We see it played out all the time, the struggle between what is good for a local community with what is good for the larger, and it is what has been largely driving many local areas of the county into incorporating as new cities over the past several years rather than give up their cherished dreams for their community to regional thinking.
Competing visions target busy route
It's 'Main Street' vs. 6-lane thoroughfare
By Ed Fletcher - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Monday, October 1, 2007
Fair Oaks Boulevard -- one of the longest and most heavily traveled thoroughfares in the region -- is the way home for thousands of area residents. But for thousands of others, it's "Main Street" -- home to the local grocery, drug and hardware stores.
Those competing interests are at the heart of a debate on the future of an aging stretch of the roadway.
Armed with years of data, slick plans and heaps of survey information, a small contingent of Carmichael residents is working with Sacramento County in hopes of adding new shops, life, a vibrancy to Fair Oaks between Oak and Marshall avenues, complete with a walkable, mixed-use "Old Colony Main Street District."
The problem is the "Main Street" plan assumes the boulevard remains a more pedestrian-friendly four-lane road, while traffic data suggest it should be widened to six lanes.
County planners say they have a compromise in mind and hope that the Fair Oaks hitch is just a bump on the road to revitalizing the commercial corridor.
From Stockton Boulevard to the south to Greenback Lane to the northeast, the county has targeted a dozen commercial corridors it hopes to invigorate in the coming years. Sales tax revenue and employment is flat or declining in most of the areas identified, according to county data.
