Pismo Beach City Council votes down Canyon Oaks project and land swap

Similar stories:

• Parcel added to Price Canyon plan

  Parcel added to Price Canyon plan

  But some Pismo Beach residents are concerned about the city’s expanding ‘sphere of influence’

• Editorial: A thousand homes too many?

  Editorial: A thousand homes too many?

  Is Pismo Beach ready for another 1,000 homes? We don’t believe so. Not today, and not even five or 10 years from now.

  There are major issues that would have to be satisfactorily resolved before a plan for developing as many as 1,000 homes, two hotels, vineyards and a golf course off Price Canyon Road should even be considered. Those include water supply; traffic congestion — especially on Highway 101 and Price Canyon Road; the ability of schools to handle additional enrollment; preservation of scenic views along Price Canyon, to name but a few. There also is the rotten economy to consider. In this slow market, this is hardly the time to add hundreds of new homes.

  Down the pike, though, there’s bound to be demand for more housing on the Central Coast — heaven help the economy if there’s not — and there will be increased pressure to build.

• Viewpoint: Development a bad fit for Pismo

  Viewpoint: Development a bad fit for Pismo

  The 154-acre Los Robles del Mar residential development proposed to be added to the city of Pismo Beach is an outdated project whose traffic impacts, questionable water supply, layout, mass grading and needless destruction of oak woodland require serious reconsideration. This project is a dinosaur, conceived in the 1980s, designed in the 1990s, and trying ever since to find support with a skeptical public.

  The project seeks to jam more than 300 residential units onto the site, which is underlain by one of the most easily eroded soils in the world, the Pismo loamy sand. For more than 100 years, this soil type has been recognized for its erodibility. It was the site of a major restoration project by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s to combat poor agricultural practices that had led to massive erosion at that time. Much of the work was done within a mile of the Los Robles del Mar site and some of the CCC’s handiwork is still functioning and visible today in the same small valley.

  Because most

• Price Canyon: Future home of 2,000 new Pismo beach residents?

  Price Canyon: Future home of 2,000 new Pismo beach residents?

  If added to the city at once, the Price Canyon project would be the second-largest block of land annexed by a city in San Luis Obispo County in nearly 50 years and could expand Pismo Beach by a third. That possibility has prompted some residents to fight the plan.

• Orcutt-area voters approve controversial SLO annexation

  Orcutt-area voters approve controversial SLO annexation

  Residents of the contested Orcutt area near San Luis Obispo voted to allow annexation by the city Tuesday, paving the way for millions of dollars of residential and commercial development to fall under the city’s jurisdiction.

  Twenty-nine people voted in favor of the city’s plan to annex the area. Eighteen voted against it.

  Only the 55 registered voters said to be living in the area were eligible to vote on the issue. Election results released Tuesday night showed that 47 of the 55 people registered to vote in the area did so by mail ballot.