There’s a brand new 3-story project planned for 4870 Voltaire Street in OB. The City of San Diego just announced the project on April 15 with a “Notice of Future Decision.”
An application has been made for a Process 2 Coastal Development Permit for development of the following:
- new detached three-story building
- with commercial tenant space on 1st level,
- office tenant space on 2nd level, and
- 2-bedroom dwelling unit on the 3rd level,
- conversion of the garage of the existing one-story dwelling unit into a bedroom.
The 0.11-acre site was once the location of Dover Plumbing and has had previous commercial development proposals that did not pan out.
Here’s the formal notice:
Some History ….
Back in 2018, the Rag reported:
It was just about exactly 6 years ago [2012] that Dover owners, Scott Hoff and Craig Skinner, moved onto the site, after having been absent for 5 years from Ocean Beach. This is part of our report from March 2012:
… Dover Plumbing has returned to Voltaire Street. Opening up in the old Staniforth Electric building – next to Jim Bell’s center – the long-time Peninsula business was on Voltaire for decades when the property was bought by World Oil …. That’s when the plumbing firm moved over to West Point Loma, next to Baron’s market.
I spoke to the new owners, Scott Hoff and Craig Skinner – each of whom had worked at Dover’s for years and years. They had bought out the former owners, Laura and Darin Goodwin -Scott is related to them through marriage. Having reopened on March 1st, Hoff and Skinner are in the process of getting a new paint job for the office. They had bought the property from Ray Staniforth and had to clear up the lot. They have 5 employees, including local OBcean Sherry, who has worked for Dover for many years.
Now half a dozen years later, Dover Plumbing doesn’t need all that space and the business will probably move over to the Midway District area, this reporter was told today by the owner.
Then in December 2018, OB Planners gave the green light to a new commercial development for the site. Here’s the Rag report:
Last night, Wed, Dec. 19, [2018] the Project Review Committee of the OB Planning Board gave a commercial project slated for Voltaire a green light to proceed to the next step. The next step is being reviewed by the full board at a future meeting. … The Project Review Committee is a sub-committee of the Board and gets first crack at reviewing projects that come before the Planning Board, and usually gives a recommendation of thumbs-up or thumbs-down to the full board which carries substantial weight.
The committee, chaired by newly-elected vice-chair Kevin Hastings, sat before nearly 2 dozen people in attendance in the Community Room of the OB Rec Center. Usually there’s only one or two in the audience along with a handful of developers and their reps at these sub-committee meetings but tonight, it was different.
And mainly because members of the Planning Board had distributed door-hangers announcing the various projects in the immediate neighborhoods of those projects.
Commercial Project at 4870 Voltaire
The largest project to come before the review panel was a 2-story, mixed-use commercial project for 4870 Voltaire Street – the former Dover Plumbing property next to the Jim Bell property. Mark Brencick is the owner-developer and made the presentation for the revised project scope, now calls for the demolition of the former Dover building and the construction of 2-story, 7,430 square-foot, mixed-use building consisting of 2 for rent dwelling units and 2,380 square feet of commercial space. The dwelling units will have 2 and 3 bedrooms.
Brencick, a civil-engineer told the Board he plans to utilize the commercial space for his offices and rent one of the residential units to his daughter. The front of the building will be 16 feet high, and the unit above set back from the edge. One of the main issues was parking, and he explained he’s putting in 9 spaces, 5 commercial and 4 residential, by using a parking lift.
The Board voted 6 to 0 to approve the project for the full Board (no date has been set).
But a year later, Mark Brencick passed away on April 1, 2019, and the Rag stated: “… the project has stalled if it has not been outright deleted.”
In early July of 2022, the Rag ran the following story:
Best Fence in OB?
John Atkinson and his wife Tuktha bought 4870 Voltaire Street back in March of 2021. Since then, he designed and built a new fence and cleaned up the front. They wanted an open design so they could still talk to people out front, so he designed the fence from a small art project called the Great Wave off Kanagawa. Tuktha does the gardening. He designed the post around the planters for Newport Ave 9 years ago, but they were never used so he used them for Voltaire. In the future they plan to put a small retail building on the property. In the meantime, John and Tuktha believe they have “the best fence in OB.” Why do you think, dear reader?
The saga of this particular piece of land in OB continues ….
