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Residents urge compensation, safety review as Lamson sewer work may run past College Park
Summary
College Park residents told the Seal Beach City Council that sewer construction tied to a nearby Lampson Avenue development will disrupt yards, risk mature trees and may require costly back-yard wall replacement; the developer said it will instead connect to the Rosmore district after Seal Beach denied a city sewer tie-in, potentially costing the city connection fees and improvements.
Patty Campbell, a College Park East resident, told the council the Lamson Avenue project by Lenar (referred to in the meeting as Lenar/LAR) will require sewer mains running down Lamson that will pass alongside hundreds of homes and mature median trees, creating “a royal mess” for neighbors and risking damage to a decades-old block wall that abuts many backyards.
Campbell said the north side of Lamson has a high-pressure gas line and urged the city to exclude that corridor from construction. She estimated replacement of the deteriorated block wall at roughly $200–$240 per linear foot and calculated a total replacement cost for the affected run she described at about $1.1–$1.3 million, asking the council to press the developer for mitigation or a replacement wall.
Council members heard a response from Scott Levit, a representative of the developer LAR, who said the Lampson Park Place project (246 units, 77 of them designated affordable rental units) was approved by Los Alamitos but that Seal Beach has declined to allow connection to its sewer. “We are going to connect to the Rosmore district,” Levit said, adding that technical plans remain to be finalized. Levit also told the council that the developer had previously proposed a connection to Seal Beach and had planned $1.2 million in sewer connection fees and about $900,000 in park and beautification improvements that the city will now not receive if the sewer ties to Rosmore instead.
The exchange highlighted two related points of contention. Residents said the longer sewer alignment now proposed would result in greater neighborhood disruption and asked the city to use its leverage in negotiations to secure remediation for impacted homeowners. The developer said the city’s refusal to permit a Seal Beach sewer tie forced the change, and warned the city could also face state housing compliance and litigation risk if it does not follow state affordable-housing requirements tied to the project.
City staff indicated that aspects of the Lamson matter were discussed in a closed session earlier in the day and that the city attorney will provide a formal response to the developer. No formal council action was taken on the project at the meeting.
What happens next: staff will follow up with a written response to the developer and the council; residents asked for negotiations that include mitigation for wall replacement and traffic impacts during construction.
