by Mark McDermott
Jon Bell spent three decades building the Deep Roots name in Manhattan Beach. A developer is now using it without his permission.
Bell, owner of Deep Roots Garden Center, recently learned that The 119 LLC — a commercial developer that purchased the former nursery site at 201-207 N. Sepulveda Boulevard — has created a shell company for its proposed housing project and named it Deep Roots MB, LLC. The name now appears as the official applicant of record in city planning documents.
Bell is not having it.
“This is beyond absurd. Let me be very clear,” he wrote in an email to customers and neighbors this week. “Deep Roots Garden Center is in no way affiliated with this project.”
Bell knows what actual deep roots are. He worked at that location, which had been a nursery for six decades, starting when he was 15 years old. He bought the business, formerly Bob’s Nursery, from former owner Bob Brock when he was 28. He named it Deep Roots in homage to its longstanding place in the community. But he didn’t own the land, which eventually became part of a larger wave of development sweeping Manhattan Beach.
The housing project is one of three already in plan check under the city’s Residential Overlay District, the state-mandated zoning that allows developers to bypass local building codes in exchange for including affordable units. Under normal Manhattan Beach zoning, buildings along Sepulveda are capped at 36 feet. According to a city planning notice issued January 16, the proposal at 201-207 N. Sepulveda calls for a seven-story, 60-unit rental complex rising nearly 69 feet on the .627-acre site at the northwest corner of 2nd Street and Sepulveda, where Deep Roots operated for 28 years. Of the 60 units, 12 would be designated low income. The project is being processed by right — meaning no public hearing will be held, and the city has no legal discretion to deny it if it meets objective development standards.
The ROD, which the City Council adopted reluctantly in 2023 under threat of state sanctions, allows development along Sepulveda Boulevard and Rosecrans Avenue that could ultimately add an estimated 2,326 new units to the city over the next 14 years. Two additional projects — a 550-unit building and a 500-unit building, both on Rosecrans — remain in preliminary planning review. As this newspaper has reported, the council has effectively lost the ability to alter or stop any project that meets the state’s requirements. When the city initially fought a density bonus project, Project Verandas, it faced a $50 million lawsuit from the developer, two additional lawsuits from housing advocacy groups, and threats from the state Attorney General’s office.
“The state has taken away our ability to get public input,” Mayor Pro Tem David Lesser said at the time.
Bell, a Manhattan Beach native, said the scale of the project proposed for his former location worries him for reasons beyond the name.
“Having spent 28 years of my life working at that location, I can tell you that adding hundreds of additional cars coming and going onto that fast-moving highway is a bad idea,” he wrote. “I have witnessed dozens upon dozens of accidents, some horrific, at the intersection of 2nd and Sepulveda.”
His concern is well-founded. Since December 2024, three pedestrians have been killed on that same stretch of Sepulveda Boulevard. Michael Kawasaki was struck and killed between 8th and 9th Streets in December 2024. On January 7, 2025, Mira Costa senior Ford Savela, 18, was struck and killed near 3rd Street and Sepulveda — one block from the proposed development — returning home from the gym. Less than four months later, on May 4, Loyola High School tennis star Braun Levi, also 18, was struck and killed by a suspected drunk driver while crossing the 100 block of South Sepulveda, just one block in the other direction. At a council meeting last May, Councilmember Amy Howorth acknowledged what had become a crisis on the corridor.
“We’ve received many, many, many valid concerns about safety on Sepulveda Boulevard,” Howorth said, “particularly that stretch south of Manhattan Beach Boulevard, which tragically has been the site of multiple fatal accidents in recent years.”
It is a concern the city is largely powerless to act on. Under the ROD framework, traffic congestion concerns do not constitute grounds for requiring project modifications unless they can be demonstrated to represent a specific, quantifiable safety violation based on objective written standards. Beyond that, Sepulveda Boulevard is a state highway under Caltrans jurisdiction, leaving the city without independent authority over the roadway. The city has been working with Caltrans on a corridor safety study since the summer of 2025, with potential strategies expected to be presented to the City Council this spring — but that effort predates the current project proposals and was not initiated in response to them.
For Bell, the developer’s use of the Deep Roots name has added insult to injury. And no small amount of confusion. Since the developer listed Deep Roots MB, LLC as the applicant of record with the city, Bell has been fielding calls daily from residents — some asking whether he is behind the project, others offering him financing for it.
“It can only be assumed they chose to name their new LLC after my company to deflect public anger away from themselves,” he wrote. “I have been fielding numerous phone calls from concerned residents wanting clarification.”
Bell says a cease and desist letter is being drafted, backed by the threat of a lawsuit. He is blunt about what’s at stake.
“If I had the tens of millions of dollars to do a project like that, I would have just purchased the land and kept my garden center going there,” he wrote.
Bell, whose business has been recognized as Best of the Beach by Easy Reader for 15 consecutive years, moved Deep Roots to Torrance last year after being forced to leave the Manhattan Beach location. The new store — roughly three times the size of the original — has pivoted toward indoor plants and pottery. It is, Bell said, very much a family operation, in a city that has less and less room for them.
“Manhattan Beach is just unfortunately pricing themselves out,” he said. “They’re never going to see much in the way of mom and pop, or individually owned businesses anymore.”
The 119 LLC had not responded to a request for comment by press time.
