Bonita Residents Ask Supervisors to Keep Road Blocked

Two dozen Bonita families have at least two more months to enjoy living on a street without traffic, while more than 5,000 daily commuters must wait at least that long to find out if they’ll get their favorite shortcut back.

At issue is tiny Frisbie Street and an adjacent cul-de-sac, Aleman Place. The roads were blocked in February after the county Board of Supervisors agreed to a temporary closure.

Nearby business owners say business has dropped since the closure.

But residents say it was necessary because speeding drivers have made their neighborhood dangerous. Fourteen people came to a Board of Supervisors’ meeting yesterday to ask for a permanent closure.

But there was no resolution yesterday.

Supervisor Greg Cox, whose district includes Bonita, asked for more time to meet with the residents and business owners to see if a solution can be found.

“Clearly we cannot go around and close streets all over. Traffic is horrible in Bonita, but it’s also horrible in a lot of other areas.”—Supervisor Greg Cox

Cox was joined by Supervisors Pam Slater-Price and Dianne Jacob, both of whom cited concerns about public safety.

Supervisors Bill Horn and Ron Roberts voted against the continuance. Both said adding speed bumps and signs prohibiting right-hand turns during rush hour could adequately reduce traffic on Frisbie.

“While the closing of the road is convenient for the people who are living on it, it seems to me it would be bad public policy.”—Supervisor Ron Roberts

Frisbie, which is 950 feet long and 28 feet at the widest, was never intended to be a main road. However, it has become a busy cut-through in recent years for drivers seeking to avoid a traffic light at the corner of Central Avenue and Bonita Road.

County traffic studies found there were 2,270 daily vehicle trips on Frisbie in 1988. By 2003 it had increased to 5,200.

“One day I was bringing several kids to the 7-Eleven when a car clipped my elbow. It could have been a lot worse. It could have been all the kids.”—Resident David Whited

Penni Wilson-Neely brought a crushed metal mailbox, which she said a pickup had hit. Kathy Lightbody said her house is close to the road and there are no curbs or sidewalks. “Please, somebody’s going to be killed if you don’t make the right decision here,” she said.

Orville Moody, former Bonita-Sunnyside fire chief, said there had been nine injury accidents there from 2002 to early 2005, including one fatality, and none since the road was closed.

Two people spoke in favor of re-opening the road. One was the owner of the 7-Eleven on the corner of Frisbie, who has long maintained that the closure would, and did, hurt his business.

A Bonita resident said she was inconvenienced by having to drive three-quarters of a mile around the block to reach the store.

The county public works staff originally made no recommendation as to whether the road should open or remain closed.

However, late Tuesday a revised recommendation was issued, which was given to the supervisors yesterday morning. It called for the street to be re-opened within 90 days while “traffic calming” measures such as speed bumps are added.

Larry Watt, the county’s deputy director of public works, said the road closure had produced “unanticipated and unacceptable safety and business impacts.”

Watt said calls to a hotline, established to gauge community sentiment, ran two-to-one in favor of re-opening the road.

Traffic using the adjacent shopping center as a shortcut had doubled, Watt said. And each day 15 to 20 cars go the wrong way through a one-way alley behind the post office in an apparent attempt to evade the stoplight at the corner.

Both businesses at the end of Frisbie, the 7-Eleven and a restaurant, reported a decrease in business, he said. Watt said a permanent closure “could significantly increase the county’s liability exposure” from the businesses.

The matter is scheduled to return to the Board of Supervisors on Jan. 11.

San Diego Union-Tribune | October 7, 2005 | Updated August 28, 2016

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EDITOR'S NOTE: The original article was written 21 years ago and updated 11 years later. The "5,000 daily commuters" has increased to 19,000 vehicles on our roads daily, nearly four times the load.

Speed forward to ten years later, will the partial closure (north to south) be allowed to remain?

If the County proceeds with the updated restaurant (La Finca becoming Nectar) and the proposed two-story office building (with an open-roof venue TBD), those businesses might and probably will petition for a left-turn out of the parking lot. That left turn would give them additional access to Central Avenue by cutting through the Frisbie Street neighborhood.

The "new and improved" Nectar Restaurant was first presented in Action Item 7 of the June 3, 2025 Sweetwater Community Planning Group meeting. When asked about the remaining land belonging to the site, architect Abhay Swelter pleaded ignorance. He said that his work only involved the renovation of the restaurant. It seemed fishy—at best—to those present.

Then, surrounding neighbors received a letter from the County of San Diego, Planning & Development Department in October of 2025.

Jump to the year 2026. Chris Jacobs came to do a presentation at the March 3, 2026 Sweetwater Community Planning Group meeting. It appeared as item 8 in the Non-Action items on the agenda.

"Chris Jacobs is a Land Use Planner III with the County of San Diego's Planning & Development Services (PDS), holding this position since April 2023, where he oversees various land development projects. As of 2025–2026, he is actively involved in planning projects such as the Cottonwood Sand Mine and Fallbrook self-storage developments."—Google

I believe that Mr. Jacobs was startled by all the push back he received at that meeting. Rumor is that the owner of the property was fearful of attending. The County has represented land owners in the past (the Self Storage facility proposed for Bonita Road next to the fire station, for one). It seems like a conflict of interest to me.

I wrote about the March 2026 meeting in an article titled "La Finca De Adobe Morphs into Nectar Restaurant with an Additional 2-Story Commercial Building." The response from the majority of the community about the 2-story building has not been positive. Stay tuned . . .

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