Right here’s an indication Torrance desires to be extra tourism-friendly – Each day Breeze

A recent inventory of signs found around 19,000 of them sitting on streets and in parks in Torrance, but city officials couldn’t find a single one labeled “Torrance Beach” along the anonymous stretch of sand next to Redondo Beach Pier.

Unsurprisingly, many visitors – as well as some residents – have no idea that South Bay’s largest city has access to the coast, the main bait for most tourists.

When a visitor is looking to shop at the Del Amo Fashion Center – once the largest mall in the country – it is largely a matter of chance that they come across it on busy Hawthorne Boulevard. There are no signs directing visitors to one of Southern California’s most prestigious commercial routes – and a major source of sales tax revenue for Torrance.

And few motorists know that the city’s quaint historic business district even exists when they head towards Freeway 110 on Torrance Boulevard or Carson Street, the two major east-west thoroughfares that demarcate the business core of Old Torrance. Neither street leads to the shops, restaurants, and breweries of the pedestrian-friendly Old Torrance.

However, the lack of signs of Torrance hotspots could soon change.

“People can drive by and never know there’s a little gem,” said Fran Fulton, the city’s director of economic development. “We know we’ve had to deal with signage in the city for a long time. There’s such a mishmash in town.

“We needed to come up with a plan that could improve signage across the city immediately,” she added, “and create a more consistent, engaging feel of the place.”

Armed with a grant of US $ 142,000 from the Southern California Association of Governments and US $ 30,000 in city funding, Torrance officials are working on a signposting plan that they will submit to the city council in June.

A survey with an interactive map allowing respondents to suggest signage types and locations is available on the website City website. So far, around 200 people have taken the survey, Fulton said.

Linda Amato, General Manager of the Doubletree by Hilton South Bay and Chair of the Discover Torrance Visitor’s Office that runs the new one California Welcome Center at the Del Amo Fashion CenterThe main question visitors ask is, “Where’s Torrance?”

“Where’s the beach?” is barely a second.

“We want it to be easy to find and enjoyable to look at,” she said of the city’s goals and the new signage plan. “With the Welcome Center there is a lot of hope that we will bring a lot of tourists.”

The vast majority of the nearly 20,000 signs in the city are regulatory in nature – like parking restriction signs Clear the streets of vehicles on street cleaning days.

The goal of the city with its upcoming plan is to put up signs that will help people get around on bicycles or on hiking trails as well as in automobiles.

In other words, telling them what they can – and how they can – rather than what they can’t.

For example, the city may want to post signs pointing to a proposed walking and cycling path that will lead visitors east from the transit center under construction on Crenshaw Boulevard to the local breweries and Old Torrance.

After all, while the C Line – formerly the Green Line – extension to Torrance Will be the end of this route once it’s completed within the decade, it won’t necessarily be the end of the exploration for visitors. That is, when they know where they are and where to go.

“You go to other cities and you get off the freeway, you know you’ve arrived,” said Fulton. “We haven’t had that in Torrance before.

“It’s nice to know what city you’re in,” she added.

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