The Bird Rock Community Council is struggling to reach a decision on how to proceed with a planned lighting project on La Jolla Boulevard.
The intent is to add lighting to street trees to provide better visibility at night — but the design remains to be seen.
“Lighting projects for the Bird Rock commercial district benefit residents, merchants and visitors by providing increased community aesthetics, greater public safety and an enhanced commercial identity for the Bird Rock commercial district,” BRCC President Joe Terry said at the board’s May 7 meeting.
As part of the plan, three types of lighting were illuminated on trees the evening of April 10. One tree had uplighting that would be installed under grids or dirt areas and projected into the tree. Another had lights that hung from wires on branches and illuminated a large swath of the sidewalk below. The third option displayed wraparound lights placed around the trunk of the tree that could extend two feet into branches.
Terry said “no one was impressed” with the tree that was wrapped in lights, so the board is “going to have our own aesthetically pleasing tree-wrap demo relatively soon.” A date has not been scheduled.
The hanging-lights option, Terry said, “demonstrated that you could have relatively small LED lights to give us a lot of light on the sidewalk, and that was worth noting.” The hanging lights were preferred by most of those who attended the demonstration.
The uplighting option “hit the aesthetic objective, [whereas] the hanging lights may or may not,” Terry said.
Thus, BRCC will continue to collect about the options through Monday, June 3. Comments can be emailed to [email protected].
“We want to move ahead with this project … so we’d like as much input by then” as possible, Terry said.
Once lights are fully rolled out, they would be installed on both sides of La Jolla Boulevard in a three-block stretch between Camino de la Costa and Midway Street.
The Community Council has been looking for ways to improve lighting in the business district for more than a year. Earlier this year, the council secured a $25,000 grant from San Diego County that could be applied to the lighting project and others.
Other BRCC news
Meeting rotation: The board is considering reducing the number of meetings held every year, moving from once a month (except for January and August) to once every other month. Terry implied this is due to low attendance.
“Due to popular demand,” he said to chuckles from the five people attending the May 7 meeting in person, along with those watching on Zoom, “we are going to reduce the number of meetings we have … to five regular meetings and our holiday meeting [which also is a party].”
Details are still being confirmed, but he said there likely will be a June meeting and no July meeting. Given that the board does not meet in August, the next meeting after June would be in September.
Sign project: Terry said the board received a “rough estimate” on the cost of a project to install community monument signs in Bird Rock. The plan, which has been in the conceptual phase for four years, is to make sculptures of small boulders adorned with pelicans or cormorants and install them at a location or locations decided by the board.
Early on, the idea of placing signs in the roundabouts at each end of the business district seemed to be favored.
Terry said the estimate of the cost of large rocks with lettering was “somewhere between $8,000 and $10,000.” However, that does not include the costs of permits or the bird sculptures that would be placed atop the boulders.
on the proposal is still being collected, and fundraising efforts are to begin in coming months.
Sidewalk repairs: The city of San Diego recently completed work to grind down and even out area sidewalks due to reports from the Bird Rock Maintenance Assessment District.
“Although the MAD has no obligation to repair cracked, raised or uneven sidewalks, all efforts are made to report such problems,” said MAD representative Barbara Dunbar. “A number of cracked, raised or uneven sidewalks in Bird Rock have been reported to the city in the past year. As a result, the city hired a contractor to grind down raised sidewalks to make them more even. The results can be seen throughout the Bird Rock public right of way along La Jolla Boulevard.”
“They have definitely reduced trip hazards and made the sidewalk a lot safer for pedestrians,” Dunbar added.
Next meeting: The Bird Rock Community Council is scheduled to meet next at 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 4, at Bird Rock Elementary School, 5371 La Jolla Hermosa Ave. Learn more at birdrockcc.org. ◆
