Our friends at the Point Loma Association newsletter recently looked into what’s happening at the former bank on Poinsettia at Chatsworth. And they filed this brief report in their newsletter (if you’d like to get on their newsletter list, click here):
It’s been two years since the pandemic closed the bank on Poinsettia at Chatsworth, and 17 months since some of us gave up trying to get cash out of the brick wall in the back.
Now, something is happening inside the bricks. Noisy, dusty, serious remodeling is happening. One of our reporters – who drives by frequently while delivering UberEats during his lunch hour – was dying to peek inside. So he did.
All photos from Point Loma Association newsletter
The teller walk-ups are gone. Although, even when the bank was open, few tellers appeared. (Often they responded to complicated questions by pointing to a phone across the room and suggesting a call to Minneapolis.)
This week workers are removing the vault. No small task, unlike in the movies where outlaws just blow ‘em up.
Since the vault is going, the chance of a bank returning is probably nil.
Sometime, in the next few months, we will be able to reveal the new occupants. Clue: it is not an Italian restaurant.
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Well, there are no current permits for whatever is being done in the building.
Bummer. Was really hoping another bank was going in (and I was going to switch to whomever it was). Lack of ATMs around there is just awful (no I won’t use that crappy one inside the donut shop).
Side note – it seems like they are changing up their approach for the floor one spots in the new apartment building where Sunshine used to be? Perhaps some coworking spaces?
Not, co-working spaces, but “interim” residential uses. Essentially these will be lofts, but there will not be commercial spaces.
Neither Nimitz Crossing nor Upper Voltaire were able to find any lessors for the commercial spaces on the ground floor, so Nimitz Crossing’s developer went to the City and got the “interim” commercial designation applied and permits issued to convert the residential to commercial. The permit is only for 10 years but a considerable amount of money was spent so I’m not going to mark my calendar to show up and watch their removal/demolition.
A little history. I was opposed to the Famosa condos, now the site of Pop Pies, the Upper Voltaire mixed use and the Nimitz Crossing development. During the debate on the Famosa development, former assistant planning director and then-chairman of the Peninsula Community Planning Board Allen Jones convinced me that the future of Voltaire was a vibrant, mixed use, walkable commercial/residential neighborhood, sort of like Little Italy on a smaller scale. I drank the kool-aid on the ground floor commercial, but still thought Upper Voltaire and Nimitz crossing were way too intense with the amount of commercial and the number of dwellings. So now we get no commercial, and waaaayyy too many residences.
The signs in front of Nimitz Crossing advertise “Urban Lofts/Spacious Live/Work Studios/Coming Summer 2022”
BTW, I live in Sea Colony, directly across from Nimitz Crossing and just up the street from the Upper Voltaire project. The residential units appear to be fully, or almost fully perhaps, occupied. I have not observed any perceptible increase in traffic or competition for street parking. Both developments provide underground parking.
So the “vibrant, mixed use, walkable commercial/residential neighborhood” that Allan Jones promoted has not developed, I doubt it will in the foreseeable future if ever. “Upper OB” isn’t even close to being like Little Italy despite one superb Italian restaurant, Cesarina.