SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Kensington residents say they’ve been fighting to protect a part of their neighborhood’s history for years, but with the city moving forward with plans to replace streetlights, residents fear the fight may be over.
Within the past 24 hours, residents have seen crews dismantling and replacing street lights.
It may not seem like a big deal, but for residents it is beyond heartbreaking.
David Ross is a Kensington resident and an active member of a group working to get Kensington designated a historic district.
He says, “There’s very little history left in San Diego, so we’re trying to preserve all of our history, and this was a big part of that.”
Ross said the problems started a few years ago when some of the streetlights stopped working. Because the lights were old, they couldn’t just fix what was broken. They had to replace the entire circuit under the streetlight.
Ross says he has asked the city to preserve the lights.
He added: “These are the planning group’s logos, the historic Kensington logos. They are icons of this area. They have stood proudly here for 100 years.”
The city agreed to look at options for upgrading and rewiring streetlights based on cost. In a written statement to ABC10NEWS, the city said the report estimated that upgrading each streetlight would cost about $20,000 and have a lifespan of just 10 to 25 years. The city compared this to “streetlights costing less than $20,000 per streetlight and having a lifespan of 50 years or more.”
As a result, the city decided to replace the streetlights with new ones with a similar design to the old ones, but Ross said this could impact the city’s efforts to designate the area as a historic district.
“The historic street lights contribute, or contributed, to the historic district. Same with the houses. Anything that has history contributes to the district,” Ross said.
Now, as the old streetlights end up in the trash, neighbors are making a last-ditch effort to save part of what they believe makes their neighborhood unique, Ross said.
“There were about 20 people out there last night taking things out of the bins,” Ross said. “It’s a very emotional thing for the community to try to save things themselves. All we can do now is express our frustration, our shock, our disappointment and take it to the ballot box, that’s the only recourse we have left.”
