End of the Year Thoughts from Coastal Caretakers

FROM COASTAL CARETAKERS

Ring out the old year, ring in the new!  Coastal Caretakers appreciate what all of you have done in the past to keep major developers out of Ocean Beach.

However, the City of San Diego has a new attack underway: to remove the protection we now have by declaring that the Ocean Beach Historic District is not a District.  One response is to cave in, give up.  They, the powers at the State and City, have all the balls in their court, and they can bounce them around any way they want.  They can rewrite the law, law they wrote in the first place and got it wrong.

The one or two minutes per person we get during public comment is for a decision that our elected officials have already made.  But we are OB!  Ocean Beach IS a Complete Community!  We will be there once again to let the city and developers know one thing: We will not go away.  No to 23-story buildings on Point Loma Ave without adequate parking spaces!  No to Lower Voltaire Skyscrapers!  And NO to an all-new Newport Avenue.  OBceans will be there to protect our Historic District.
We want to take this time to remind you where we have been and where it is going, and  WHY we need to get the attention of City Hall. Here is a summary:

August 29, 2024, Coastal Caretakers and friends won our appeal to the Planning Commission, and the 20-unit building designed by Galba Architects never happened. Bad press tried to imply we were NIMBYs and wanted that corner to remain in its current state of disrepair, earning us the title bestowed on all objectors.

What we do want is honesty and plans that ‘fit’ the neighborhood. That corner design began with an 8-unit structure with parking. No one challenged that structure. When asked at the Ocean Beach Planning Board meeting if he would consider the 8-unit building, the developer told the audience “it would not pencil out.” We want honesty to tell the true story.  There is NOT rapid transit in Ocean Beach, nor will there be— there are no plans, there is not a Budget.  The Complete Communities Solution should not be legal in OB, period!

The Planning Commission upheld the Appeal by Coastal Caretakers in 2024, but the City came back within less than a year.  In regard to the City’s latest Plan A, the protection granted to Ocean Beach will be taken away by dismantling the 27-year-old Ocean Beach Historic District.   It is simple: they did it so fast that they forgot to take the period before the comma out before adding the words below. These are the words that will allow the development prohibited in OB to occur.  If you were the developer of 23 stories in PB, think about Point Loma Ave. What makes us so popular?  We never even think of it.

The slope of the hill gives all of Point Loma Ave one thing the flat area of PB Lacks:  An Ocean View!  Here is how they changed the words to change protected to unprotected.  Below is the prior Municipal Code, with the proposed words in Bold:  The words are so goofy, but here they are:

§143.1002 “Application of Complete Communities Housing Solutions Regulations.” Subparagraph (b) states “The regulations in this Division shall not apply to the following types of development:

(6) Development located within a designated historical district or subject to the Old Town San Diego Planned District., with the following exceptions: 

(A) Development on properties that are not designated as contributing resources to the Ocean Beach Cottage Emerging Historical District;

Geoff Page first told us about this October 25, 2025. Not that long ago. This change went through the Historical Review Board, not something that we (then) followed routinely.

FAST FORWARD: Things happened fast.  On October 6, 2025, this modification went to the Planning Commission. Their minds were aligned against OB. They had forgotten their previous decision. This was the same commission that unanimously supported the appeal a year before. On October 6th there was little discussion.  Hey, the chair of the committee told us what they were going to day on the day we won the appeal, when said the solution is to “change the Municipal code,” and the City Planning Department did.  We should not have been surprised.

But things got tricky.  We first heard about it on October 31. November 2, the City took ALL of the Historical Resources website down, and when it came back up, everything that helped us was gone.  Ocean Beach just disappeared.  Fortunately, we had a lot of those delete pages from the appeal we submitted in 2024.

More slight of hand followed the Planning Commission meeting.  The modification was supposed to go to the City’s Land Use and Housing Committee on December 11.  But it didn’t.   Mysterious things occurred.  The Chair, Councilmember Kent Lee, declared the meeting adjourned for December 11 with no further comment.  We were relieved, but things were happening too fast, and it wasn’t good news.

What can we do as a community to get “their” attention? For a minute, we thought we would flood the Committee and Council with Holiday cards, and a short statement inside of our protest/appeal.  Not a bad idea, but we got little response, maybe because we are feeling deflated, or maybe because we could not get information out as fast as the city was changing what was going on, which was ….

Council member Raul Campillo was removed from the Land Use & Housing Committee. Why? With 4 members, they had 3 sure votes.  And yes, there is an answer.  A unanimous vote from the Committee can simply be approved on the Consent Calendar of the City Council.  They don’t even have to pretend to hear what we say.

It looks like this LU&H committee meeting will be held on January 14, but there is NO official date until there is an official notice.

So please, get your comments ready. Mark your calendars.  Don’t give up, that is what ‘they’ want.  Why is it important to try?  Well, we would always wonder if we could have won again.

So what do we have that the city doesn’t?  Well, let’s take love.  We love Ocean Beach.  And we do things the OB way.  We provided paper copies of our protest.  What started because we couldn’t get the city portal to work seems to be unnerving to them.  Creativity is part of our Ocean Beach culture.  That is why we need you.  We want OB to be our unique seaside village. We are not unaware.  We know that change is coming. However, we want the change to be a well-planned collaboration with the residents.   Point Loma Ave, Newport, and Voltaire don’t need 23-story buildings.

What can we do next?
1. We need to get NOs on the website form when it is time for LU&H agenda (more later).
2. Same for the city council agenda (later).

Enjoy the rest of the holiday, enjoy the beauty of the clear sky after the storm, the amazing sunset that we can still see! We have to be willing to fight against skyscrapers that will scrape away our views of the sky and sunset.  Our Motto (taken from a Planning Board member with creativity):  We are OB!  Ocean Beach IS a complete community!

Please stick with us as 2026 unfolds. If the city wins, we all lose.