Pismo Beach homeowner has been fighting ‘frustrating’ zoning for 3 years. Now he’s suing
A Pismo Beach homeowner is suing the city after requests to make changes to his property were denied for more than three years.
Andrew Grow, owner of the Shell Beach Road property at the heart of the lawsuit, said the city has left him no choice after multiple requests to install a rainwater collection and storage system were denied by the Pismo Beach Planning Commission and Pismo Beach City Council.
The rainwater collection system would occupy the northern end of Grow’s property, providing him with around 50,000 gallons of water each year for landscaping and fire suppression.
Grow also plans to make the water reserve available to firefighters servicing his part of Shell Beach, as the closest fire hydrant is nearly 1,500 feet from his property.
“It seems that there’s been opportunities to clean up this mess, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any interest in doing that,” Grow said. “It seems like (the city doesn’t) have a problem with having problems with people.”
Pismo Beach property has unique zoning
The zoning of Grow’s Shell Beach Road property has been the subject of dispute since the early 1980s, when the city of Pismo Beach changed it from residential to open space.
Stan Bell, the property owner at the time, launched a series of lawsuits alleging that the city had denied him all reasonable economic use of the property.
Pismo Beach then amended the zoning to allow Bell to build one house on the lot, creating Open Space-1 zoning.
Bell sold the lot to former Pismo Beach Chamber of Commerce president Mike Spangler in 2002, who built the home that currently sits on the property.
Spangler took the city to court in 2015 when the city shut off utilities to his home and began fining him.
He had refused to sign a deed restriction that would preserve a majority of his property as open space and permanently keep a dirt lot next to his house undeveloped.
At the time, the city claimed this was part of the original conditional use permit to build a home.
Spangler ultimately won his lawsuit over the fines, with San Luis Obispo Superior Court Judge Dodie Harman ruling in 2016 it an attempt to “bully Spangler into recording an open-space easement.”
Harman did not rule on the constitutionality of the open-space easement, which remained in place once Spangler died in 2016 and the property was sold to Grow.
Spangler and the city reached a settlement prior to his death, leaving the zoning of the lot as a question mark.
“The argument to the court would be that the city is refusing to uphold the settlement that they entered into in 2016 with the previous owner, Mike Spangler, by declining or denying this project based on the false pretense that it would expand the lot coverage that’s already been recognized by the city,” Grow said. “We’ve don’t agree with their new interpretation, or application of the 2016 settlement.”
Property owner: Lawsuit is ‘latest chapter’ in long-running dispute
Over the past three years, Grow said he and his attorney, Paul Beard II, have “exhausted all of (their) options” with the city, leaving a lawsuit as their only remaining recourse.
Grow said he is not suing the city to change the lot’s “frustrating” zoning, only to uphold the terms of the 2016 settlement.
Beard said this lawsuit is ”just the latest chapter in a long-running dispute” between the city and whoever owns the Shell Beach Road property.
“This lawsuit is about more than just this tank project, it’s now about ensuring that (Grow’s) property rights and his investment-backed expectations are fully protected against what we consider to be a very, very unfair interpretation of the entitlements of the project and of the 2016 settlement,” Beard told The Tribune.
The Tribune reached out to the city of Pismo Beach for comment but had not received a response as of Thursday evening.
This story was originally published September 22, 2023 at 8:00 AM.
