By Charly SHELTON

The monthly meeting of the Montrose Shopping Park Association was held Thursday, April 4, and there was a lot on the agenda. After recently holding the Wine Walk, the MSPA is now preparing for the Kids & Kritters event coming up on May 5 and the Arts & Crafts Festival taking place the weekend of June 1-2. The calendar is filling up and the MSPA has its hands full. One item of note, though, is a bit further out.

The Verdugo Boulevard Rehabilitation Project will commence later this year. The project is now in the outreach stage, where representatives visit community meetings to spread the word on what is coming. Between July and October, the VBRP will resurface the street, install new traffic lights and beautify the surrounding area of Verdugo Boulevard between Clifton Place (the street between New Moon Restaurant and the Mobil Gas Station) and the Glendale City boundary line at La Tour Way, just past the 2 Freeway offramp.

The project will consist of five phases. Phase One is concrete work to repair or replace sidewalks and gutters. Phases Two, Three and Four will see asphalt repair and resurfacing to make the street smoother and nicer to drive on, and lines on the lanes and crosswalks repainted, which will have zebra stripes. Phase Five features the modification of existing traffic signals at Valihi Way and the 2 Freeway offramp, with an all-new signal being installed at the corner of Verdugo Boulevard ad Park Place, the first street west of Marshalls.

Along the way, other projects will be carried out alongside and underneath the street pavement, including a water meter and fire hydrant relocation at Valihi Way and new trees – Desert Willow and Crepe-Myrtle – planted along the route.

This sounds like a lot but it will be manageable, said Armond Simonian of the Glendale Public Works Dept., because the work will be done mainly overnight and usually limited to one lane at a time. This will allow traffic to continue to flow in the lane next to it and will not necessitate the closure of Verdugo Boulevard during the day unless absolutely necessary. More information will be available on the Glendale City website on this project as it goes to bid in the next few weeks. Visit GlendaleCA.gov for more information.

  Charly Shelton