South La Mesa Neighborhood Against Proposed 7 eleven.

Update:

Thanks to all of those supporting our opposition to a 7 eleven in Spring St. and Gateside Ave. We have received a lot of community support.

7 eleven reps applied for an alcohol license last month for this location. Our community submitted yesterday 61 signed petitions to ABC (Dept of Alcoholic Beverage Control), in addition to those submitted to the City of La Mesa.

Our experience so far has been mixed as both ABC and the City of La Mesa, understandably, are staying neutral until they make an official statement. We hope our safety concerns are taken into consideration primarily, as many times these issues end up being resolved by what is permitted by law- without taking the human aspect into consideration.

This location is zoned for a commercial use, so we do expect a business to take over the site.

Our neighborhood is not opposed to a business moving into the location. It's the alcohol and 24hr service from convenience stores that attracts a lot of crime, which is what happened accros the street from this location, at the 7 11 store at Palm Ave and Echo Dr..

From our experience talking to people and collecting signatures, including those near Echo dr., our neighbors are relieved that the 7 eleven at Palm Ave. is closed. However, some of these neighbors are even considereing moving out of the area because of the increased criminal activity, which the 7 eleven helped to create. We tried to contact the owner of the lot to try to meet and explain our concerns but got no response.

We hope the city takes our safety concerns seriously. We will fight this all the way.

If you would like to join our effort, please write an e-mail to Jonh O'Donnel, City of La Mesa Assitant planner at jodonnell@ci.la-mes.ca.us