Home Antioch Antioch City Council Agrees to Look Into Changing Street Names

Antioch City Council Agrees to Look Into Changing Street Names

by ECT

Last week, the Antioch City Council discussed the idea of changing street names of both A Street and L Street within the city.  The council stated they liked the idea and requested staff bring back more information at a future meeting.

According to city staff, it could cost more than $125,000 for the CAL Trans/Highway 4 signs and the A St. and L St sign replacements.  The item was last discussed in August of 2015.

At that time, it was suggested that L St would become Marina Way, Marina Parkway, Marina Drive or Marina Boulevard. Meanwhile, A Street would take on the name “Rivertown” to lead people to the historic downtown.

During Public Comments, Mayor Sean Wright read a public comment by Joy Motts highlighting how The Rivertown Preservation group has for 14 years, worked to promote and celebrate our great history and unique downtown.

“As we move toward the 150th anniversary of our great city, please consider this opportunity to get downtown a boost as we look to revitalize this beautiful part of our city with name changes to A St and L St. It would be a good start,” said Motts.

Allen Payton stated during public comments that this discussion goes back to 1996 as part of the city economic development plan and with changes made it made sense to name A Street Rivertown Drive and L Street Marina Boulevard.

Payton suggested they name A Street to Rivertown Drive and at A St. and Second St it be changed to West Rivertown Drive while suggesting L Street could be called Smiths Landing Boulevard which would be in line with the new Smiths Landing Restaurant.

“But the concept has always been about promoting downtown. But if people as they’re driving down the freeway, oh, there’s a river down there. The Smiths Landing,” said Payton. “What’s that? Well, it’s unique to our town. No one other cities can really have that name in the street that goes into the downtown where Smiths Landing was originally.

Mayor Pro Tem Lamar Thorpe brought the item forward saying he liked the idea of the L Street improvements.

“I think we’re long overdue for this discussion into finally getting some of this done and I think we’ve missed some opportunities with the expansion of Highway 4 a with the renaming of the streets, but that’s for another day in the debate because those over,” said Thorpe. “I don’t want to sit here and say, I think we should change the names to this. The third, there seems to be an interest in changing the name of. So, if this council so chose to, to forward, maybe we should move in a direction that at least allows the community to be involved in that process.”

Councilwoman Monica Wilson agreed with Thorpe saying they get the community involved in the naming of the streets but said some improvements need to be done to about 8-homes.

“I do not have a problem with naming the streets. I know a city manager’s tired of me talking about those eight houses that we can’t seem to get, find the owners to come fix up on L street because we are going to name these streets and people are going to come down. They’re going to definitely come down and see some areas that we need to fix up,” explained Wilson. “I have no problem with the name change, definitely do some outreach to community and definitely do some outreach to the businesses on A Street, let them know that this process has started wearing the thought process. We are still early in this process that these businesses know that this is something that’s potentially coming and how it may or may not affect them and get them their input as well.”

Councilman Tony Tiscareno agreed saying there was no issue with the name changes calling it market value for the city but requested more community input because there is a lot of different ideas.

“We’ve heard a couple already, so it be nice to, to get the community involved and make that final decision. But once we start seeing progress, we have some areas out there that I think needs to be addressed and, and we have a nice freeway, they’re starting to landscape that. And if we change it into a nice feeling names street and you’re going down to an area that hasn’t really been addressed, kind of defeats the purpose,” explained Tiscareno.  “I’m in favor of that market type of change. As we move forward about it, I think there’s a timing factor there that we want to see some progress and things are starting to look a lot better.”

Mayor Sean Wright stated he loved the idea of changing these names.

“I think its great,” said Wright but did say he questioned the timing noting that back when the wanted to change the names they had a difficult decision of changing the street names or hiring police.

“I believe that the council did a smart thing and said, no, we’re going to use this money to hire police. So there wasn’t a deal like that back then. It was a, it was a values is type decision and I think we’re getting to the point where we were going to have the opportunity to make that name change, but I think we need to be very strategic,” stated Wright.

He suggested they utilize their branding company to help figure out the right timing to make it the biggest bang for the city’s buck.

“I mean, you do it too soon and you solely the name right? Everybody looks and goes, well you did, you call it a Marina Parkway and it’s still not very clean and not very good,” explained Wright. “So how do we balance that and make that happen at the right time.”

Wright called it a high priority, but it was a matter of timing, but the council was on board and liked the idea.

Staff will begin working on the idea of changing the Street names and bring back more details to the council such as funding and branding plans. The item is anticipated to be back for council discussion towards the end of the year.

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13 comments

Verne Sep 17, 2018 - 7:37 am

$125,000 to change a few street signs? I’ll do it for this months rent! Surely those funds could be used for something more important that that!

Chris Seides Sep 17, 2018 - 7:45 am

Constant crime, blighted areas, homelessness, noise, reckless driving, and the city council is thinking about renaming streets? That’s the priority? What about bringing business and good jobs to Antioch?

