Thanks to a windfall of grant funding, two critical projects are now done in Del Rey Oaks.

Over the past five months, a small but significant slice of Del Rey Oaks has undergone a major transformation. (An unrelated project, the Fort Ord Regional Trail and Greenway, broke ground last June and continues apace.)

The transformation has been on the steep slope of Rosita Road south of Angelus Way, where the west side of Rosita has been rebuilt, the embankment down the hillside shored up and 22.56 acres of overgrown vegetation cleared, opening up sunlight onto properties that haven’t seen it in decades.

The transformation was facilitated by two grants – one federal, one from Cal Fire – and underscores how critical grant funding is for a tiny city like Del Rey Oaks, which operates on a tight budget that leaves little to invest in capital projects.

The federal grant, $546,733 from the Federal Highway Administration, was awarded in February 2024 after Rosita’s western lane along the hillside started to fail, slipping downhill. Ron Fucci, the city’s Public Works employee, says he’s been noting cracks along Rosita – a major neighborhood artery – since 2022, and that it started to get so bad that it kept him up at night.

The repair was just completed after a month of construction. The road now provides a sweeping view of a different project long in the works: In 2023, Cal Fire awarded the city a $317,000 grant to clear vegetation along Rosita, but with bird nesting season from Jan. 15 to Sept. 15, work couldn’t get started until last fall; it wrapped up in January. Mostly, Fucci says, it was ivy and dead trees. “We ran into vines that were almost 18 inches wide because they’d been in there so long.”