Cambria Christmas Market is closer to getting a temporary permit. What happens next?
Cambria Pines Lodge owner Dirk Winter is one step closer to having a one-year, gap-filling permit for the 2021 Cambria Christmas Market, but there’s at least one more step to go before it’s a done deal.
North Coast Advisory Council (NCAC) members unanimously followed the lead of the council’s Land Use Committee on Aug. 18 and advised San Luis Obispo County officials to grant the permit — with one condition.
The council and committee want county and fire officials to do frequent, random health-and-safety inspections during the market’s operating hours.
Some NCAC members said previously that they’d seen unsafe conditions during previous markets — including electrical extension cords on the ground, in the rain, carrying power to small heating units in some of the vendor booths.
The plan must next go before the county Planning Commission, but as of Aug. 20, the date for that hearing hadn’t been set yet.
The calendar is racing toward the holiday season, though, with lots of planning, preparation and vendor and staffing commitments to lock down before the Cambria Christmas Market can turn on its approximately 2 million twinkling holiday lights.
In addition to vendors and live music, the market will feature themed vignettes, Santa Claus and cozy fire pits, as well as food and drink.
An authentic German Christmas market will offer imported German goods, including nutcrackers, smokers and ornaments, along with handcrafted items from local artists and artisans.
The Cambria Christmas Market is currently scheduled to take place during evening hours from Nov. 26 through Dec. 23 at the Cambria Pines Lodge, 2905 Main St. in Cambria.
Market tickets, which cost $15 to $25, are being sold at cambriachristmasmarket.com.
Hotel owner seeks to extend Christmas Market permit
According to Erika Schuetze, spokeswoman for the county’s planning division, Winter originally applied Feb. 3 to extend his then-expired five-year permit to cover a 10-year period, “increase the number of vendor booths from 26 to 50, and extend the shuttle route to Moonstone Beach.”
Planners placed the application on hold, she said, “pending the receipt of additional information from the applicant.”
“Due to the time it will take to process the more extensive request,” Schuetze explained, Winter then revised the project description to maintain the “original scope and format of the market, as approved in 2015,” with the request that the expired permit be extended to cover the 2021 Christmas season.
Winter will apply for the longer permit later.
He could appeal the commission’s decision to the county Board of Supervisors, and, depending on their decision, could appealed that later to the California Coastal Commission.
Cambria Chamber of Commerce surveys members
The Cambria Christmas Market was the subject of an inquiry sent recently by the Cambria Chamber of Commerce to its members, and a subsequent discussion of the results at the Aug. 17 meeting of the chamber’s board of directors.
“The Cambria Chamber board is supportive of the Christmas Market and wants it to be successful,” longtime board president Mel McColloch wrote in an Aug. 2 email to members. “We do not want to prohibit growth of, or the success of, any business in Cambria.”
Cambria residents have complained for years about traffic noise, litter, neighborhood parking problems and other issues associated with the market. But they weren’t invited to participate in the chamber’s business-oriented survey.
A total 48 chamber members responded to the chamber’s survey about the Christmas Market. Of those, 51% said the holiday season event has had a positive effect on their business, 21% said it has been detrimental to their operations and the rest said it didn’t affect them.
Of those responding, 27.7% had retail businesses, 17% were restaurateurs, 14% were in real estate and the remainder represented banks, personal services, construction/trades or other categories.
McColloch said, based on the survey, the chamber’s stance is that “the Christmas Market is very successful as it now operates and any changes would increase the problems that currently exist.”
He said those problems include parking in Cambria’s East Village and traffic congestion and fumes on Burton Drive and around the neighborhood near the Cambria Pines Lodge.
More than 66% of respondents wrote that parking and traffic impacts were detrimental to their business, 26.7% wrote the market interfered or competed with their operations, and 6.7% wrote the market had killed Cambria’s traditional downtown holiday celebration, Hospitality Night.
Others wrote that the market made it more difficult for their customers to get tables at local restaurants.
Some respondents had positive things to say about the Christmas Market — noting that it brings visitors to the area for an extended period during a traditionally slow season, and attracts new groups of people every day.
“I do think it’s a fun thing to have, and I have enjoyed going there myself,” one respondent wrote.
McColloch reported that most who filled out the survey said they “do not want the market to get any larger or run longer. They want to keep all operations as they are and not expand the days the market is open, or change the hours of operation, or add as many vendors” as had been proposed in the earlier permit application for 2021 and beyond.
Event parking a primary focus
At the chamber board’s Aug. 17 meeting, the parking crunch caused by Cambria Christmas Market visitors was a primary focus of the discussion.
Committee chairman Oz Barron itemized some possible overflow parking locations.
They include Leffingwell Landing; the area by the Cambria Historical Society’s old schoolhouse on Main Street near Santa Rosa Creek Road; the Rodeo Grounds area, pullouts along Highway 1; the parking lots at the Veterans Memorial Building and Pinedorado grounds, and spaces behind the Cambria Chamber of Commerce office.
Other possibilities include the lots at Mechanics Bank and Bank of America, and the three-part parking lot behind the medical building at 2150 Main St. and parking areas alongside it, with some of those spaces dedicated to patrons of Robin’s restaurant, Barron said.
The chamber board also discussed the shuttle bus that carries people from Moonstone Beach Drive to the market — a bus that’s apparently funded by the Cambria Tourism Board, not the market.
So far, according to Chamber board member Miguel Sandoval, the San Simeon Tourism Alliance hasn’t authorized paying for a shuttle that would take visitors to and from that town to Cambria and the market.
