CORONADO – A ruling on a lawsuit to determine who is responsible for maintaining concrete channels along bayfront homes in Coronado Cays has a homeowners group scrambling to notify owners.
The Coronado Cays Homeowners Association, a group representing 1,200 property owners, filed suit in September, alleging the city has failed to maintain concrete channels along its waterways. The group claims the channels are dangerously close to collapsing. The city asked a judge to throw out the lawsuit because the homeowners group failed to name all affected landowners.
A San Diego Superior Court judge issued a ruling Dec. 22 that gave the homeowners association 45 days to amend the lawsuit by adding the names of all those involved, a list that may comprise nearly 390 property owners.
Larry Peterson, general manager of the homeowners association, said many property owners live out of the country.
“Even when we send out mass mailings, we have a very difficult time contacting homeowners,” Peterson said. “To get everybody's name on that list would be very difficult.”
Steven Boehmer, an attorney representing the city, said it was important for all property owners to be included to avoid a “multiplicity of lawsuits.”
Meanwhile, at its meeting Tuesday, the Coronado City Council voted to implement guidelines recommended by TerraCosta Consulting Group on how to assist property owners in case channel walls or their concrete caps, called bulkheads, collapse. The council also agreed at the meeting to notify 10 property owners whose channel walls may be in danger of collapse, according to past underwater depth studies.
Vincent Sincek, an attorney representing the homeowners group, said the city's study merely gathered information from previous studies with “no new additional information taken into account.” Sincek urged council members to hold off on implementing the reconstruction guidelines until a new underwater depth study the city is conducting is completed sometime in March.
Peterson said the homeowners group believes the city “has the duty to maintain the channels” and is asking a judge to name the responsible party.
Coronado Cays is a planned community of multimillion-dollar bayfront homes and condominiums, some of which can be reached by wide channels that lead to private docks. Concrete walls along the channels reinforce the earth on which the homes sit. The walls are topped by bulkheads that are attached to the land by buried anchors.
The homeowners group says that because the bulkheads are anchored in place, the concrete walls are apt to “kick out” from under if they are not fully supported at the bottom by dirt or other substances. It alleges the city has not maintained the channels and has allowed the situation to deteriorate to a “dangerous condition.”
The city claims it is responsible for the channel from one bulkhead across the channel to the other and is required only to remove material that accumulates on the flat part of the channel bottom.
The city asserts that each homeowner is responsible for the sides because the material there supports the walls, which protect homes. The city believes the homeowner, not the city, should have to maintain that support.
The homeowners group board was scheduled to meet last week to decide how to proceed. For now, the group is trying to figure out how to contact all owners.
“We'll pray that we don't have a sea wall that falls or collapses,” Peterson said. “It's a real dilemma, but we're not going to drop the lawsuit.”
Janine Zuniga: (619) 498-6636; janine.zuniga@uniontrib.com
