Gatos a destination.

“All those people sitting on the streets in their cars going to the beach, those are the people we need to get out of their cars and into the town,” he said. “Hopefully this will have a big positive effect.”

While other streets like Lincoln Avenue in Willow Glen and Pruneridge Avenue in San Jose have been narrowed to make room for bikes and pedestrians, Morley said he’s not aware of any other nearby recent one-way street conversions.

Reineke is unsure whether the parklets will be a big enough draw to more shoppers and pedestrians. And for families, he’d like to see more green spaces where children can roam instead of confining them to enclosed patios.

“If you’re going to use a parklet, you’re tethered to it,” he said. “It’s like a cage for kids.”

But MacGregor-Scholes is optimistic.

“Los Gatos isn’t this downer, dying town,” he said. “It’s just going through an evolutionary process.”