Collection Description

The City of Lemon Grove is an intimate community of about 26,000 residents in southeast San Diego County. As a small municipality nested within an expansive metropolis, Lemon Grove faces the unique challenge of preserving its unique history and small town charm amidst a largely urban landscape. The city’s small town attributes are not only attractive to residents and visitors, but they also allow for more feasible implementation of rapid and widespread sustainable practices. The City of Lemon Grove continues to gain momentum as a model of sustainability as it seeks innovative ways to address both community and global needs.

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Improving Street Sign and Stop Sign Data in Lemon Grove, CA: Analysis of Geographical Data Collection and Editing Methods
The Geography Department at San Diego State University, in collaboration with the Sage Project and the City of Lemon Grove, produced an inventory of stop sign and street identification sign locations within the city limits of Lemon Grove. Two teams collected stop sign coordinates with ESRI’s Collector for ArcMap and street sign coordinates with Google’s My Maps. Maps were then created from these two information layers. The purpose of this geographic information system (GIS) was to aid the city in its efforts to develop infrastructure improvement in the area. From the two inventories, or layers, that we created, patterns emerged reflecting a discrepancy between retail and residential areas. There are more existing and improved signs in the north and central parts of the city, whereas the south-central areas and neighborhoods on the western and eastern borders are not yet as updated. The two methods of collection also remind us that an initial inventory should be made on a desktop, with imagery, before any fieldwork. Once the basis inventory is made, it can then be updated, changed, or appended in the field. This will allow for a planning phase that would guide future site visits and provide a checklist to eliminate previously visited areas. The Google platform allows for very accurate locational data to be captured based on satellite imagery, while the ArcMap platform is better when multiple users may be interacting on a single map. We suggest training employees to manipulate the attribute data or designating a team responsible for entering data collected in the field to maintain updated locational data., San Diego State University
Lemon Grove Climate Action Planning: Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Climate Change in Lemon Grove, CA
Recent satellite and ground-based data have indicated that Earth’s climate is changing at an alarmingly fast rate as the mean global temperature continues to rise. This effect is visible around the world and is already beginning to threaten both society and the environment (Kitchen, 2014). Our failure to limit the emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) today will lead to damaging and irreversible changes in climate tomorrow. For this reason, Lemon Grove has collaborated with the Sage Project at San Diego State University to generate possibilities for climate change mitigation and adaptation. This detailed report identifies the main objectives and aims of our initiative, which are intended to help Lemon Grove build a more equitable and sustainable future. These ideas have been developed specifically to reduce GHG emissions across many sectors, including: electricity, transportation, natural gas, solid waste, water, and wastewater. However, equally important are our adaptation policies, which will be just as critical in protecting Lemon Grove from the long-term impacts of climate change, such as cool zones, increased green space, and public education. This report also includes a chapter dedicated to the United Nations Toolkit. The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, or UN-Habitat, recognized that many cities were in the initial stages of combating climate change and reducing GHG emissions. Most cities do not have any kind of climate action plan (CAP) that would raise awareness in their communities regarding mitigation and adaptation strategies. In response, the United Nations developed the “Guiding Principles for City Climate Action Planning.” This toolkit includes eight guiding principles that provide a resource for evaluating cities with current CAPs; these principles and resources can also be used to formulate a climate plan in cities that have little or no current plan. These principles address the following descriptors to be considered and addressed when formulating or evaluating a CAP: ambitious, inclusive, fair, comprehensive and integrated, actionable, evidence-based, and transparent and verifiable. In our case, Lemon Grove currently has not yet completed their CAP; thus, we are utilizing these principles to collaborate with city officials and provide recommendations that will set them up for success with the development of their CAP. The goals of these field tests are to identify how the principles can be applied to cities of different socioeconomic statuses, help cities with their planning process, spread awareness of climate change, and receive feedback on the project., San Diego State University
Lemon Grove Downtown Village
The land use plans outlined in this document were produced through the partnership between the City of Lemon Grove and the Sage Project at San Diego State University during the fall semester of 2016. In Diana Richardson’s Geography 572 course, titled “Land Use Analysis,” upper-division undergraduate and graduate students were presented with the opportunity to formulate conceptual land use plans that they believed would constitute a sustainable, productive, and sensitive use for the Downtown Village area of Lemon Grove. These proposals were to display consistency and be complementary to the surrounding areas of the project site while meeting the city’s Tactical Urbanism and Placemaking goals., San Diego State University
Lemon Grove Mural Project
Student design proposals for a mural in Lemon Grove., San Diego State University
Lemon Grove Recreation Department Expansion Opportunities: Envisioning New Recreational Offerings in the City of Lemon Grove
The purpose of this report is to propose sustainable ways to expand the recreation services for the City of Lemon Grove, as well as provide sustainable solutions that revitalize existing recreational offerings. Dr. Jennifer Sheppard’s class—RWS 504 Advanced Professional Writing— investigated a wide range of options to be included in this report. Through gathered surveyed data, students propose that the City of Lemon Grove grows the Recreation Department programming by adding two new community events: an Annual Birthday Bash and a weekly Farmer’s Market. By developing these two events, residents will develop a deeper sense of pride and belonging to their neighborhood that can proudly be shared to attract other San Diego locals to visit the area. The final section of this report discusses the results of an additional survey conducted during the Spring semester of 2022. The survey focused on identifying the recreational interests of Hispanic residents in Lemon Grove, regarding potential new programming opportunities that reflected aspects of Latinx culture and the Spanish language., San Diego State University
Lemon Grove Redevelopment
The redevelopment ideas summarized in this report were produced by students at San Diego State University in collaboration with the City of Lemon Grove. Students enrolled in the Finance 437, taught by Professor Dana Kuhn, created development plans for both industrial and mixed-use parcels of land in Lemon Grove. The industrial parcel is located near the Martin Luther King Jr. Freeway on the north side of North Avenue between Allison Lane and Olive Street. The mixed-use parcel is located on the south side of Broadway between Main Street and Olive Street., San Diego State University
Lemon Grove Roundabouts / Complete Streets (Team 5)
The purpose of the study is to evaluate the existing design of Broadway/Grove Street Intersection and consider how well it aligns with the local, state, and federal guidelines for roundabouts. Both full-sized and mini-roundabout guidelines were considered. Results of the analysis indicate how features of the current configuration respond to those guidelines, as well as a set of recommendations to improve the conditions based on best management practices., San Diego State University
Lemon Grove Roundabouts / Complete Streets (Team 6)
An implemented roundabout was created and assessed on the basis of practical, social, and environmental considerations in order to meet project objectives. The final design will include a roundabout at the intersection of Lemon Grove and Grove streets. And entire street design at Broadway/Grove, as well as Broadway/Kempf, and this document contains all of the design work done for these projects., San Diego State University
Lemon Grove Signage
Design proposals for Lemon Grove signage., San Diego State University
Lemon Grove Wastewater Reuse
The City of Lemon Grove seeks to incorporate more natural elements and green spaces throughout the Downtown Village area of the city. The goal of this project was to propose additional green spaces to the Downtown area of Lemon Grove and create a wastewater treatment facility to obtain water to irrigate these proposed areas. Throughout this project, the Ten State Standards (Health Research Inc., Health Education Services Division, 2014) and the California Code of Regulations were used as guidelines (California Office of Administrative Law, 1990)., San Diego State University
Lemon Grove: Municipal Strategies to Address Homelessness
A 2016 report by the San Diego County Grand Jury found that the East County cities of El Cajon, La Mesa, Santee, and Lemon Grove lacked an adequate response to addressing homelessness (San Diego County Grand Jury, 2016). Lemon Grove had the smallest overall population among the four cities referenced in the report, as well as the smallest unsheltered homeless population (Regional Task Force on the Homeless, 2015). Publication of the grand jury’s report garnered media attention and public interest, leading to the city’s partnership with the Sage Project at San Diego State University to explore strategies to address homelessness (Pearlman, 2016). This study incorporates qualitative research of primary and secondary source data from county, regional, state, and federal public records, direct communication with stakeholders, site visits, and peer-reviewed literature from political science, public health, sociology, organizational behavior, and public relations to examine the existing framework addressing homelessness and provide recommendations for small to medium-sized cities in San Diego County, like Lemon Grove, to connect with available resources and deliver them to their homeless residents through membership and participation in the Regional Task Force on the Homeless. This report explores four main research questions in order to develop recommendations to Lemon Grove city leadership based on their inputs to Sage Project participants, as well as additional documentation they provided from other studies undertaken to support the city’s General Plan Update in 2017. The results of scholarship yield two key recommendations for city leaders. First, it is recommended that the Lemon Grove City Council make homelessness a top priority in the agenda it provides to the city manager and staff to execute. Second, it is recommended that Lemon Grove join and take an active, participatory role in the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless., San Diego State University
Lemon Grove: Parks & Perceptions
In partnership with the City of Lemon Grove and the Sage Project at San Diego State University, students in Honors 113, under the guidance of Dr. Kristen Maher, collected, organized, and analyzed data pertaining to park usage in Lemon Grove. Data collected for this project included a survey of students’ initial impressions of Lemon Grove and observation data from each of five city parks: Berry Street Park, Lemon Grove Park, Civic Center Park, Firefighters Skate Park, and Dan Kunkel Park. Park data were based on observations made over the course of three weeks (September 16 to October 7, 2016) at different times of day. Data points for each park included how the city’s parks were used during this span of time, who used them, and how often they did so. Observations were also made related to each park’s appeal, safety, and areas for improvement. This report offers findings from this data collection as well as recommendations intended to improve the parks in Lemon Grove and increase the city’s appeal to visitors and new residents., San Diego State University

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