OB Planners to Review City’s Code Changes on Ocean Beach’s Historic District — Tuesday, Nov.4

The OB Planning Board meets tonight, Tuesday, November 4, and their Action Item #1 is to review San Diego City Staff’s efforts to change the code around the OB Historic District. They will evaluate the language proposed by staff and make their recommendation(s). This issue has been percolating around OB of late because of the city’s machinations to undercut the district’s impact.

Here is what the Rag reported on Monday:

Formerly entitled the Ocean Beach Cottage Emerging Historical District — which has been around since 1999 — it was on the chopping block as a city staff recommendation because a little over a year ago, the San Diego Planning Commission voted to spare OB from a horrendous development project of 24 ADUs on Point Loma Avenue precisely because of the existence of OB’s historic district. And at the end of the hearing on August 29, 2024, one of the commissioners turned to staff and urged them to change the city’s Municipal Code to get rid of the district as a basis for exempting OB from some of the worse housing policies of Todd Gloria’s administration, called “Complete Communities.”

And a year later, the staff did just that: they came up a “fix” that if approved by the various governmental bodies, would exempt OB’s historic district from being considered as a basis of not allowing Complete Communities being applied to future development projects. It’s a policy that allows developers wide latitude in circumventing time-honored building restrictions if they met some minimum standards.

The so-called Ocean Beach “fix” is part of a package of “reforms” city staff has come up with in order to eventually allow a bunch of politicians — we call them the City Council — to have absolute control over what projects are termed or designated “historic” in San Diego, taking the decision-making out of the hands of experts, historians, and architects. This package of reforms is in “Package A”. …

OB currently has an historic district. If the city removes it or greatly waters its purpose down to nothing, it will cause the loss of the existential character of Ocean Beach. OBceans must show up at these governmental agency hearings — and the first is this Thursday, Nov. 6th at 9:00 a.m. at 7650 Mission Valley Rd. in Mission Valley (NOT downtown). It will be at the Development Services Department Edric Doringo Hearing Room – “The Edric”, San Diego, California 92108

Here is the  OB Planning Board’s official agenda: