1996: Preview of Coming Attractions

A look back at Lemon Grove 17 years ago.

No Fooling:  As April Fool's Day dawned in 1996, Lemon Grove was busy reinventing itself.  With just five years left until the new millennium, U.S. cities, large and small, were thinking about their General Plans -- those planning and development bibles that charted the way forward.

Steve Saint, editor of the Review, devoted the front page to the update of Lemon Grove's General Plan, a document that dated back to 1980 when the city was in its infancy.

Some 20 volunteer citizens, all ages and backgrounds, formed GPAC (General Plan Advisory Committee) and worked for 18 months with consultants Lettieri-McIntyre & Associates to examine every line of the old plan.  By April, 1996 the group had shrunk to 12 diehards, who hung on in the face of pounds of reading material and the inevitable pressures of life that had claimed the allegiance of the other eight.

But it was the patient Planning Department staff, along with city council members, closeted for months with Lettieri-McIntyre, that went through seven (or was it nine?) stormy public hearings to hammer out the General Plan that lives on today.  Bravissimo to them all.

In all there were 41 areas slated for some kind of rezoning.  Eight major targets were call "Special Treatment Areas" (STA).  A ninth, STA3, had already born fruit when the decrepit 1893 Troxell house--the former stagecoach stop--had been demolished in 1991 to make way for The Home Depot.  This flagship branch was completed in 1993 and has been a retail lifeline in town.

Downtown Village:  The eight STAs include the Downtown Village at Broadway and Lemon Grove Avenue.  Meaning shops on the ground floor, residential upstairs, all clustered near mass transit.  Citronica One rising by the Trolley Depot embodies this concept.  Citronica Two will do likewise.  The partly solar-powered Trolley Promenade will be an urban park for residents, shoppers and trolley riders.  

Massachusetts Station:  This trolley stop was rezoned for mixed use, but redevelopment hasn't happened here yet.  The goal is to build a similar shops-downstairs-you-live-upstairs buildings adjacent to mass transit.

Regional Commercial:  Build megastores like The Home Depot and Food 4 Less along Broadway from Buena Vista to Federal Blvd.  Phase out blighted residential areas.  The relatively recent Citron Court opposite Food 4 Less is part of the latter concept.

West Central Avenue:  This is where Central slopes down an ancient ravine to the Federal Blvd. industrial area.  The goal is to keep a semi-rural character with no more than four dwellings per acre and lot sizes of at least 10,000 square feet.

This area shows most clearly the effects of the primordial sea that covered the U.S. during the Eocene, about 40 million years ago.  Fossils abound in the cliffs.  Federal Blvd. was once a river valley--and today, during rainstorms, still is.  The swampy area full of reeds near the connection of Rte. 94 dates from the Eocene.

Federal Blvd. Auto Sales:  This is our "mile of cars," the area where major car dealerships cluster.  But DCH Honda's campus is at the entrance to town on land any car dealership would love with its freeway access and high visibility.  Honda's location is a tribute to the siren song of sales tax from auto sales.

Skyline Commercial Center:  The former Skyline Wesleyan Church relocated to a hillside campus on Route 94 east of Rancho San Diego.  Church land was rezoned commercial for retail development (even though another church is still on the site).  The goal was and is to provide residents with a shopping area at the south end of town.

Troy Street/Route 125:  Everyone knows this story.  The big road, 125, was built and Palm Street rerouted to the north along the bluff by Troy Lane and Crane Street.  Older properties were lost, while the Golden Avenue neighborhood got sound barriers against freeway racket.  The latter work at 2 a.m.  

The H. Lee House, perched on its hilltop smack in the middle of future 125, was moved between 2000 and 2002 to its present home in Civic Center Park.

Eastern Central:  Planners sought to move multifamily residences away from Central Avenue toward the Downtown Village to avoid what some call the "North Park Effect", i.e., all buildings and parking and no open space.  This zone required larger lot sizes to ensure development of single family homes.

