A staircase in Pismo Beach has been closed due to storm damage. Should it be demolished?
Beachgoers and lovers of the California coast may have one fewer access points to the sand in Pismo Beach within the next few years if the city can’t find an affordable way to repair or replace a damaged staircase.
Since Oct. 26, 2021, the Pier Avenue beach access stairs near Margo Dodd Park have been closed to the public after a storm battered the structure, washing away the bottom level of steps that descend to around 800 feet of sandy beach and rocky coastal outcroppings.
At its Tuesday meeting, the Pismo Beach Planning Commission raised the possibility of permanently demolishing the stairs after several attempts to secure grant funding for repairs fell through in recent years.
With the connection to the beach broken below the third landing, city staff offered four options for the stairs’ future, as directed by the City Council at a November 2022 meeting.
Options ranged from spending around $430,000 on temporary repairs to reopen the stairway as is, all the way up to a $5.2 million project to build an entirely new access at Palisade Avenue one block to the south, where the descent to the beach sits on steadier footing.
Ultimately, the Planning Commission voted 5-0 to approve a coastal development permit — a recent requirement from the California Coastal Commission to keep the stairs closed in their current state — that will give the city the option to demolish and remove the stairs entirely.
“The issue is repairing it in its current place in its current configuration doesn’t make any sense, because we’re only going to continue to have storms that will just wipe out the improvements if we put them back,” community development director Scot Graham said during the meeting. “That was the least expensive option, to put it back in its existing configuration, but that’s not money well spent — it really needs to be reconfigured or relocated, and that’s when the cost started moving up into the millions of dollars, which the city didn’t have.”
What options does the city have?
This year was already set to be decision time for the stairs’ future even before they were damaged, Graham said.
In 2005, the state Coastal Conservancy funded a review of the stairs, along with a 20-year grant to maintain the stairs through September 2025, meaning that after the end of the year, all future maintenance would shift to the city, Graham said.
Demolishing the stairs wholesale — which is what the coastal development permit allows for — is by far the cheapest option, as the city has already budgeted $360,000 for their removal in its Capital Improvement Plan, Graham said.
Complicating the path to fixing the stairs, the rocky bluffs below Margo Dodd Park feature several caves and structural issues with its seawall, meaning repairs to the stairs would need to go hand-in-hand with fixing any existing issues, Graham said.
One option could be to rebuild and reinforce the seawall with a new stair access included in the structure, which would improve the longevity of the replacement stairs, though this option would be the second-most expensive at an estimated $4.8 million, Graham said.
It would also mean getting the Coastal Commission’s approval — no sure bet, even if the commission tends to favor coastal armoring to protect public land and infrastructure, Graham said.
Replacing the stairs fully using the same design would cost around $2.3 million, he said.
Graham added that one condition of the coastal development permit’s approval was that the city would continue seeking grant funding to explore future options to replace the stairs, meaning there’s still a chance the city can take another shot at beach access in that spot in the next few years.
What happens next?
With the Planning Commission’s approval, the city now has the option to remove the stairs at will barring an appeal from the Coastal Commission, though any demolition work would likely happen in 2026 or 2027, Graham said.
Planning Commissioner Dan Oberhelman pointed out that people still use the Pier Avenue beach stairs even with closure notices posted and the entrance boarded up, and asked that city staff look into closing the stairs more completely in the meantime.
“I’m looking at a photo of the barricade that’s been put up — is there any way we can do something a little more attractive?” Oberhelman said. “I don’t know how you close off a stairwell and make it look pretty, but it kind of screams, ‘We’re poor and don’t have the money to fix it.’”
Planning Commissioner Reed Van Rozeboom said that while he was sad to see the access closed potentially for an extended period of time, the stairs are no longer fit for regular use.
“It’s obviously a hazard right now,” Van Rozeboom said. “The last thing I want to do is remove any coastal access, but in this particular scenario, it’s not safe access, so I think it is important that we remove this.”
