The construction is finally complete, but the nightmare is not over for some businesses along University Avenue in City Heights.<\/p>\n
For nearly three years, the outside of their stores and offices have been inundated with orange barrels, heavy equipment and dust as the City of San Diego spent $13.2 million in safety improvements, including landscaping and roundabouts to slow down traffic.<\/p>\n
The work took almost twice as long as expected, and according to an amended lawsuit, most of the delay was caused by San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) ignoring requests to identify the location of an underground vault.\u00a0The lawsuit claims SDG&E\u2019s actions created a \u201cpublic nuisance\u201d caused by negligence.<\/p>\n
The construction began in May of 2023, and wrapped up in early 2026, but by then, the owner of\u00a0 Supermercardo Murphy\u2019s says his customers had moved on.<\/p>\n
Ron Kassab has owned the City Heights mercado for 22 years.\u00a0He said before the construction project began, his business was strong and the flow of customers was steady.\u00a0When the project dragged on and it became nearly impossible to find a parking place and a path inside, his business suffered.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kassab said he lost a third of his business and the losses continue to climb because the shoppers have found new places to buy their groceries.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not the same as before,\u201d said Brenda Lino Rojas, a store manager.\u00a0 She told NBC 7 that at one point most of the employees were convinced the store would close permanently because there were no customers to take care of.<\/p>\n
Kassab said he employs about 45 people who all live in the area.\u00a0 He does not want them to go without a paycheck, but he also has rent to pay. Without customers, he has to take money from his other businesses to keep the grocery store afloat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey literally destroyed our business,\u201d said Kassab, who added that the roundabouts that were installed are also costing him money because 18-wheelers can\u2019t maneuver them to make deliveries.\u00a0 \u201cThey cannot make a left turn. They cannot make a right turn even if they come from Orange Avenue. There\u2019s no way they can make that turn so the deliveries are costing us a little bit more.\u201d<\/p>\n
NBC 7 reached out to other businesses in the area that say although their business is starting to improve now that the orange cones are gone, they\u2019re still struggling.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like starting all over again,\u201d said Uriel Salfaco, who manages the Sampah Barber Shop.<\/p>\n
Kassab\u2019s lawsuit is seeking a\u00a0 minimum of $2 million for loss of business and access.<\/p>\n
NBC 7 reached out to both the City Attorney\u2019s office and SDG&E for comment on the lawsuit.\u00a0 Neither responded in time for this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The construction is finally complete, but the nightmare is not over for some businesses along University Avenue in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[15006,1016,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-388670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-city-heights","tag-lawsuits","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}