UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS (KGTV) \u2014 The lights on the University Heights sign are back on after more than 6 months of outages \u2014 but the community says the 30-year-old landmark still needs a major facelift.<\/p>\n
The city funded a neon replacement earlier this month, bringing the sign back to full brightness after a prolonged period of burned-out letters.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes it was all out, then it would work, and then it’s been completely out for the last 2 weeks before September 9th when they did the neon replacement,” Marc Johnson, president of the University Heights Community Association, said.<\/p>\n
The fix came at a cost of about $24,000.<\/p>\n
“The city was able to find about $24,000 in the couch cushions to fund the replacement of the neon on the sign, which was awesome,” Johnson said.<\/p>\n
But Johnson says the neon replacement is only part of what the sign needs.<\/p>\n
“The metal has rusted. It’s faded. The decals, the lettering around the neon are all peeling and cracking,” Johnson said.<\/p>\n
Graffiti at the top of the archway is also among the issues that need to be addressed in a full refurbishment, which is estimated to cost $80,000.<\/p>\n
The University Heights Community Association launched a fundraiser at the end of August to cover the cost. Within the first week, a longtime resident stepped up with a significant contribution.<\/p>\n
“We launched that fundraiser at the end of August, and within the first week, one of our most generous longtime residents came up with a $25,000 matching donation,” Johnson said.<\/p>\n
More than $56,000 has been raised so far. The goal is to reach $80,000 by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
“So we fundraise to get this done so in 2027, the sign is good as new again, and we hope that will last until 2057,” Johnson said.<\/p>\n
Johnson also said he hopes the Maintenance Assessment District can begin building a reserve fund for any future repairs the sign may need.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS (KGTV) \u2014 The lights on the University Heights sign are back on after more than 6…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-472449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","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\/472449","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=472449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}