Change the street names and we will have to:
1. Change the signs, on the streets and Highway 4
2. Businesses will have to change all of their printed material and websites
3. Residents will have to change all of their contact information with all financial and government institutions.
4. GPS systems will need to be reprogrammed.
5. Public safety dispatch systems will need to be updated

The current street names are part of Antioch’s history, why change them?
What will be the actual benefit?

This is just a vanity project for the city council. Local government at its worst.

Kimberly Dunn Sep 17, 2018 - 7:45 am

I would vote on something like this IF THEY ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING TO OUR DOWNTOWN. IM done there to 2nd St. every 6 weeks. Has not changed in YEARS

Dg Sep 17, 2018 - 8:52 am

Chris said it to a tee. Don’t waste the money. That is redicilous

Julio Sep 17, 2018 - 8:57 am

Why don’t we pay the unfunded liabilities before we do anything. Hire the police we are supposed to have promised to us. Hire a good street sweeper twice a month. The list goes on. We cannot spend our money like this. Dawn tells us in 2 years we will bankrupt. Hell we already are.

Nana Sep 17, 2018 - 2:09 pm

How about the cost to the businesses on those streets to reprint checks business ,cards, drivers license,SSI SO ON AND SO ON

Chris hurd Sep 17, 2018 - 2:58 pm

Here’s why This is so dang stupid, because there are other letters in the sequence of streets and this would totally mess that system up… it goes from A to O… so you would change A and O but not B,C,D,E,F,H,I,J,K? How ridiculous is that…. leave the street names alone… if you wanna just waste our money why don’t you do it by actually helping with the homeless population by building a place where they can shower or slee, our eat, or even just congregate In a civilized matter instead of them being on every freaking street corner and crevice in our town…. but y’all wanna just waste money by forcing Businesses to waste Money on their sign changes and advertisements…. come on Antioch city council. GET YOU ACT TOGETHER AND DO SOMETHING THAT IS ACTUALLY A BENEFIT TO OUR COMMUNITY

Chris hurd Sep 17, 2018 - 3:02 pm

Here’s why This is so dang stupid, because there are other letters in the sequence of streets and this would totally mess that system up… it goes from A to O… so you would change A and L but not B,C,D,E,F,H,I,J,K? How COMING is that…. leave the street names alone… if you wanna just waste our money why don’t you do it by actually helping with the homeless population by building a place where they can shower or slee, our eat, or even just congregate In a civilized matter instead of them being on every freaking street corner and crevice in our town…. but y’all wanna just waste money by forcing Businesses to waste Money on their sign changes and advertisements…. come on Antioch city council. GET YOU ACT TOGETHER AND DO SOMETHING THAT IS ACTUALLY A BENEFIT TO OUR COMMUNITY

Jim Simmons Sep 17, 2018 - 3:19 pm

This is a terrible idea. Does anyone not realize the Antioch Police Department is located on L Street and with all the crime being reported at the police station it will look like Marina Blvd or Smiths Landing Blvd will be full of high crime. Does the city not think? One of the best facilities in the city will then be associated with crime.

Changing A Street? As if our schools don’t have enough problems, now it looks like the council doesn’t know the alphabet and it begins with B.

MEV Sep 18, 2018 - 12:32 am

Ridiculous waste of money! Try cleaning g up this pathetic city first. That money should go to your inhumane animal services department before wasting it on street sign renaming. This beyond ignorant. Get some people with a head for business to clean up Antioch and quit wasting money on stupid ideas like this and raising taxes. Should have paid more attention on how East County was getting screwed by BART permanently ruining any chance for a decent economy in East County.

Lola Saavedra Sep 18, 2018 - 2:40 am

“A” Street would hardly be considered beautiful! It looks like skid row. Get the owners of the buildings to do some modification to make their properties look presentable. The strip malls on “A” Street look shoddy.

Beto Sep 18, 2018 - 9:47 am

Antioch should change it’s name to east Richmond since that’s what it’s turned into.

Kimberly D Sep 18, 2018 - 3:17 pm

This article and notice from City of Antioch that they are placing Measure W on the November 6, 2018, ballot, which is intended to “maintain Antioch’s quality of life (you can stop laughing) and City services” makes you wonder. All they want is to renew the 1 cent sales tax (it must be expiring). To be wanting to change these street signs for the mere sum of $125,000 to attract people to downtown Antioch, which is such an eyesore. I think that once they redevelop the downtown like Pittsburg did, we could revisit that idea. Payton suggested that they change L St. to Smiths Landing Blvd. to direct people to Smiths Landing Restaurant. What happens when they go under, does it revert back to L St. or do they have to change the name AGAIN? A lot of this stuff makes no sense. If Antioch had a lot of money in their coffers, no problem, but as we all know that is not the case. We would just like to see our police force increased (so maybe people wouldn’t be afraid to go to downtown) – which we already approved that measure in the past and are still awaiting the additional officers (hopefully in the traffic Dept). and blight taken care of, etc. It’s pretty bad when people say that Can do whatever you want in Antioch because nothing will happen, you don’t have to obey the traffic laws, pay your car tags, which if you leave on the paper tags, no worries, you can’t get in Trouble for anything, because they can’t identify you.. I’ve heard from so many people, that’ Antioch doesn’t give out tickets. There are no consequences for people behaving badly.

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