The town is in the initial planning stages of phase two of the downtown streetscape project, which will affect approximately 500 feet of N. Santa Cruz Avenue.

Phase two consists of sidewalk and intersection work starting just south of N. Santa Cruz and Los Gatos­Saratoga Road, and continuing to immediately north of Bachman and N. Santa Cruz.

All phases of the project—including improvements on Main Street—will be completed by 2005, with phase two construction scheduled to start in April 2003 and end in July.

Before that happens, the town will hold a handful of public input meetings, focusing specifically on attracting downtown merchants whose businesses will be affected. The first is set for Friday, Jan. 3, at 8 a.m. in the Los Gatos Town Council chambers; the second, Jan. 10 at 4:30 p.m. in the chambers.

"Our approach is to involve the affected merchants as much as possible," said John Curtis, Los Gatos director of parks and public works. "We want people to be on board. We want them to know what's going on."

Greg Stowers, president of the board of the Town of Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce, said the town set a "good precedent" with the level of communication that it initiated with this year's construction.

"Everyone went into the last project with a lot of skepticism" that the town would complete the work on time, but it did, Stowers said. Now, the merchants have more faith that the town will do what it says and keep the communication lines open.

"The Chamber is hopeful just to continue that same kind of relationship," Stowers said.

Curtis said workers will close off sections of sidewalk for up to a week at a time, much like they did for phase one of the streetscape project this summer. The town will work with businesses, however, to come up with alternate store entrances and sidewalk routes.

Traffic, for the most part, will still be able to make turns south on N. Santa Cruz. Although there might be some temporary street closures, "it is certainly not our intention to develop any permanent detouring," Curtis said.

Phase two could include infrastructure work, in the construction of storm drains. That kind of drainage is needed in the downtown area, but "the issue is whether or not we can do it next year, along with the sidewalks," Curtis said. An option is for the town to wait one more year to do that construction, at the same time that it plans to "tear up" the surface of N. Santa Cruz for repaving work.

Without the storm drains, phase two will cost less than phase one, which came out to roughly $1 million. With the infrastructure work, the cost is yet unknown. "It's in design—we're still evolving some of the concepts," Curtis said.

Along with the 500-foot-long strip of N. Santa Cruz, construction will occur on Grays Lane. That work is part of an already approved contract and is scheduled to start in March. Curtis said the object is to widen the sidewalks, narrow the width of the street and perhaps add a storm drain.

"Everything from Highway 9 down to Wood Road [on N. Santa Cruz] will be complete" after next summer's work, Curtis said. The next step is then to improve the streetscape of Main Street up to College Avenue, parts of which already have new sidewalks.

"All of what we're doing on N. Santa Cruz we also will ultimately do on all of Main Street," Curtis said.

For more information on the downtown streetscape project, call the parks and public works department at 408.399.5770.

"This is the time to let people know what our plans are and get their input," Curtis said.