Downtown Santa Rosa prepping for Old Courthouse Square reunification

Santa Rosa has begun preparing downtown streets to handle the detour of traffic around a soon-to-be-reunited Old Courthouse Square.

Road crews on Wednesday turned the section of Fifth Street between Mendocino Avenue and B Street from a one-way street to two-way.

The switch is one of the most visible changes to downtown streets taking place in advance of the Aug. 5 permanent closure of Mendocino Avenue between Third and Fourth streets.

When that four-lane artery is severed, most traffic will be spill over one block west onto B Street.

Making Fifth Street a two-way route will allow northbound drivers to jog from B Street back onto Mendocino Avenue, one of several places they’ll be able to do so.

Most southbound traffic is expected to follow B Street down and rejoin Santa Rosa Avenue at First Street.

The city had originally hoped to have the two new side streets - Hinton on the east and Exchange on the west - installed before the detour took effect, said Jason Nutt, the city’s director of Transportation and Public Works.

But a tight time frame and delays related to underground utilities forced the contractor to move forward with the detour before the streets were complete, Nutt said.

That shouldn’t be a problem because the side streets were never envisioned to carry traffic through the downtown, but rather to help downtown visitors access downtown merchants and the future square, Nutt said.

One of the businesses most affected by the change is Exchange Bank, which has a drive-thru facility on Fifth Street. The bank opposed previous efforts to restore the street to two-way traffic, citing the impact on the drive-thru. Drivers will now have to cross east-bound traffic to access and exit the horseshoe-shaped drive-up window.

Rolf Nelson, a senior vice president at the bank, said the city had given bank officials plenty of notice and they’re not too worried about the impact on customers.

“I think experience tells us that the driving public adjusts,” Nelson said.

The $9.2 million project aims to restore the downtown to its pre-1966 alignment, before the courthouse was removed and the four-lane road routed through the square. The long-debated project got underway in earnest in May and should be complete by the holiday shopping season.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 707-521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.