Developer wants to build 8 homes near Highway 1 in SLO County. And neighbors aren’t happy

A proposal to build eight homes just off Highway 1 in Cayucos is on its way to the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission, but with some caveats from the North Coast community’s advisers.

After a long, intense meeting late Wednesday night, the Cayucos Advisory Council voted unanimously to “recommend denial of this project until the developer completes a comprehensive stormwater management plan for the entire project.”

The council recommended another denial based on proposed home designs.

The all-volunteer Cayucos Advisory Council can’t make any binding decisions on its own. Instead it can advise SLO County planners, the Planning Commission and the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors. The council made its recommendations based on input from community members.

The property is comprised of two lots that make up a wedge-shaped parcel tucked between Highway 1, Ocean Avenue and the Bella Vista by the Sea mobile home park, with only Lucerne Road and a few homes between it and the Pacific Ocean.

That area offers one of the first views of Cayucos that southbound motorists see as they enter the oceanfront town from the north.

What council members considered Wednesday night was only a basic development plan, not a full proposal including details on each house including hardscape and stormwater plans.

No individual plans for homes and their lots have been designed yet, according to Ian McCarville from Kirk Consulting land planners in Atascadero, county planner Jeremy Freund and J.R. Beard from the San Luis Obispo County Public Works Department.

Each of the eight properties would be developed as individual projects, they said, with permit applications submitted separately later by whoever builds the homes.

That could be the current property owner or, if he decides to sell any of the lots, anybody who buys one of them from him.

The only storm water management plan included was for the development plan itself.

The development’s potential stormwater mitigation could include storage ponds above or below the ground from which the runoff could be released gradually, according to presentations by McCarville, Freund and Beard.

Cayucos residents: Stormwater runoff damaged homes

Wednesday’s Cayucos Advisory Council meeting included testimony from community members who said previous problems with stormwater runoff had flooded their homes in Cayucos and cost them many thousands of dollars in repairs.

The speakers emphasized that not having a full stormwater and runoff plan for the entire project was a recipe for future disaster.

They said previous county projects to mitigate the town’s persistent runoff problems hadn’t improved the situation, as seen during the heavy winter storms earlier this year.

The speakers also said county officials had provided little assistance in the homeowners’ cleanups and costly repairs.

Among those demanding a full stormwater plan for the proposed housing development were Sue Black and Dan Borradori, whose Lucerne Avenue seaside residences are downhill from the property.

If storage ponds fill out when it’s raining, she asked, “Where’s that water’s going to go after it’s collected?”

“Into my house again,” Black answered angrily.

“In 2003, a million gallons of water went through my home in an hour,” she said.

While her home was inundated with mud, water and sludge, county “risk management people told me it would take three weeks just to get the paperwork to me,” Black recalled, and much more time to create a plan to clean it and fix the problem.

Those repairs took three years to complete, she said.

Borradori, a Cayucos native whose family name graces the town’s Borradori Garage, said he’d had to make several expensive repairs to the home that’s been part of his family for more than 80 years.

The home had been flooded by downhill runoff several times in the past, he said.

“We’ve seen how much silt slides (during storms), and how much water pours out of the hillside,” he said.

Borradori said he’s made improvements including adding a sump pump to deal with an annual spring under the house, installing a 6-foot-deep French drain around the house, and adding a “massive concrete slab” to prevent slippage and hold the foundation in place.

He calculated that, when four of the houses are built uphill from his home, “There’d be about 4.5 million pounds added to that hillside, all sitting on something watery underneath, slippery.”

That’s “not good,” Borradori said. “If this thing fails, who’ll pay for damages to my house … The county, this council?”

Community clashes over home design recommendations

Speakers were also unhappy that the permit application specifically excluded some styles that most current Cayucos residents feel are the predominant designs found in the homes in their town.

Those include Victorian, Western, Cape Cod or nautical.

In response, the council recommended the housing project be denied unless the developer volunteers to change the regulations of the new neighborhood to reflect the architectural design standards of downtown Cayucos, including those styles listed above.

Those neighborhood regulations — known as covenants, conditions and restrictions — are rules governing the use of a certain piece of real estate in a given community. They’re usually enforced by the area’s homeowners’ association.

Council wants Cayucos in proposed marine sanctuary

At about 10 p.m. Wednesday, the council unanimously approved sending a letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration urging a redesign of the proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary.

NOAA proposes that the sanctuary’s northern boundary would be south of Morro Bay at Hazard Canyon Reef. The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary to the north ends in waters off northern Cambria.

That would leave ocean areas from Morro Bay to Cambria vulnerable to development, including oil drilling, according to council Chairman John Carsel.

The original dimensions of the proposed sanctuary included those areas.