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By Miriam Raftery
June 23, 2023 (Lemon Grove) – Michael Perez, an attorney who runs the nonprofit Imago Dei (operating as 29: Eleven), with his wife, a dream to restore two historic buildings in Lemon Grove. They wanted to open up a home for women who are struggling, including pregnant women in need of shelter and mothers with babies. Since buying the property in 2008, however, Perez told ECM, “We’ve been in a constant struggle with the city of Lemon Grove over building permits.”
He described a nightmare of obstacles in the permitting process, as well as frustrations with the Sheriff’s department for not being responsive to his pleas for help to keep out homeless people who repeatedly broke down barriers to camp out inside.
Then last week, a fire destroyed one of the two buildings, a house originally built in the 1930s by Dr. Ebon McGregor. The other building, which once served as Dr. McGregor’s was spared. The site is on Main Street, next to city hall in the heart of Lemon Grove.
“My wife and I both cried when we heard about it,” Perez told ECM. “We’re going to trust God,” he said, adding that he still hopes to find a way to bring the nonprofit’s services to the site. “I think it’s needed.”
Photo,left: McGregor house in 1936
Dr. McGregor built the home during the Great Depression with help from patients who were unable to pay their bills. He once tried to sell the property for $12,000 in 1943, before Lemon Grove was a city, according to Helen Ofield, founder of the Lemon Grove Historical Society, and would have taken $4,000 cash.
In later years, the property housed multiple familes and its condition deteriorated.
Perez bought the property in 2008 from a woman whom he says had several families living in the two structures in violation of city codes. “The place was in disrepair,” he recalls. “When you walked by, it reeked.”
In acquiring the property, Perez says he found himself in a “bidding war” with the city of Lemon Grove, which ran the price up. “They won the bid, but they didn’t have the money to pay for it,” he says. “The owner was informed that they (the city) would have to put in for a block grant.”
The prior owner didn’t want to wait, so sold the site to Perez and gave the tenants notice, he says, adding that the property was not serviceable due to the condition it was in. Over the next 15 years, Perez says he battled with the city for permits in a process he claims has prevented he and his wife from using their property. The attorney believes what the city has done is “illegal” but says he doesn’t want to sue – only to have permits issued.
ECM has reached out to the city manager for a response to Perez’ statements, but we have not yet had a response.
After long delays, Perez says he did get a renovation permit, only to have the then-city manager whose window overlooked the project shut it down, though Perez claims the project was in compliance. Since then, he says,”We’ve been back and forth in the battle get permits, with long delays – one over a year.”
He says he reached out to Ofield because he hoped to maintain the integrity of the building. He opted against seeking a historic designation despite the tax benefits of doing so, because he didn’t want to complicate the process by having to “jump through those hoops and increase costs of construction.”
Last week, Ofield criticized Perez for removing original casement windows and putting in windows with metal frames. But he says preserving casement windows would have jumped the cost up from $50,000 to $300,000, a rate Ofield voiced skepticism over. But Perez says, “We did our best to try and make it look similar.”
Next, he relates, “We finally got the permits in 2019. Then COVID hit; nobody’s working anymore. Because we were not able to do the work, our permits expired.” He notes that in most cities, such as San Diego, applicants were allowed to extend permits if work was disrupted by COVID, but “not Lemon Grove, so now you have to do completely new permits…right now, we’re two years into the process, and we still don’t have our permits.”
One problem, he says, is that the city farms out permit processing to an outside company. Perez says a private investor was willing to put in $150,000 to help with renovations, but walked away due to the long delays. “If we could have paid a thousand dollars to get those permits quicker, we would have,” he says of any potential extra fee.
Ofield says when historic properties are left empty for years, problems such as decay or fires can occur. She had pushed for the city to acquire the property, but the city lacked the money. But she says, “While it is true that COVID blew a hole in lives and activities worldwide, it is now a convenient excuse.” She says not enough was done to keep a chain link fence secure, adding, “The first responsibility to a famous, historic old house is security” as well as frequent visits by the property owner.
Perez detailed his efforts to keep the property secure.
“We’ve had a constant interaction with the Sheriff’s department,” he says. ”At one point, we even let them park in our parking lot, hoping they would help, hoping they would take a peek. But they just weren’t patroling….The Sheriff was not paying attention, no matter how much we complained," due to lack of resources.
He adds that a form granting permission to patrol the property had to be filled out every 30 days, a challenge since the station is closed weekends and keeps short orders some other days, so was often closed when he tried to stop by.
ECM is reaching out to the Sheriff for a repsonse
Perez had a chain-link fence built around the property, but says that homeless people got past the barriers. ”We put up lights. We boarded everything up. We go there regularly,” he maintains. “Ironically, we were there two days before the burning and we had to run out five homeless people…I’ve told the city manager, one of these days I’m going to run into one with a gun or a knife….this isn’t safe for us.”
The Saturday before the fire, Perez says he told the homeless people in the front building they had to leave, but shared a thermos of coffee with them. “I waited while they cleaned their stuff out, then went back to Home Depot, and came back and boarded it up. That may be why the front property wasn’t damaged.”
But when he looked at the back building, he found ”every single door and window had been torn off.” He didn’t have enough materials to fix it that night, but says he asked a friend from church to help him come back later in the week to board up the back building as well. “We were trying very hard” he says.
Heartland Fire and Rescue has not yet determined the cause of the fire, though neighbors have said homeless people had previously set fires to keep warm.
He and his wife have tried to be good neighbors. “We’ve done community cleanup projects there,” he says of the site, which is zoned for mix commercial and residential use.
He still hopes to move forward with the nonprofit and says the city’s new community development manager, Michael Fellows, was “doing more. I think he’s trying really hard. He’s acknowledged that they’re having a hard time keeping staffing.” That was before the fire.
But the city has since delivered bad news. “The city met with us and says, `Now you have to demolish.” Perez says the city is telling him to tear down the back building, since fire only damaged the residence, the two-story building on the back of the property.
As for the burned building, Perez mused, “It looks like the outside is salvageable, but they (the city) say it’s just a shell and has to come down.”
He voiced anger at this. “The city is so anxious for us to tear it down.” He says he told the city manager, "Now you think it’s urgent?’”
After years of delays, Perez reflects, “Now we’ll need to build from the ground up. But at least if we have the commercial property going, we’ll have someone on site.” He emphasized the need for the city to approve the permit.
He concludes, “We’re just regular folks who are trying to do a good thing in the city. We’ve accomplished a lot of that already, especially in El Cajon, where two of our homes are,” he says of his nonprofit’s shelters for women in need and their young children. “We’re both from East County. It’s frustrating that we’ve had to struggle with the city of Lemon Grove…We just want to get our permits to move forward and do what needs to be done.”
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