Residents in Kensington continue to fight to preserve history

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — For years, residents in Kensington say they’ve been fighting to save a part of this community’s history. But now they worry their fight has come to an end, as the City moves forward with plans to replace these street lamps.

Within the last 24 hours, residents have seen crews work to dismantle and replace street lamps.

While it may not seem like a big deal, for residents it’s beyond heart breaking.

David Roth is a resident and an active member of the group working to have Kensington designated as a historic district.

He says, “ We try to preserve all this history because there’s so little of it left in San Diego. And this was a big part of that.”

Roth says the problems started when some of the streetlights stopped working a few years ago. Because the lights are older, they couldn’t just fix the broken ones. The entire circuit underneath needed to be replaced.

Roth says they asked the City of preserve the lights.

Adding, “ They're the logo for the planning group, they're the logo for historic Kensington. They are iconic for this neighborhood. They've been standing here proudly for 100 years.”

The city agreed to explore the option for refurbishing and rewiring the lights based off of costs. The City sent a document to ABC10NEWS saying the report estimated that each street light would cost approximately $20,000 to rehab with a life expectancy of just 10 to 25 years. They compared that to the “ cost of new streetlight which is less than $20,000 per light with a life span of over 50 years.”

As a result, the City decided to replace the streetlights with brand new ones with a similar design to the old ones, something Roth says could impact their efforts to designate this area as a historic district.

Roth says, “ The historic streetlights are or were contributors to the historic district. Just like the houses are. Anything historic is a contributor to the district.”

And now as the old streetlights are thrown into a dumpster, Roth says neighbors are making a last ditch effort to save a piece of what they believe makes their community unique.

Roth says, “ There were about 20 people last night taking things out of the dumpster. To try and preserve them themselves it's very emotional for the community.All we can do now is just express our unhappiness our shock our dismay. And take it to the ballot box that's the only recourse we have.”