Multi-story development breaks ground on SLO County beach city’s new ‘West End’
The latest mixed-use condominium development from Coastal Community Builders officially broke ground in Grover Beach on Wednesday morning.
At an event attended by City Council members Robert Robert and Jules Tuggle and San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg, Coastal Community Builders celebrated the start of construction of Trinity, a 23-unit mixed-use condo development at 197 W Grand Ave.
Trinity is the fourth Coastal Community Builders project in Grover Beach, and the third to break ground within the past two years.
With the full development around a year from completion, Coastal Community Builders CEO Cam Boyd said he’s excited to see development advance along the city’s downtown core.
“This is the next chapter in helping the city realize their vision for West Grand Avenue,” Boyd said.
What will the new development look like?
Standing three stories high when fully constructed, as of Wednesday, Trinity was still just a graded 1.03-acre dirt lot where BJ’s ATV Rentals used to be.
In recent months, demolition and grading teams removed the 10 structures — mostly sheds, car ports and vehicle storage that belonged to the previous business — and started the development process.
In doing so, they also removed and replaced 2,100 cubic yards of soil contaminated with residual oil from the ATV rental business and naturally occurring tar balls, causing a noticeable odor.
When completed, the development’s 23 condos will look out over the ocean, peering over the train tracks, Hwy. 1 and the parking area that admits guests to the Oceano Dunes Natural Preserve State Park.
The ground floor of the 24,150-square-foot building on the West Grand Avenue side of the will host 2,500 square feet of commercial retail and outdoor patio space, which will sit beneath seven residential units on the upper levels.
A pair of 19,332 square-foot residential buildings consisting of eight townhomes each will extend along the railroad tracks.
The building on West Grand Avenue will stand 55 feet high, while the two purely residential buildings will reach 42 feet.
The project will include 50 on-site parking spaces between 32 tandem garage spaces, five single-car spaces for mixed-use residents and 13 parking lot spots, according to the project’s October staff report.
Boyd said this project will be the first of what Coastal Community Builders are calling the “West End” of West Grand Avenue, an area with an increased focus on pedestrian-oriented commercial spaces and dense developments.
“It’s a keynote for the entry to the city,” Boyd said. “It’s the first thing anyone’s going to see as they come off of Highway 1 down from Pismo Beach.”
Ortiz-Legg praised the city’s collaborative efforts with developers, calling Grover Beach “the little engine that could.”
City manager Matt Bronson echoed those sentiments, adding that Trinity and other Coastal Community Builders projects will fulfill the city’s goals laid out in the West Grand Avenue Master Plan in 2011.
“Cities don’t build housing,” Bronson said. “We create these conditions for housing developments to happen, and it takes investors, developers, property owners like Coastal Community Builders to see that vision, to come in and say, ‘Yes, we want to be part of it, we want to be part of this master plan, part of this community.’”
