Three-story medical office building approved in Arroyo Grande

A three-story medical office building will soon be built near Arroyo Grande Community Hospital.

The Arroyo Grande City Council unanimously approved plans for a 45,517-square-foot, three-story medical office building at Fair Oaks Avenue and Woodland Drive, after the same council asked for numerous revisions to the project last year.

The building is phase two of a mixed-use project approved by the city in 2008. The first phase consisted of the 30-home Walnut Grove neighborhood off Fair Oaks Avenue.

Approximately half of the medical building is expected to be leased by the neighboring hospital.

The Planning Commission recommended approval of the medical building last year, but the City Council decided in November not to approve the project as proposed and asked developer Triple P LLC to return this month with changes that would address the council’s concerns about traffic, parking and the building’s height.

On Tuesday night, most of those concerns were addressed — the new proposal called for a different driveway configuration to feed into the building’s front entrance and striping along Fair Oaks Avenue to allow for a dedicated right-hand turn way onto Halcyon Road. Parking was increased to 190 spaces. The council also reaffirmed its position that the building’s height is allowed under city code.

“I appreciate that the applicant was so willing to accommodate the requests not only of the homeowners, and also to really narrow in the scope related to the specific concerns we had,” Councilwoman Barbara Harmon said. “I commend the stick-to-it-iveness of the applicant, the staff and also my fellow colleagues on the council for really continuing to make this the best project that it can be.”

Much of Tuesday’s discussion, however, focused on an unlikely sticking point: Whether using more short light poles was better than using fewer tall light poles.

Representatives of Triple P LLC said at the meeting they would prefer to use 20-foot light poles throughout the property. Councilman Tim Brown asked to replace those with 12-foot light poles, to lessen visual impact on the nearby neighborhoods.

“I can tell you now I will not vote for anything taller than 12 feet,” Brown said. “I cannot support light standards of 20 feet because it flies in the face of everything people have been trying to do, including the applicant.”

Councilwoman Kristen Barneich originally supported keeping the 20-foot light poles, also saying it would lessen the light impact on nearby neighborhoods.

Eventually, she and her fellow council members voted in favor of requiring the 12-foot light poles.

“My goal is to have less light on the adjacent residential properties, so whether it is tall or we have more lights lower — I just don’t want the lights spilling out,” she said. “So however we do that.”

This story was originally published January 26, 2016 at 9:47 PM with the headline "Three-story medical office building approved in Arroyo Grande."