‘A town whose time has come’: How Grover Beach’s building goals will change face of the city
The past decade has seen the city of Grover Beach make redevelopment of its downtown core the focus of its policies — but not everyone is on board with progress.
Jacob Town, owner of The Spoon Trade on West Grand Avenue, said he’s had a front-row seat to watch the replacement of old city streets and the growing height of new developments that have kicked into high gear in the past few years.
Now, redevelopment is at his doorstep, and it’ll force some difficult decisions in the next year, he said.
Beach Front Plaza, the commercial space home to The Spoon Trade, Bee House Thai Cuisine and several other businesses, was purchased by developer Coastal Community Builders around three months ago and will serve as the next site of redevelopment on West Grand Avenue, Town said.
Town said he’s had good conversations with the new owners of so far, but the future of his restaurant is uncertain.
He said while he’s unlikely to accept the new ownership’s offer of new spaces in its upcoming mixed-use Palladium or Encore developments, it’s unclear whether The Spoon Trade will move into a shared space with its bakery across the street or seek a new location in Grover Beach.
“Everything’s all still up in the air, but yes, our restaurant will be torn down in the next year,” Town said.
How changing housing goals opened up development opportunities
Coastal Community Builders CEO Cam Boyd said the construction of Beach Place — the mixed-use development on West Grand Avenue home to local favorites including Red Bee Coffee and Grover Beach Sourdough — opened the door to taller construction along the city’s central corridor when it was built a little over 20 years ago.
Since then, the city has done a good job of making adjustments to the development code to make it more friendly to redevelopment, particularly through changes in 2022 that increased building height, relaxed approval requirements and emphasized developing dense housing, Boyd said.
“When we saw those changes taking place in the development code, and we saw how underdeveloped the city was, and we recognized how much potential it had, given its proximity to the ocean and the ability to capture ocean views from upper levels of the development,” Boyd said. “It became very clear to us that Grover Beach was a prime target to increase their housing numbers and create a pedestrian-oriented commercial corridor where one didn’t truly exist yet, and we made a strategic decision to acquire a number of properties on the far west end of West Grand Avenue at a time when development had been stagnating for quite a while.”
Through the Coastal Community Builders projects already in motion at 197, 401 and 402 West Grand Ave., the city is already on track to add a total of 119 units of housing, with the Encore and Palladium projects both coming to market as “affordable by design.”
Practically speaking, Encore and Palladium condos are hitting the market in the low to mid-$400,000 range — around half of the city’s median sale price of $865,000 recorded by the California Association of Realtors in January, Boyd said.
Down the road, People’s Self-Help Housing’s Cleaver & Clark Commons is also set to introduce 53 units of deed-restricted affordable housing — meaning rent is tied to income level compared to the city’s area median income — by employing similar density and height tactics.
While these condos and affordable units are the most visible examples of development and growing building heights in Grover Beach, plenty more projects are in the pipeline.
According to the city’s new Major Development webpage that was rolled out March 10, not counting the 119 units from Coastal Community Builders and 53 units at Cleaver & Clark Commons, 127 more units across seven projects are in the development pipeline between the building and plan review stages.
The largest of those projects still under plan review — and farthest out from gaining approval — is a four-story mixed-use project with 54 apartments at 675 W Grand Ave.
It’s not alone in its design goals. None of the seven projects logged in the city’s Major Development page are under three stories high, with one 20-condo mixed-use project in the plan review stage at 261 Rockaway Ave. designed to stand five stories high.
Only a handful of these projects are expected to introduce low-cost or affordable housing, and many of the townhomes and condos coming down the line will likely be market-rate.
City manager Matt Bronson said none of this should come as a surprise.
The West Grand Avenue Master Plan approved in 2011 that’s seen the city rebuild its western streets calls for the introduction of multi-story buildings as a next stage of development in the area.
Coastal Community Builders has more West Grand Avenue projects in the pipeline
Boyd said his company has development aspirations beyond its current projects.
Coastal Community Builders has a trio of lots in mind for development: a grassy stretch of land running between Front Street and the train tracks immediately north of the 197 W Grand Ave. project, a small lot immediately east of the 197 W Grand Ave. project at 171 N. 2nd St., and most prominently, the Beach Front Plaza strip mall, Boyd said.
