SLO County supervisors OK Cambria Christmas Market for 2 years despite appeals. What’s next?
The Cambria Christmas Market will likely return for the 2022 and 2023 holiday seasons — depending on one key factor.
The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to deny appeals filed by three Cambria residents to block extending the Christmas Market’s temporary event permit. Now the Cambrians have vowed to take their case to the California Coastal Commission.
“It’s obvious the board could care less about our right to peace and tranquility and public safety,” appellant Claudia Harmon-Worthen wrote in an email Tuesday night, calling the commission “our last hope to save our town.”
Held annually at Cambria Pines Lodge and the nearby Cambria Nursery and Florist, the Christmas Market features two million Christmas lights as well as seasonal displays, vendor booths, food, drinks and live music. The holiday event lasts from just after Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve, with some of the displays remaining up into January for hotel guests and restaurant patrons.
Entrepreneur Dirk Winter, who owns Cambria Pines Lodge, the nursery and a handful of other local hotels, was at the hearing Tuesday with his planning team. But Dave Watson, principal planner for Watson Planning Consultants, was the only person from the team who spoke about the market.
Over a decade in operation, the Market’s permit was reviewed and granted annually and then for a five-year period through 2021.
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, a modified version of the event continued, but attendance was officially limited to guests of the hotel, the Lodge restaurant and other lodgings owned by Winter.
That sort of operation apparently is allowed under the Lodge’s permit as a hotel that provides venues and periodic events for its guests. It also allows the Lodge to continue the display for its guests beyond the permit period.
It was on that basis of two years of modified operation in 2020 and 2021 that Watson added the request that that the supervisors not only approve the Market’s permit for 2022 but also for 2023.
During the hearing, Watson described Winter’s hope to eventually shift the Market to operate under the Lodge’s coastal development permit to avoid the periodic application process and allow a more comprehensive use of the entire lodge.
Board Supervisor Bruce Gibson argued Tuesday that the 2023 extension shouldn’t be added to the permit, saying that 18 months was plenty of time for the applicant to get through the process of modifying the Lodge’s coastal development permit. But the board chairman ultimately joined his peers in approving the two-year temporary permit.
“This is a very significant event for Cambria and has positive impact on the visitor-serving businesses that goes far beyond the Lodge,” Gibson said at Tuesday’s meeting. He noted that the majority of the members of the Cambria Chamber of Commerce support the event, as evidenced in a survey taken last year
In his closing remarks at Tuesday’s hearing, appellant Russell Read objected to the last-minute addition to the permit of the 2023 event, saying the county Planning Commission and the community hadn’t been informed in advance or had a chance to review the proposal.
Read also said the Planning Commission’s original approval of the permit last year, before a technical glitch delayed the supervisors’ subsequent review, didn’t factor adding in extra years because of the pandemic.
In an email reply to The Tribune on Wednesday, he said he’ll notify supervisors that when they added the 2023 Market to their motion, he believes they violated the state’s Brown Act law about providing the public with sufficient advance notice before taking such an action.
In her email, Harmon-Worthen criticized Winter for what she called his “overwhelming greed and disregard for human and wildlife, a pattern and practice that’s been his M.O. (modus operandi) for decades.”
“My efforts will be devoted stopping the Market,” she said. “I don’t live near the Lodge, but wrong is wrong and someone needs to stop Dirk Winter from destroying our town, literally from burning it down with his extension cords and exposed outlets.”
“However,” Harmon-Worthen noted, “water will be the main issue with the CCC, as it has been for all new construction.”
In a phone call Wednesday, Watson told The Tribune that Gibson “was right” when the board chairman said that reducing the potential impacts to the general public is “the responsibility of this board” and requires balancing the rights of property owners with the needs of the Market.
“I have no doubt the county will continue to require outreach … all of us working as closely as we can with everybody concerned ... to try to satisfy as many people as we can, year in and year out,” Watson said.
He added that “trying to balance the operations of the lodge (and the) benefits it creates economically with residents needs” is a “continuous process.”
“We want people to continue to contact us” with their concerns and ideas, Watson said.
According to Watson, if Winter is able to convert the Market’s temporary event permit into a “long-term amendment to the coastal development permit” quickly enough, “we may not need the extra year.”
This story was originally published May 4, 2022 at 10:59 AM.
