OB Rag

The Project Review Committee of the OB Planning Board meets this Wednesday night, April 17 at the OB Rec Center, at 6 pm sharp.

There is one project up for review, for 4705 Point Loma Avenue, where the owners have applied to demolish the existing structure and build 20 units in a 3-story multi-family residential building. The 20 units are either 1-bedrooms or studios. (See the full description below in the agenda.)

If it’s difficult to read the text of Action Item #2, here it is (in a simpler format but verbatim):

This Saturday, April 13th, 2024 at Noon in Ocean Beach !!

Come join a growing number of your friends and neighbors, standing out on a busy corner in Ocean Beach, demanding a CEASEFIRE in Gaza, and demanding that the U.S. stop providing Israel with weapons that have already killed 30,000+ Gazans.

This weekly demonstration, organized by the San Diego Veterans For Peace and the progressive women’s group, Code Pink, will mark the eleventh consecutive Saturday at the same location, corner of West Point Loma Blvd and Sunset Cliffs Blvd, with the group growing in numbers each week. 

From Source:

Presented by the Hodad’s Foundation & AWOL Productions. We’re dedicated to honoring the Old School ways and keeping it local! This Surf Contest is for all the local rippers and families in our beloved Ocean Beach Community.

Steven Mihailovich, writing in the Pt Loma-OB Monthly, gave an excellent account of a local planning board leader’s campaign to reform the city’s short-term rental ordinance — and how OB is currently being negatively affected by its defects.

In his April 10 post, Mihailovich — one of the Peninsula’s better writers these days — quoted Kevin Hastings, vice chairman of the Ocean Beach Planning Board, extensively as Hastings explained the situation at a March 27 public meeting

Here’s the video of the new Ocean Beach Pier design from the City of San Diego.

by Marisa Kendall/ Calmatters / April 11, 2024

Politicians pushing to make homeless encampments illegal across wide swaths of California point to one city as proof it will work.

“San Diego gets it,” Senate Republican Leader Brian Jones said during a recent press conference. “They are having great success so far with their ordinance, and we hope we can take that success across the state.” Jones’ proposal, Senate Bill 1011, is modeled after a controversial new San Diego ordinance that bans encampments near schools, shelters and transit hubs, in parks, and even, if shelter beds are available, on all public sidewalks.

But how well is San Diego’s “Unsafe Camping Ordinance” really working?

Styrofoam is not allowed in the City of San Diego. After a grace period, a ban is officially in effect.

Businesses bringing in less than $500,000 annually were given a year to comply with the ban, which initially passed in April 2023. “The ordinance only dictates that you cannot use polystyrene foam. However, we do have preferences for the alternatives that are used, so things like rigid plastic that can be recycled,” said Jennifer Ott, a recycling specialist

By Colleen O’Connor

“It’s the economy, stupid,” a phrase coined by Bill Clinton strategist, James Carville in 1992, defined that election and defeated President George W. Bush.

The 2024 election, however, will not be about the economy.  Inflation is hot again (nothing new); rents and housing are expensive.  The price of gas and food (kept out of the inflation stats) are already baked in.

Women know about these costs while trying to put “food on the table.”  Now their reproductive rights are at risk.  A bitter assault on personal, private decisions. The 2024 election will be about and for women. 

By Ken Stone / Times of San Diego / April 7, 2024

After a rally and brief march Thursday, a group of labor-union advocates at the University of San Diego entered the Hughes Administration Center and made their way to Room 222.

The office of James T. Harris III, USD’s president. They buzzed for entrance. No answer. “The door was locked,” Meghan Donnelly told fellow nontenure-track faculty and supporters after emerging from the campus HQ facing the stately Immaculata Church. She reported that an election plan had been slid under the door, so Harris would see it when he returns.

From Informed Infrastructure / April 8, 2024

Yesterday, Civitas, an award winning global landscape architecture and urban design firm, as a subconsultant to Moffatt and Nichol, a premier waterfront engineering practice, presented the latest design concepts for the replacement of the Ocean Beach Pier based on extensive community outreach and engagement over the past year. The presentation event provided community members with an exclusive look at the latest concept that the City of San Diego has selected based on the public’s preferences.

A bunch of condo complex owners at the foot of Bermuda Avenue in Ocean Beach want the city to help them pay for dealing with Sunset Cliff erosion problems on their property.

These Ocean Beach residents say they’re worried coastal erosion could seriously impact their condo complex, Oceanus. Russ Rasmussen, a resident of Oceanus told SanDiego7 News that he moved into his unit 13 years ago. “When I moved in, the bluff was eroding right in front of our complex.”

By Ken Stone | Times of San Diego – SDMetro / April 9, 2024

Using new concrete techniques may be key to a new Ocean Beach Pier that can last 50-75 years, design experts said Saturday at a presentation on replacing the iconic structure.

Following more than a year of community engagement, the City of San Diego at a Liberty Station presentation revealed the preferred design concept that captures the features San Diegans expressed they would like to see in a new pier.