RESIDENTIAL OVERLAY: Developer takes Deep Roots name for housing project
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…
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