![\"End](\"https:\/\/lamesacourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/DS1.jpg\")
<\/a>Development of the 7,400-square-foot East County building (located on the north end of a Fletcher Parkway strip mall containing a Souplantation restaurant and a Michaels arts and crafts store) and its sprawling lot, initially got underway in 2015 and was projected to open at several different times over the last three years but ultimately never materialized.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Feb. 13, the site’s owner\/CEO Aaron Dean announced on the Depot Springs Facebook page that he’d placed the property, which his family has owned since 1959, up for sale via the commercial real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield. It has the Fletcher Parkway address listed for $2.4 million as a \u201cpermitted brewery opportunity,\u201d along with $700,000 worth of brewery equipment (available for sale separately).<\/p>\n
As reported in the La Mesa Courier in March of 2016, Dean hosted a community forum to address growing neighborhood discontent about his expansive project \u2014 namely overflow parking and noise concerns stemming from plans to operate a live-music venue on the brewery\u2019s grounds. However, he contests those issues weren\u2019t the cause of the Depot Springs\u2019 demise.<\/p>\n
\u201cActually, most of the community provided overwhelming support for the project,\u201d Dean told the Courier recently. \u201cWe had a few folks who misunderstood the actual idea of the project \u2026 We spent a great deal of money doing sound studies and working with the city and our architect to make sure the project would be in compliance with our approved conditional use permit.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Dean, the facility had reached \u201cabout 70 percent complete\u201d but ran into an insurmountable slew of problems recently.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really was a perfect storm,\u201d Dean said. \u201cI can\u2019t blame one thing that caused the project to stop \u2026 The bank had some issues with the cost overruns and a neighbor, who I will leave nameless for now, created a huge issue over parking that eventually got dismissed but was a six-month [work] stoppage alone. I think whenever you try to do something new, you always run a risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Depot Springs Brewing Co. would have certainly been a breath of fresh air to an otherwise sleepy part of town. Upon its opening, the project would\u2019ve hosted a full-service, family-friendly restaurant\/brewery concept (including a 3,000-square-foot enclosed, alcohol-free \u201ckid\u2019s camp\u201d) along with a 600- to 900-person (depending on type of seating) outdoor courtyard for live music and other events. While news of the site\u2019s sale is a disappointing end to the long-awaited project, there could be a silver lining.<\/p>\n
Dean is currently talking with several different potential buyers, presumably breweries, to purchase the property and, hopefully, bring his vision (or some semblance of it) to life at long last.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good news for anyone else is that the path has been built,\u201d Dean said. \u201cAll the issues I had are dealt with \u2026 So long as the [potential buyers] I am working with don\u2019t try to increase the footprint, it will work great. I do think it\u2019s 50\/50 as to whether one of the other breweries we are working with would keep the entertainment to the extent that we had planned. Success, for now, is about having the capital to finish. I believe all the groups we are speaking with can make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Dean, the La Mesan is focusing on his other neighborhood venture: Sheldon\u2019s Service Station. Along with slinging coffee, breakfast, lunch, and a few craft-beer\/wine selections, the La Mesa Village hotspot also hosts live music every weekend. Dean said that starting in April, they\u2019ll be extending hours with music going later into weekend evenings. And if he has other projects up his sleeve, he\u2019s not telling \u2014 just yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs for something totally new? We will see \u2026 it\u2019s in my blood to keep trying new things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Dustin Lothspeich is a La Mesa resident\/musician who largely spends his time writing about the San Diego music scene for area publications.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Por Dustin Lothspeich<\/p>","protected":false},"author":878,"featured_media":224950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11548","_seopress_titles_title":"End of the line for Depot Springs","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11548,11551,11550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-mesa-courier","category-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/878"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}