Reader Explodes ‘Bombshell’ on Latest Developments of Notorious Ebers Project in Ocean Beach

The San Diego Reader – in today’s cover story – exploded a bombshell of news about the latest developments to the continuing saga of the project at Ebers and Greene in northeast Ocean Beach. Dave Rice meticulously pieced together the entire story and history of the project and explained in detail all the financing of the project and all of its unraveling.

At the end of his story, Rice explains how finally a prominent Los Angeles area businessman who created a bakery mini-empire, bought the property for $925,000. And the new owner has a new contractor with new plans and new permits to finish the project – as a single family home. Plus, the new owner has NO plans to bring his project before the Ocean Beach Planning Board.

Does this sound familiar? Nelson, the original owner, also failed to present the project before the community Board. This is horrendous and appears another chapter on this mini-castle is about to be written. Meanwhile Rice reports:

Boyajian, reached by phone in late September, says he has a total of $1.2 million tied up in the property, and is working with a new contractor to complete the construction — as a single-family home. He reports that new permits are currently being reviewed by the city. The project, once again, will not be presented to the community planning board.

This latest bombshell will be unsettling to the property’s immediate neighbors, as the monstrosity has just sat there on a busy corner. They had hopes the city would force any new owner to demolish what was there and start over. Doesn’t sound like the new owner agrees.

Dave’s piece is certainly worth the read, especially for OBceans. He starts:

A long-derided construction project at 2269 Ebers Street in Ocean Beach, spearheaded by Curtis Nelson of Nelco Properties, officially suffered its death blow this spring; after failing to attract a buyer at a foreclosure auction, ownership of the property reverted to Center Street Lending, an Irvine-based hard money lender that specializes in providing financing to “property flippers” seeking to buy low, complete a quick remodel, and resell properties at a significant profit.

Nelco’s ownership of the property – two short blocks off West Point Loma Boulevard and a block east of Sunset Cliffs Boulevard – was frequently controversial — at times the developer bragged on social media about his disregard for the coastal height limit, advertised his development as a two-unit property (it was permitted for only one residence), and drew fire from the community for allowing the property to fall into disrepair after illegal construction was halted by the city. But a dive into the financial history of the property offers an interesting look at how a simple fix-and-flip deal can go horribly wrong.

Nelco originally bought the four-bedroom, two-bath fixer for $645,000 in mid-2015. The home, built in 1927, sits about five blocks from Dog Beach and nine blocks from Newport Avenue, OB’s main drag. Residents here tend to be quieter and more entrenched in the OB lifestyle than the younger, more transient denizens of the neighborhood to the west locals refer to as the “war zone.”

The OB Rag has long covered this notorious project – and Dave acknowledges and applauds our coverage. He quotes this reporter extensively:

“I first learned about the place in late June, early July 2016,” explains Frank Gormlie, publisher of the Ocean Beach-centric OB Rag blog. “Some neighbors had put up a sign and a mannequin wearing a mask to complain about the way demolition was being handled on the smaller existing house.”

After meeting with the neighbors, Gormlie’s site took on a muckraking role, digging up dirt on the owners, the project, and the city. His activities, Gormlie explains over a mug at the Newbreak coffeehouse on Abbott Street where he’s greeted as a local by staff and patrons alike despite having moved from the neighborhood earlier in the decade, would result in increased scrutiny from the local planning board and protesters taking to the street. The topic was his site’s biggest draw for nearly a year.

“We eventually came up with a laundry list of issues — first was parking and whether it met the floor area ratio [a regulation that restricts improved square footage of a building to 70 percent of lot size, significantly lower than in other San Diego neighborhoods], it looked like it was over 30 feet high. But as we looked into it, it turns out there were all kinds of problems. Was this truly an addition, or was it two units?”

The project didn’t appear before the OB Planning Board, which usually offers input on proposed construction in the neighborhood, because it was represented to the city as a remodel of an existing single-family residence in permit applications. Such a classification would have allowed the project to dodge a coastal development permit typically required of beach-area development.

Thing is, Nelco never saw the property as a simple single-family remodel. In a failed attempt to sell the property in early 2016, notes on the expired listing state that the property “will be re-listed once 2nd unit is completed.”

“When you went to Curtis Nelson’s website, there he was very proudly talking about two units. But this was never supposed to be a multi-unit development,” Gormlie argues. “You’ve also got to consider the role of the city’s Development Services department, and the allowances they’ll give developers. Someone was asleep at the wheel on this project to progress to the point you could go in, pull a permit, and a new structure going up three stories before the community wound up feeling so violated they started demanding oversight on their own.

“It turns out there were two sets of plans submitted that didn’t match — and [Development Services] was asked how these could have gotten through and their response was ‘Oh, well they must have been reviewed by different people.’”