By Marc Longpre [ marc@hmbreview.com ]
The response to the closure of Highway 1 at Devil’s Slide took several twists and turns over the past week, with Caltrans crews busy on the site and local businesses getting a helping hand from the government.
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Caltrans officials said they are hoping to discover how far the earth has moved by the end of the week — calculations that will indicate how to best stabilize the road and how long that process might take.
Rumors were swirling around the Coastside earlier this week that the road would be closed for more than six months and that the annual October Pumpkin Festival was jeopardized by the road’s closure. While that could ultimately prove true, Cameron Palmer, president of the Half Moon Bay Beautification Committee that coordinates the Pumpkin Festival, insisted that such reports were premature and that planning for the festival continued unabated.
Also last week, government officials took two steps designed to help local businesses cope with the closure.
Caltrans announced that federal funding would be available for advertisements to run during radio and television traffic reports announcing that Half Moon Bay and Pacifica businesses are open as usual.
According to San Mateo County Supervisor Rich Gordon, the Federal Highway Administration has advised that local businesses are eligible for an emergency relief pool. Gordon said a group from Half Moon Bay and the county is putting together language to submit as part of the application.
“The coordination between all the agencies and representatives has really been amazing,” Gordon said.
Charise McHugh, president of the Half Moon Bay Coastside Chamber of Commerce and Visitors’ Bureau, said it’s important to get the message out that the Coastside is open for business. Last week the chamber sent out a press release stating as much to media outlets throughout the Bay Area.
“One thing we didn’t have in 1995 is e-mail,” McHugh said. “We know the power of the Internet and if we can get the word out with people sending this along we could probably blanket a lot of people.”
McHugh said that representatives from the Small Business Administration were in town Tuesday and would stay for three weeks. McHugh said they would be working out of the chamber’s office and would advise business owners on the options available to mitigate losses as a result of the closure of Devil’s Slide.
SBA representative Charles Kight, working out of Pacifica, said he has found great interest in business loans on the Coastside.
In order to qualify, businessmen must be able to prove that they have been hurt by recent events.
“If they can show that last year at this time they were making ‘X’ amount of dollars and this year that amount is less, we would be willing to loan them the difference,” Kight said. The loans have an interest rate of 4 percent. r
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