Enhance La Jolla Day will showcase Village streetscape plans May 13

The next Enhance La Jolla Day next month will provide a first look at formal renderings and plans for a streetscape project on The Village’s main thoroughfares.

The event will be held from 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday, May 13, in front of Union Bank at 7807 Girard Ave. Representatives of local planning groups will be on hand to discuss what they do in the community, Nissho California will give away plants while supplies last, and renderings will showcase the $15 million streetscape plan while supporters answer questions.

Participating organizations will include the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, Bird Rock Community Council, La Jolla Community Foundation, La Jolla Village Merchants Association, La Jolla Town Council, La Jolla Community Planning Association, La Jolla Shores Association, Rotary Club of La Jolla, La Jolla Historical Society, La Jolla Music Society, La Jolla Parks & Beaches, La Jolla Traffic & Transportation Board and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Refreshments will be provided.

Enhance La Jolla is a nonprofit that manages the Village Maintenance Assessment District with authority to enhance services provided by the city of San Diego, including landscape maintenance, street and sidewalk cleaning, litter and graffiti abatement and additional trash collection. It also can privately fund and complete improvement projects in public spaces, such as trash can upgrades, bench installation, sign augmentation, park upgrades, public art and tree canopies on main thoroughfares.

The group has presented Enhance La Jolla Day the past two years. During the inaugural in 2021, La Jolla’s community organizations came out to spruce up The Village, provide information about their groups and put river rock in tree wells as part of an ongoing project.

With the tree well project nearly completed, the 2022 Enhance La Jolla Day focused on family-friendly art events, distribution of milkweed plants (on which monarch butterflies live and reproduce), service demonstrations and information from community groups.

This year the focus turned to unveiling the streetscape plans, drawn up under the auspices of the La Jolla Community Foundation, the fundraising arm of Enhance La Jolla.

Streetscape means the appearance or view of a street, and the Enhance La Jolla plan is a four-phase project to renovate Girard Avenue between Silverado and Prospect streets and the area known as “The Dip” at Prospect. Planned improvements in the public right of way include curb extensions, paving, landscaping, lighting, conversion of northbound Prospect to a public pedestrian way between Girard and Herschel avenues and converting the southbound side of Prospect in that area to two-way traffic. More than $1.5 million is already available for the project.

The intersection of Girard Avenue and Prospect Street is one of the locations included in Enhance La Jolla’s Village streetscape plan.

(Elisabeth Frausto)

“Our hope is that the community members that attend get a deeper appreciation of what it takes to maintain The Village, what the organizations that serve La Jolla — from the Athenaeum to the Community Planning Association to the Rotary Club — and a better understanding of the streetscape plan,” said event chairwoman Barbara Bry.

Organizations that would like to participate can email Bry at bbry@blackbirdv.com.

Other Enhance La Jolla news

Continuing contracts: At its April 20 meeting, the Enhance La Jolla board unanimously approved the recommendation of a subcommittee to continue working with Nissho California for landscaping and trash abatement and Urban Corps of San Diego County for power washing.

“Through the course of our deliberations, we learned Nissho is headquartered in Vista, so they had to start and end their day there,” said Enhance La Jolla Chairman Ed Witt. “That meant losing hours of productivity every day [with commute times], so we came up with a plan with Nissho to start their day in The Village. … We’re gaining [approximately] 14 hours of productivity per week that we are going to be able to advance the enhancement of La Jolla. We’re very excited about that.”

Trash technology: Witt said Enhance La Jolla is meeting with city of San Diego representatives “to go over some new technology in trash container pickup.”

“The city has installed in our district sensors on the covers of all trash containers which produce a report for the people coming each day ... to empty trash containers,” Witt said. “This new system tells the driver what containers need to be emptied and will ultimately tell the department where and how many containers we will need.”

Updates on the new sensors and how they are working in The Village will be provided at a future meeting.

Tree replacement: Witt and new Maintenance Assessment District Manager Brian Earley met with city representatives to discuss replanting trees in front of the La Jolla Recreation Center.

“The palms that were placed there years ago have all died except for one,” Witt said. “In total there are five tree wells that will need attention and we are working with them for a thoughtful [replacement].”

The intended trees are pink trumpets, and Witt said Earley is looking into the cost to buy them. The San Diego Parks & Recreation Department would install and maintain the trees.

Next meeting: Enhance La Jolla meets quarterly or as needed. The next scheduled meeting is at 4 p.m. Thursday, July 20, at a location to be determined. Learn more at enhancelajolla.org. ◆