ESCONDIDO, Calif. — A pool at a senior living apartment complex in Escondido has been closed for repairs for nearly a year, but no repair work is being done. A CBS 8 viewer reached out to us, frustrated about enduring another heat wave without a pool to cool off. After some phone calls and an email from CBS 8, a construction crew came to the pool and the property manager said the pool will be fixed in 2 weeks.
When our CBS 8 crew got to the Birchmont Senior Living complex in Escondido Wednesday, a man was laying down blocks around the pool’s edge. Residents tell us it’s the first time anyone has worked on the pool since management shut it down last August.
Dana Matzen has lived at Birchmont for several years.
“Last August. It was scorching," he said. "One day we were using it and the next they were destroying it. They tore all the tile off. It was basically just a shell of a pool. It looked like basically what it looks like now. They tore it apart. They never came back to finish it. It’s been 10 months.”
Matzen says the property manager told him and his neighbors they were waiting on permits from the City of Escondido for the pool repair. So for 10 months, everyone at the complex with 150 units waited. Hoping the work would get done and the pool would open again.
“A lot of them use the pool for therapy and exercise," Matzen says. "I use the pool for my back. It helps a lot.”
When the property manager sent out annual rental increase notices, that’s when Matzen contacted CBS 8.
He says, “Everybody went ballistic and that's what spurred me on. It was an insult to what they were doing to us.”
CBS 8 went to work. The newsroom sent an email to the property management company on a Tuesday afternoon and left messages at different numbers. We set up a time Wednesday morning to come check things out and try to talk to someone in the office. Before 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, things started changing.
“I noticed the management and 3 other people were handing out brochures and taping them on the doors of each apartment,” Matzen says.
The print out says: “Birchmont Staff is delighted to inform you work will commence tomorrow, July 10th at 7am.”
Matzen says he couldn’t believe it. He was dumbfounded.
A regional manager came to the complex when our CBS 8 crew was there. She told us they’d been waiting on permits and the permits from the City of Escondido had just come through. She says the pool will be back open to residents in a couple of weeks.
We reached out to the City of Escondido to see when the permits had been approved. Late in the day CBS 8 spoke with Escondido’s Deputy City Manager Christopher McKinney. He says the Birchmont Senior Living property company never applied for any permits for pool work. He says he doesn’t know if they even need permits for the work that’s happening since the City doesn’t know what work is being done. He also says the owner of the complex receives special considerations from the City of Escondido because it offers low income housing.
We asked Matzen if he thought the work being done at the pool was a coincidence to CBS 8 doing the story.
“No. I knew you had left messages last night and probably this morning. So I knew what instigated it,” he says.
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