Fundraising campaign to restore SLO County veterans hall begins. Will supervisors chip in?
Cayucos residents are banding together once more to help repair an iconic structure in the small beachside town.
About six years ago, community members raised $235,000 toward restoring the deteriorated and unsafe Cayucos Pier, which reopened in 2015.
Now the Cayucos Vets Hall Restoration Committee is working to save the town’s historic Veterans Hall.
Committee members hope supporters will not only donate to stabilize, repair and update the building located at 10 Cayucos Drive, but also express their support for the restoration project during the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors’ Nov. 2 meeting (recently postponed from a Sept. 28 date).
Fundraising starts for Cayucos Veterans Hall restoration
Originally known as the Cass Warehouse at Cayucos Landing, the Cayucos Veterans Hall dates back to 1872, according to the venue’s website.
The Cass Warehouse was one of a series of buildings in downtown Cayucos in 1875, which included Capt. James Cass’ store, lumberyard, home, wharf and pier.
In 1920, the warehouse was acquired by the state of California, according to a 2017 San Luis Obispo County evaluation of the warehouse structure.
The Cayucos Veterans Hall has been a popular venue for everything from governmental meetings to weddings, fundraisers, parties and barbecues for decades.
The main part of the building has been closed since 2016, due to structural issues. But the entire hall has been completely off limits since late June, when it was red-tagged by the California Office of the State Fire Marshal.
For a time, some townspeople feared that their community center would simply fall further into disrepair and be abandoned.
Now, a coalition of people including county Supervisor Bruce Gibson and representatives of various Cayucos organizations want to make sure that doesn’t happen.
According to a fundraising letter sent out earlier this month, the Cayucos Vets Hall Restoration Committee has “set a goal to raise $500,000, and has already received over $60,000 in commitments to help ensure funding for the restoration project,” which is currently estimated to cost $5.4 million.
The county has a $1.8 million grant in hand, but it could expire soon, according to the committee.
According to the committee, the closure “has been a huge burden to the community.”
Besides serving as a venue for weddings, anniversary parties and other special events, the hall is used by Cayucos community organizations for fundraisers. The Cayucos Historical Society, Cayucos Art Gallery and the Cayucos Lions Club all use the building.
While the state owns the Cayucos Veterans Hall, San Luis Obispo County’s Central Services department maintains the facility and the grounds, county real property manager Phil D’Acri explained in a June email.
“The county has an agreement with the Lions Club to operate and provide general maintenance of the Vets Hall building,” D’Acri wrote.
San Luis Obispo County’s Public Works Department will lead the restoration project, county Parks Department director Nick Franco said.
Franco added that “the portion of the building that faces the ocean is in the original jurisdiction of the Coastal Zone,” so permitting applications for any work done there “go straight to California Coastal Commission.
“The other portion (including the parking lot and street portion),” he said, “is covered by the Local Coastal Plan managed by the county.”
The vets hall is a historical building, which can carry its own restrictions and regulations.
Plus, he said, the structure’s three separate parts were built at different times.
The old warehouse building came first, “then the kitchen and bathrooms were added, then the meeting room was added on,” Franco said. “It could be considered to be three structures joined together.”
SLO County supervisors could help fund project
At the Board of Supervisors’ Sept. 28 meeting, supervisors will consider committing to fund the $3.5 million balance.
A large turnout of enthusiastic project supporters could help convince them to do that, committee member Greg Bettencourt told the Cayucos Advisory Council (CAC) on Aug. 4.
According to Bettencourt, Gibson has been meeting with “a great group of people interested in fundraising.”
“He said he’s looking for money to finance the last $3 million to rebuild the hall,” Bettencourt said. “As with the pier, most money comes with strings.”
In a July 14 interview with The Tribune, Gibson called the vets hall the “civic heart” of Cayucos.
As the committee wrote in a fundraising letter sent out earlier this month, “we need you, the people who love Cayucos, to persuade the SLO County Board of Supervisors to invest in the future of Cayucos and help fund the restoration, based on the understanding that rents on the facility” would help pay off any debt the county incurs toward the project.
The letter said that having more donations in hand before Sept. 28 will also help to convince the supervisors of the community’s dedication and commitment toward the hall.
People speaking enthusiastically about their commitment to the project Sept. 28 could not only convince the other supervisors about the project’s worthiness and value to Cayucos and the whole county, Bettencourt said, but could “also impress whoever is coming up with the money” in the form of supplementary grants.
The donations the committee is seeking would supplement those grants, reducing the county’s debt load that ultimately would be repaid by fees paid by people renting the hall.
The more donations the committee accumulates, the lower that debt could be, which could be reflected in keeping rental fees reasonable.
As the committee’s press release said, “funds raised in this effort will be dedicated to reducing county costs, refurbishing the hall and to emphasize that the vets hall should remain an affordable resource for the local community organizations” and others who want to rent and use it to create future memories.
For more information, go to www.restorecayucosvetshall.org.
This story was originally published September 16, 2021 at 8:58 AM.
