Should supervisors let owners demolish distinctive home on coastal SLO County bluff?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Supervisors will weigh objections to replacing oceanfront home with larger build
- North Coast Advisory Council cites visual impact and bluff preservation policies
- Original home, designed by Warren Leopold, offers public ocean views via trees
County supervisors will consider Tuesday community objections to replacing a distinctive, 1,170-square-foot, oceanfront home in Cambria with a structure that’s more than twice as large and would further block views of the sea.
The house, located at 2675 Sherwood Drive and designed in 1965 by Central Coast legend Warren Leopold to maximize those coastal views, is flanked by four large, mature Monterey Cypress trees, through which there’s a clear view of the sea for people walking by on the street.
The existing one-bedroom, one-bath, bluff-top house — a vacation rental with beach access — is less than 200 feet from the entrance to the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve.
The one-tenth-acre property is in a prime residential area where many smaller homes already have been torn down and replaced by much larger ones.
Owners Peter and Beata Przybyslawski want to replace the house with a 2,419-square-foot, three-bedroom, three-bath home.
It would remain a vacation rental, according to the North Coast Advisory Council, which has appealed the plan to the Board of Supervisors after it was approved by the Planning Commission in November.
Mid-century modern home was designed by Warren Leopold
The house is described at slocal.com as “a most unique” structure with minimalist mid-century modern character that’s been updated.
It has a large, upper-level “cupola” surrounded by windows, which provides lighting to areas below it, including the home’s the bathroom.
Representatives of the North Coast Advisory Council plan to support their appeal’s arguments in person at Tuesday’s meeting, according to Jeff Kwasny, who chairs the council’s land-use committee.
He told The Tribune their focus is on minimizing environmental impacts, protecting those scenic views for the public and helping to preserve the community’s character.
He said the county’s interpretation of protections for the North Coast shoreline area, as outlined in the item’s agenda listing, “just considered the sand and rock and not the bluff. We have policy that we’ll present that says otherwise, and includes the bluff and visual resources.”
The appeal will be heard during the board’s afternoon session.
It’s not the first Leopold house to generate controversy over proposed changes.
For instance, in 1999, property owners Peter Horton and James Reynolds battled over changes the latter made to a connecting oceanfront deck and an addition of a 6-foot fence between their two homes, both of which were designed and built by Leopold, who had died the year before.
This story was originally published June 2, 2025 at 2:33 PM.