All three of these proposed development locations are being designed with multi-story uses in mind, with the 171 N. 2nd St. projected to stand 40 feet tall — providing ocean views, Boyd said — and the Front Street and Beach Front Plaza developments both expected to push closer to the 55-foot height limit, according to planning documents provided by the city.
Boyd said Coastal Community Builders acquired Beach Front Plaza around three months ago and has worked with the existing tenants to find them new homes.
“We’ve had discussions with all of the existing tenants there, and we’ve made clear to them that they have first right of refusal of any of our commercial spaces, whether they’re in Palladium, Encore, Trinity, or our new location at Beach Front,” Boyd said. “A couple of them have indicated a strong interest in relocating into our commercial spaces in Palladium and Encore, while some of them have indicated that they would prefer to move elsewhere along West Grand Avenue or relocate.”
Town said he has around six months to make a decision on what to do with The Spoon Trade.
He said the process of redevelopment isn’t all bad news for local businesses, as ultimately it will bring more residents and their wallets to the downtown area, but progress will exact a heavier toll on some businesses than others.
I think that Grover Beach is a very special little tight-knit community,” Town said. “If Coastal Community Builders are coming into an existing community, it’s going to be interesting to find out: Are they building their own or are they joining ours?”
Other tenants of Beach Front Plaza have already made a decision on their future.
Julia Powers, owner of Let’s Knit located a few doors down from The Spoon Trade, said she’s closing her doors permanently next week because of the change of ownership.
With Beach Front Plaza’s closure likely set for March 2026, Powers said she had no interest in continuing to pay rent at her current location, as moving would be too expensive.
“It’s sad for me to see this being torn down, but I understand progress and what they’re doing,” Powers said. “I’m at the point where I could retire and be fine with it, but I was thinking I could sell the business, and now I can’t.”
How development, progress will influence water, sewer rates
While all three upcoming projects have yet to appear before the Grover Beach Planning Commission, Boyd said he expects to submit them to the city for review in 2025, starting with the Front Street project near the end of March.
Most projects will start appearing before the Grover Beach Planning Commission around six months from now, he said.
Mayor Kassi Dee said with limited space available for intensive development in Grover Beach, hitting the Regional Housing Needs Assessment goals laid out by the state Department of Housing and Community Development can prove challenging.
In the current 2020-28 RHNA cycle, Grover Beach is required to approve 369 new units of housing in total or risk losing local control of zoning and development to the state. Of those 369 units, Grover Beach must approve 155 above-moderate income homes, 66 moderate-income homes, 57 low-income homes and 91 very low-income homes.
“We have to hit RHNA numbers, and this is the way we do it,” Dee told The Tribune. “We are landlocked. We have to move upward.”
Bronson said while all developments in progress on Grand Avenue are already budgeted into the city’s water supply, the introduction of more units will demand more water.
As is, the city is in the middle of another attempt at raising its sewer rates — a particularly controversial topic in Grover Beach — to fund needed sewer system updates.
That’s not all due to new development.
Existing sewer mains are already running at more than 80% capacity, far from the optimal range of 50-70%, so the changes are needed to continue serving existing homes, according to the Feb. 24 City Council staff report.
A new sewer rate study and payment structure will be presented at the March 24 meeting, while the city will revisit raising water rates later this year to further cut into the sewer improvements, Bronson said.
“In the last couple of years, we’ve received substantial rainfall that’s helped our current situation and given us a little bit more breathing room before we still need to plan for future water supplies for across our community, not just for new development, but across our community,” Bronson said. “The vast majority of our water needs are for our existing residents and businesses today, but that’s an issue we’re going to be looking at long term.”
Boyd said with the city taking a more pro-development stance, he’s confident new housing will be able to come online in Grover Beach faster than ever before.
“We believe that the city’s investment and our investment really works synergistically to create a new sense of destination, and in addition to providing a number of new housing units that help the city reach their housing goals, the commercial development and the street improvements are going to combine to really create a space where people want to come and walk around and engage in commerce in a way that Grover Beach has been starved for for decades,” Boyd said. “Given its proximity to the beach and its natural attributes, it’s a town whose time has come.”
This story was originally published March 24, 2025 at 9:00 AM.
