Common ground reached at Kensington Commons

Kensington Commons, designed in a Santa Barbara style, will include 34 apartments and 10,000 square feet of retail space when completed in August. - Allard Jansen Architects

Kensington Commons, designed in a Santa Barbara style, will include 34 apartments and 10,000 square feet of retail space when completed in August. / - Allard Jansen Architects

Developers and residents have reached common ground in the historic Kensington neighborhood.

It's a seven-year odyssey of how not to do infill development in the San Diego.

Kensington Commons, a $6.2 million, 47,442-square-foot apartment and retail project, is rising at Marlborough Drive and Adams Avenue with nary a squeak of protest from the neighborhood south of Mission Valley and east of I-15. When finished in August, it will sport 34 apartments, 10,000 square feet of retail space -- with one suite leased to Pacific Dental and negotiations nearing completion on a food service and a postal/stationery outlet.

There will be wider sidewalks, leafier landscaping and a Santa Barbara-style architecture by architect-developer Allard Jansen.

Renters, who will pay up to $2,760 per month, won't have a pool or workout space or other top-drawer amenities to large downtown condo tower complexes. But they will have a movie theater and public library across the street, a collection of popular restaurants up and down Adams, quick access to the freeway two blocks away and a bus stop out front.

Allard Jansen, the architect-developer of Kensington Commons, lives and works in the neighboring Kensington Park Plaza that he built in 1999. Nelvin C. Cepeda

"It's a lifestyle being embraced more and more and the wonderful idea that you potentially will run into a neighbor by coincidence and start a conversation," said Jansen, 60, who lives with his wife at Kensington Park Plaza, which he built in 1999 immediately west. "More connecting neighbors with other neighbors will be great!"

But this idyll of urbanity came after a seven-year battle that pitted neighbor against neighbor, city, developer and the economy. No wonder such mixed-use projects happen so rarely, given the hassles faced by competing parties.

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Common ground reached at Kensington Commons