Santa Rosa’s Third Street undercrossing to get new lighting

Santa Rosa is hoping to brighten up Santa Rosa Plaza’s dark underbelly.

The section of Third Street that dives beneath the downtown mall between A and B streets has long been a gloomy place. The overhead lights and murals of the scenic Sonoma Coast haven’t been enough to make the depression less depressing. The lights either don’t work or are ineffective; the murals, installed in 2000, are defaced with graffiti; and pigeon droppings and garbage litter the area.

“To me, as a pedestrian, when I walk down there I don’t feel comfortable,” said Danny Chen, an assistant city engineer. “It’s pretty dark.”

The City Council today will consider spending up to $706,000 to breathe some new life into the dreary undercrossing. By installing bicycle lanes, brighter LED light fixtures and a series of internally lit bollards, the city is hoping to make the experience of crossing beneath the mall safer and more comfortable for pedestrians and bicyclists.

The hope is that in doing so, the city will improve the connections between the east and west sides, linking the downtown and its newly reunified Old Courthouse Square with the popular Railroad Square shopping district and its new SMART rail station.

A number of other projects have shared a similar goal, including the Prince Memorial Greenway, the mall’s own upgrades along Fourth Street, the Sixth Street undercrossing, and last year’s widening of College Avenue under Highway 101.

Third Street, however, poses some particular challenges.

There are four structures that cross above Third Street downtown. From west to east, there’s Highway 101, a bridge between the two mall parking structures, A Street that runs along the west side of the mall, and the mall itself. As pedestrians walk along Third Street beneath the mall, shoppers 30 feet overhead are checking out new cellphones at T-Mobile.

Because of funding and right-of-way restrictions, however, the city can only create a lit pathway on the north side of Third Street, Chen explained.

The 31 brighter LED lights should also help drivers, whose eyes currently take time to adjust from sunlight to shade, which Chen called the “black hole effect.”

The work by Argonaut Constructors won’t start until after the holiday shopping season, in part because of concerns about impeding traffic on the busy route, Chen said.

The project also includes a new signal on Santa Rosa Avenue at Mill Street and Sebastopol Avenue, both of which are also slated to receive colorful artistic crosswalk designs as part of a pilot project.

The signal is unrelated to the Third Street work but was included in the project because the federal grant funds secured for both projects focus on improving infrastructure for pedestrians, planner Nancy Adams said.