The city of San Diego is working to upgrade streetlights and circuits in the Loma Portal neighborhood of Point Loma, with construction already underway on two major projects addressing what the city calls outdated lighting conditions.
Such work has been eagerly anticipated in Loma Portal for years because of frustration with the increasing unpredictability of the aging lamps, some of which are a century old.
But not everyone in the community considers the new lighting an upgrade.
One project, called the Loma Palisades SL Series Circuit Conversion, is replacing 35 streetlights along Worden, Barnard, Adrian, Bob and Polack streets. The city says the $1.3 million project is set to wrap up in the spring.
The other project, the Plumosa Park Series Circuit Conversion, also is under construction. It addresses 39 streetlights along Elliott Street and Plumosa, Hyacinth, Lotus, Narcissus, Jonquil, Poinsettia, Amaryllis and Azalea drives. Twenty-six of the lights will be replaced while crews attempt to repair and retain 13 pendant-style lights, according to a city statement.
The Plumosa Park project will cost $1.6 million and also is set to end construction in the spring.
However, some residents of Loma Portal are upset that new lights the city is putting in are taller than the ones they’re intended to replace, and they say they’re not in keeping with the neighborhood’s historical character. With a recent uptick in modernized and renovated buildings, this comes as another reminder of the area’s rapid changes.
City crews began taking down old lampposts in November, drawing objections from some neighbors.
“This is a hot topic for sure. We are trying to save the integrity of the historical Loma Portal area,” Sandy Hanshaw, chairwoman of the Point Loma Association, told the Point Loma-OB Monthly on Jan. 11.
A community goal, she said, is “stopping the actions of tearing down the lampposts” and possibly “raise money and save them.”
Resident Elaine Burrell told CBS-TV/8 in November that “I know the electrical is old-style and it might take a little more effort and labor, but we are all taxpayers here. Our taxes can go toward that sort of work to improve the neighborhoods, to fix the lampposts rather than destroy, remove and replace them with unsuitable lampposts for our community.”
The old lights, she said, “mean charm and beauty and history of our community.”
A city statement at the time said, “While the streetlights are old, they are not in a historic district and therefore are not historic themselves.”
For the city, the need for new lights goes beyond aesthetics and focuses on public safety and reliability, according to San Diego spokesman Tyler Becker, who expressed confidence to the Monthly that the updates will benefit the community in the long run.
“Some of the streetlights in this community are … at the end of their useful life,” he said. “When that happens, they begin to lose their structural integrity in both the pole’s interior and the foundation. It is important to replace the poles and upgrade the circuitry to provide new, quality assets for the community and improve public safety.”
Retrofitting old poles with updated connections and luminaires wouldn’t provide the same life expectancy as a new pole and foundation, which would result in additional costs and maintenance in the future, the city says.
“These poles will last for decades to come and include new luminaires with more energy-efficient LED technology,” Becker said. “And the new circuitry will be more reliable so that if one light goes out, the rest will stay on while the one that is out is repaired.”
For now, the city is focused on these two projects, but it has identified lampposts in the middle of roadways southeast of Chatsworth Boulevard for potential work in the future.
The city said in October that it was looking at the feasibility of adding solar lights to the tops of streetlight posts on and adjacent to Chatsworth Boulevard and on Evergreen Street between Lytton and Curtis streets to provide temporary light while working on a permanent fix to outages.
For more information on local and citywide projects, go to sandiego.gov/cip/projectinfo.