Who's Next Door?:  During the General Plan overhaul, the term "multifamily" raised images of densely packed, low income housing, or "instant slum" as one resident put it.  But GPAC explained the term meant  well-run and designed housing like Village Grove Apartments (today, Grove condominiums) built on the former Ace Drive-In property.

Like Citronicas One and Two, the Grove condos are near mass transit and shopping, crucial placement given Californians' congestion and air quality woes.

Wide Open Spaces:  There aren't any in Lemon Grove.  But we do have five lovely parks strategically placed around town:  Kunkel Park, Lemon Grove Park, Civic Center Park, Berry Park and Skate Park (the latter an effective safety valve for a persistent problem that drives cities, businesses and institutions nuts).  Apropos:

This Old Church:   In 1996, in a bold, visionary move, the City bought the property between Main and Olive Streets for under half a million.  It included the empty lot at Olive and Central, where Christmas trees are tossed each year, and the 1912 Congregational Church and its 1948 Friendship Hall.

To clarify, that was Congregational #2 (#1 is now the museum).  The church, hall and land had been on the market for several years, dropping from nearly $4 million to the City's fire sale purchase price.  The stained glass windows were crated and stored (the historical society has a plan for them).  One church pew and a collection plate are in the Parsonage Museum.  There are plenty of old photographs of the church.

Nobody wanted Congregational #2.  But, as Pete Smith wrote in this edition of the Review, "the Atherton Chapel was saved…If all goes well, we will have the most historic building in town for our museum…keep your fingers crossed."

Pete, who is still the photo archivist at the historical society, predicted well.  In the same edition he coined the phrase "heritage park" -- meaning the future Civic Center Park.

History, Whither Wilt?:  The General Plan devoted its preamble and opening chapter to the importance of protecting heritage and letting the best, most significant structures from the past inform the present and future.  We can't and shouldn't save everything.  But some things are worth fighting for, to wit:

The 1928 Tudor Revival H. Lee House was saved and functions today as the community's cultural center and lively rental facility.  The 1897 First Congregational Church became the Parsonage Museum of Lemon Grove in 1999.  By 2003 the City had built Civic Center Park as a framework for these heritage sites.

Owners and new owners of historic properties are encouraged to safeguard them, the better to lend character, stability and value to neighborhoods.   

The 1892 Troxell Manor on Olive, the third house oldest house in Lemon Grove, is being saved as we speak for adaptive reuse as a wellness center.  The 1895 Geer House and 1895 Fels Ranch are in loving hands.  Ditto, the the 1897 Williamson Ranch, the 1910 Treganza Cottage, the 1913 Little House and Hay House, the 1915 Corditz House, the 1926 Simpson House, the 1930 Aldrich House, the 1931 James House, the 1939 Art Decos on Golden Avenue, the Arts and Crafts bungalows of the early 20th century on Central Avenue, the Sonka home on Buena Vista -- and the list goes on.

A New Library:  This edition of the Review also featured an article headlined "Residents give input on proposed new Lemon Grove Library."  The San Diego County Library asked 'Grovians what they wanted in a library.  These were their hopes and dreams:

Place it in a central location.  Longer open hours for the convenience of students and working people.  More new books.  More tapes and cassettes (today's DVDs).  Space for the Friends of the Library to run a bookstore.  Temperature-controlled glass-walled rooms for study.  New technology like computers and Internet use training.  A good security system.  More public programs.  A room for children and young people. 

Ah, dear readers, sometimes God smiles.  Every single one of the above has come true in the new library now standing at 3001 School Lane.  What a far-thinking group of 'Grovians responded to that questionnaire!  And did you notice that "Book Sale" banner hanging over the trolley tracks in the lead photo on this article?

We can do this -- with a little vigilance, grit, and a good General Plan.

About this column:  Compiled by Helen Ofield, president of the Lemon Grove Historical Society, from newspapers archived at the H. Lee House Cultural Center.  Each week, we take a peek at the past with some news and advertising highlights from a randomly chosen edition of the Lemon Grove Review.  In 2012, Ofield was awarded second place in non-daily reporting and writing from the Society of Professional Journalists for the column.