By Jake Christie
November 29, 2017 (San Diego’s East County) -- The banner on the second story says “coming in 2018.” But the Grove Lofts building site on Broadway in the outskirts of Lemon Grove has been mostly unmanned by construction workers for over a month, say the Spring Valley residents closest to the site.
The Grove Lofts is a 46-foot tall, three-story, 16-unit apartment complex taking up 22,216 square feet built on top of a small underground parking garage. The lot that it is being constructed on was partially a gas station before Broadway was widened a few decades ago and one of the remaining tanks had to be removed before construction could begin after the project was approved in November of 2015. But construction has moved extremely slowly, so that only now as of press-time, the outer walls have been covered in plywood in preparation for stuccoing, the basic electrical wiring looks like it has been done, and the exterior glass windows have been put in.
Because the property is behind a fence and monitored by cameras, this reporter was unable to see if the plumbing has been put in, but usually plumbing and electrical go in at the same time, unless the company behind the project (Suncrest Residential, LLC) is trying to thwart copper thieves.
Suncrest has been in business since 2014 and has no Internet presence of its own, nor a listed telephone number, just an office in La Jolla. The representatives of the company (Ted Koros and Nicholas Gines) who appeared before the now-defunct Lemon Grove Planning Group stated clearly that they would not manage the property, but would sell it upon completion.
Why the project has slowed down is a major question. We emailed a query to Lemon Grove City Manager Lydia Romero and after more than a week, the emailed answer was: “The project you refer is still active. They are waiting on door and windows to be shipped. Inspections are being scheduled.” That was at the end of October; the windows did not arrive until the middle of this month. Meanwhile, graffiti artists are beginning to leave tags on the plywood.
The Brookside residents are unhappy because they were told decades prior that no large building could be constructed on the site because it is mostly slopes away from the road and is a triangular lot. There is a cemented water runoff ditch that acts as the city borderline at the bottom of the slope, and all the Brookside back yards facing it are solid wooden-fenced, and even with the six-foot fences the top of the bank is around fifteen feet tall. All of the apartments above the ground level at the rear of the Grove Lofts building have small balconies, so the third-story residents will have a clear view of a large section of Fairway Drive, and the fear is that possibly in a few years time somebody will use that space to scout out houses for break-ins.
Most of the residents who were opposed to the project and showed up to the Lemon Grove Planning Group and City Council meetings have been living on that street for decades. The residents closest to the project, Theresa Bailey and Rebecca McElyea, appeared before the Spring Valley Planning Group to ask for assistance in 2015; the planners composed a letter to the Lemon Grove government, but it was disregarded. Both of them have been keeping tabs on the construction, and the progress has been minimal since August.