Artist rendering of the mixed-use approved development in Baywood Park will look like from across 2nd Street. Rendering by Bob Semonsen
Redevelopment of an old gas station site in Baywood Park could finally be moving forward, after a County Planning Department hearing officer approved the plans.
But that may of course not be the final chapter in the saga of the property that dates back decades. Ten different parties appealed what was initially a routine approval demanding a public hearing.
If those appellants carry forward with their concerns, the project could be appealed to the Board of Supervisors and ultimately the Coastal Commission.
Alex Benson, who also owns the Baywood Inn, is the applicant for the project, which sits at 1300 2nd Street at the corner of Santa Maria Avenue.
It’s the site of a one-time gas station that closed over 50-years ago. The station’s building was occupied for a time by various businesses until it was burned down by the fire department in a training exercise around 2010.
In recent years, the now-vacant lot has been used by the community to host the bandstand and beer gardens for the Annual Oktoberfest celebrations, and for parking for folks visiting the Monday Farmer’s Market, which is held on Santa Maria Avenue.
Benson is trying to build a 2-story, mixed-use development with some 3,000 square feet of retail space on the first floor and three, 1-bedroom rental apartments on the second.
The property sits in the Community Services District’s water service area and the County’s sewer district. Both those agencies have indicated they will serve the project, so the nagging issues that have stopped development in Los Osos — water and sewer — appear to be handled with the project.
The zoning is right — commercial retail — and the design fits with the Estero Area Plan’s requirements that govern the community.
Still, development in a special place like Baywood Park is always going to be controversial.
“The site,” reads a report by County Planner Dane Mueller, “Is located within the Baywood Commercial Area, which is defined as a Special Community due to the area’s unique, visually pleasing characteristics which serve as a visitor destination point.”
The site doesn’t even need much grading.
“Topography of the project site,” Mueller said, “is nearly level and disturbed with existing concrete pads from prior structures, which once included a gas station and single-family residence and which were part of a controlled burn exercise in which the structures were demolished around 2010.”
Appellants wanted a hearing to get answers to questions concerning noticing of the project, impacts to the farmer’s market, parking, uses — namely the potential to be turned into vacation rentals, removal of trees, noise and lighting impacts, and water usage as well as its inconsistency with the Local Coastal Program.
Several people attended the online hearing via Zoom to express their concerns, and one by one Mueller and Benson’s agent, Bob Semonsen, answered each. It helped that Semonsen was one of the original members of the Los Osos Community Advisory Council or LOCAC, the advisory body that reviews development and other issues in Los Osos and advises the Dist. 2 County Supervisor.
LOCAC had been instrumental in helping to write the initial Estero Area Plan, indeed that was the reason for its formation back in the early 1990s.
Having that kind of institutional knowledge, from someone who was actually there when the plan was being debated and drafted, helped considerably with addressing many of the issues.
In particular, parking and why 2nd Street has diagonal parking on one side and parallel parking on the other.
The original developer of Baywood Park, Richard Otto, had gifted an extra wide easement to the County in the original tract map leaving some 18-extra feet to accommodate the diagonal parking.
But the gas station didn’t have parking in front of it. Semonsen explained that the gas pumps were situated in that portion of the right of way at the time.
Now, with the new development, four diagonal spaces will be put in, continuing the parking pattern that runs down the block to the Baywood Pier.
The plans show a total of seven spaces, with the other three shown as parallel spaces along Santa Maria Avenue. Mueller explained that configuration was put in by the Public Works Department when they got the plan and was intended to protect the farmer’s market’s need for space.
An additional six spaces are penciled in at the rear of the building. Four are for the apartments’ residents and two more to satisfy the required spaces for the retail use.
Among the concerns expressed was the water usage. Patrick McGibney who is with the Los Osos Sustainability Group, a citizen’s group that opposes new development until water supply issues are solved, asked about the water and conformity with the various plans.
He said the project violates LCP policies and the Coastal Land Use Ordinance. It must show that there is adequate water, he said.
He, as well as a few others, was also concerned whether the gas station’s underground fuel tanks were to be removed and if contamination were found, how that would be remediated?
Mueller and Semonsen both said the tanks were removed decades ago and Mueller added that the project was sent to the Regional Water Quality Control Board, which deals with underground gas tanks, and the agency didn’t comment back.
In the end, Hearing Officer, Mitch Emerson, said he’d looked at all the documentation and listened to all the questions and answers and approved the project.
Concerned citizens have 10 days to file an appeal to the Board of Supervisors, but the only one that seems to have merit is the water supply question, which the Sustainability Group has consistently argued that the groundwater basin is in severe overdraft, inadequate for demand now and can’t handle even the 0.4% growth rate the County has established for Los Osos.
