Plans to completely renovate portions of The Village are progressing.
The first phase of the Village Streetscape plan, a multi-year, multi-million dollar effort by the La Jolla Community Foundation to overhaul and improve Girard Avenue from Prospect to Silverado streets, is aiming for a January construction start.
The new start date is a few months past the previous September estimate.
“There have been a lot of challenges in working through all the details,” LJCF co-founder Phyllis Pfeiffer said at the July 18 board meeting of Enhance La Jolla, a nonprofit established in 2019 by LJCF to manage the Village’s Maintenance Assessment District, or MAD, to aid city of San Diego services.
The Streetscape will extend public plazas into the street and create mini-parks at each intersection, add decorative features to the intersections, enhance a mid-block crossing between Silverado and Wall streets, improve streetlights and add trees and benches throughout the area.
In implementing the plan, the city asked LJCF to sign a public improvement maintenance agreement, or PIMA, Pfeiffer said, which would make the foundation liable for work going forward.
Typically, however, “when a developer makes an improvement on city property, they are not liable for it afterwards,” Pfeiffer said. “They have to follow code. They have to get the permits, it has to be inspected by the city, then the city owns it.”
LJCF wants to be held to the same standard for its streetscape plans, Pfeiffer indicated.
To that end, San Diego City Council Pro Tem Joe LaCava, whose District 1 includes La Jolla, has been “ instrumental in working with city staff to define” the line between developer and city responsibility, Pfeiffer said, adeptly navigating city concerns that Streetscape lighting and storm drainage plans weren’t congruent with those in other neighborhoods.
As plans have adjusted (the light fixtures have been switched from cantilevered to traditional acorn light posts, for example,) LJCF now expects construction to begin in January.
To avoid disrupting retailers during the busy summer and winter holiday months, construction will be broken into two stages, Pfeiffer said, with the first occurring along Girard from Prospect to Wall.
