By Lynne Miller
Time to enjoy the fall air that is pushing the summer slowly to the stern. Celebrate! On Thursday, August 29th we walked into City Hall, sat together, (all 52 of us), and experienced the Hearing that resulted from our Appeal. There was no other appeal filed on this project.
I was surprised by the unanimous support of our appeal.
Applause to everyone! We all did our part, and won not just a victory for OB, but for the city’s historical districts.
Let me gloat, just a little bit. The architect who dismissed us with arrogance at the first OBPB meeting succumbed to the power of OBceans and disintegrated into a less than professional posture.
As it slowly became clear that the appeal would be approved, OB smiles grew. Clapping, cheering, hugging and happy tears replaced the tension of the Hearing. I looked towards the edge of the room where the architect had been, and it was empty. He was gone.
Lessons Learned: Don’t listen to naysayers who say not to bother, you/we could never win! Don’t be intimidated by the system or an over confident opponent.
Just a reminder. This was a Complete Community high density project, not to be confused with ADUs. All around our city ADUs, looking more like apartments than Granny flats, are covering what little pieces of land are left. So take a breather, enjoy the Holiday week-end, and know that we are just beginning to save our community.
I sipped a frozen margarita on this Labor Day Week-end and toasted Jimmy Buffett. It was a year ago on Sept 1st that he left this planet. Bubbles Up Jimmy!
Recent SD Reader article on this gives a one-sided city-dominate view of what happened. I thought the paper could have done a lot better in more of a balanced approach. Not one supporter of the appeal is interviewed or quoted. https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2024/sep/03/ocean-beach-historic-cottage-district-thwarts-apartment-project/
A short celebration – on 9-3 the San Diego UT announced Todd Gloria’s plan to redo Historic rules and regulations to meet current “requirements.” It is the next round, all too soon.
The city has been using the state as cover for a lot of wild permissive rules.
State law did not mandate Complete Communities with nearly unlimited variances and it sure didn’t mandate ADU apartment buildings in backyards.
A few years ago, the city tried to double the floor area ratio here through a quiet code update. They claimed it was a state requirement. They were wrong for the most part. We got it amended to narrowly follow the state requirement rather than the blanket increase the city was trying to do.
nostalgic – – could you supply a link to that article?
Forget additional housing in OB, I am frankly surprised anyone would want to live in this dumpy beach sh*thole, homeless, drugs, dirty, obviously, it’s a place of last resort for the leftest wingnuts like Frank and his merry band of misfits, personally, I’ll never visit again, or spend a dime there.
ok
I’m gonna start a new blog, “Leftist Wingnuts and Frank’s merry band of misfits”! Hey kevin — good riddance; OB doesn’t want you.