Rendering shows what the finished motel on South Ocean Avenue would look like.
County Supervisors pushed back an appeal of a project to build a tiny motel on a vacant lot on South Ocean Avenue in Cayucos, scheduling the matter to return to them in July.
The project would put in three motel rooms and a caretaker unit. It sits sandwiched between one newer development and another vacant lot and will have an easement that empties onto E Street.
The applicants, Uriah Donaldson and Family, plan to operate the motel in a vacation rental business model, or for families who plan to stay longer than a typical weekender would.
The project is classified a mixed-use development, according to County Planner Andrew Knighton. County Codes have a myriad of requirements covering a number of issues — from setbacks, to fire lanes, parking requirements and more. The project meets all of these requirements, according to Knighton. If it doesn’t exactly meet the requirement, then it is conditioned to come into compliance.
The County Planning Department approved the project administratively. It was upheld by the Planning Department Hearing Officer, after members of the community raised concerns focusing on parking issues.
The project needed a Minor Use Permit, and a Coastal Development Permit because it sits within the Coastal Zone and potentially under the authority of the Coastal Commission on appeal.
Those concerns about parking were voiced along with others regarding potential occupancy and the other usual concerns that people raise when someone wants to put a vacation rental (a.k.a. short-term rental) in a neighborhood of homes. This project however, sits in a commercial visitor serving zoning.
Aerial view of the project site, which eats up half of a vacant site on South Ocean Avenue. Photos courtesy SLO County
The project sits on a 7,514 square foot parcel on S. Ocean Avenue just past E Street. It’s a 2-story commercial building of 4,910 s.f. with one caretaker unit, and “three transient lodging motel units,” Knighton’s report said.
The applicant, Uriah Donaldson, needed a “modification” to the parking requirements to allow them to put in four “compact” sized spaces out of the seven called for in the designs. Thus, fewer full size spaces, but still seven.
Three people — Harley Dubois, Ann Sturges and Vicki Tamoush — appealed the Hearing Officer’s approval to Supervisors. They had three main grounds for the appeal — uses and terminology; design and neighborhood compatibility; and, parking and traffic.
The staff responded to the parking issue as meeting the requirements of two spaces per motel unit (three), for a total of six spaces, plus one space for the caretaker’s unit.
The County’s conditions on the permits include a statement from the developers that the caretaker unit is necessary and won’t be used as a family vacation space; and if a caretaker is no longer in residence, they must cease using that unit altogether within 180 days of the change.
Another condition prohibits the motel rooms from ever being converted to residential uses, so years into the future, it can’t turn into an apartment complex. They also cannot be sold as condominiums in the future.
Supervisors wanted more work done on the parking issue, and so the matter will go back to the Planning Department and come back in July. Should the appellants not get satisfaction, they can appeal it further to the Coastal Commission.
The appeal and the arguments used against it raise interesting questions about Cayucos and the perceived problem with a lack of parking in a town that often sees tens of thousands of people converging on it for big holidays and most summer weekends.
It also shows the growing dissatisfaction in town of short-term rentals, especially those sitting within residential neighborhoods.
Indeed one speaker at the Supervisors’ meeting noted that Cayucos is nearing a 50:50 ratio of vacation rentals vs. occupied, long-term rentals and privately owned homes.
