For nearly 40 years, the California Department of Parks and Recreation has been operating the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area, as permitted by the California Coastal Commission in 1982. As permitted, street-legal vehicles have been allowed to drive up and down a 2-mile stretch of beach extending from Grand Avenue in Grover Beach, across Oceano’s beachfront and the Arroyo Grande Creek, to a staging area a mile south of Pier Avenue in Oceano, where ATVs can then be driven in designated areas in the dunes.
Next to public health and safety, the chief concern for beach communities like Oceano, Grover Beach, and Pismo Beach is the impact off-highway vehicle (OHV) activity has on business volume and the local economy. Community beachfronts are their most valuable economic asset for generating revenue growth and creating jobs. This is especially the case for a distressed community like Oceano where OHV activity extends across the full length of its beachfront, effectively obstructing pedestrian use, visitor-serving business activity, and prospects for economic growth.
Pismo Beach’s beachfront is entirely vehicle-free, although it wasn’t always this way. Its economy once languished while the city allowed cars on its beach a few decades ago. This changed when the city banned vehicles on its beach in the 1980s, leading to the booming local economy Pismo has enjoyed ever since.
As a low-income community with a predominantly Hispanic population and a high jobless rate, Oceano was designated a disadvantaged community and opportunity zone by Gov. Jerry Brown in April 2018. This designation sparked community interest in exploring what might be possible as an economic growth path with graduate students in Cal Poly’s City and Regional Planning Department (CRP).
In two successive “planning studios” during the 2018-19 academic year, the Cal Poly graduate students helped residents map out alternative futures for Oceano.
In the first of these, CRP students met with residents in Oceano for a series of four workshops, leading them progressively through a process that culminated in the preparation of a community plan update in March 2019.
The second workshop picked up where the first left off, with a series of projects that included specific plans for the conceptual modeling of Pier Avenue as a visitor-serving business district, and of an Oceano Town Center in an adjoining area with a mix of commercial, residential, educational, and cultural/historical land uses.
The 65-acre Town Center plan was recently mapped with 30 acres of open space and trails, 12 types of residential housing, more than 350,000 square feet of commercial space, 200,000 square feet of hospitality and community facilities, 350,000 square feet of education and historic facilities, and 150,000 square feet of parking space.
When this is done, it will then be possible to design and implement a community-wide study with Oceano residents, basically asking them about the kind and mix of redevelopment they’d like to see in Oceano, while showing them what might be possible in terms of job creation, housing, and improved living conditions.
The sole purpose of the town center design modeling and economic modeling being done is to show possibilities for redevelopment, not to promote any particular model or even the idea for this kind of redevelopment.
The basic question being addressed is whether and to what extent the asset value of Oceano’s beachfront and the resultant socioeconomic returns on this asset (to Oceano residents, businesses, and the county) are greater with or without recreational vehicle activity on Oceano’s beachfront.
We already know that communities with vehicle-free beachfronts in SLO County are thriving, while Oceano is not, and will not, if cars and trucks continue to drive on its beachfront.
We also know that State Parks’ 2017 claim of a $243 million impact is spurious, a claim that Cal Poly professor Pratish Patel refuted in a widely circulated 2018 critique, and further debunked in his just-published report, “Economic impact from suspension of the vehicular use at the Oceano Dunes SVRA.”
So, we have three evidentiary sources telling us two things: that OHV activity in the Pismo State Beach and Oceano Dunes has had no significant economic impact and that OHV activity on beachfronts can obstruct or inhibit a community’s economic growth.
What remains to find out is:
• How much of an economic opportunity there might be for Oceano and the county by redeveloping Oceano as a destination beach community versus the non-beach community it has become since 1982 when its beachfront was repurposed for recreational driving.
• What area residents prefer versus what governing authorities, special interests, and outsiders prefer.
The economic choice seems clear enough to warrant consideration for further investigation by and for the county. Δ
Nick Alter is a retired business executive who’s been working on an Oceano redevelopment initiative with Cal Poly faculty and students. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 4, 2021.
This was a well articulated commentary that brought up new relevant information about the negative impact of vehicular traffic on the town of Oceano. It was really interesting to compare the economic status of Pismo Beach pre and post banning of vehicles on the beach .
This article challenges the old canard that vehicles on the Oceano Beach and Dunes is an unstoppable economic boon to the area. The fact is that when you consider the downside; particularly crime, medical emergencies unpaid, failure of many out-of-towners to spend much money in this community, and serious pollution, medical hazards for those who are affected by air pollution resulting in COPD and other medical conditions, etc.; the economic development of Oceano through well researched business models appears to be a welcome light at the end of the tunnel. For those with short sighted thill seeking hedonism, there are other places inland that permit recreational ATV activity. There may even be places within the county which can be repurposed for such use. It is time to act boldly and actively to pursue the full potential of Oceano through a new and challenging vision.
How is it that the failure of Oceano to develop alongside Pismo Beach is entirely the fault of vehicular use of that stretch of the beach?
Are there no other factors at work here?
What about Grover Beach? Vehicles enter the beach at the end of Grand, yet no one suggests that city is economically deprived as well.
It seems to me that writers here have preconceived ideas on what is good and what is bad and it has nothing to do with the facts at all.
Individuals and families who enjoy things I don’t enjoy have just as much right to enjoy then as I do to stay at home reading a book.
How about ways to improve Oceano without closing the dunes.
Here come the racist Left enviros again, this time in the form of a business exec trying to gentrify Oceano and drive out the lower class in the love of money.
This is the kind of reasoned, objective analysis the whole situation calls for–especially when talking about economic impacts of the SVRA and OHV’s. The typical State Parks message (deemed scientifically inaccurate by experts) is they bring millions into the economy. The bigger question is how many millions do we not get because 97% of tourists and locals dont want to play on a beach or dunes with motor vehicles racing around? Plus the devastating effects it has had on Oceano over the decades. The Coastal Commission is legally and ethically correct when they call for a phase out of OHV and beach traffic South of Oceano in a five year transition. Where they are flawed is in not moving quicker. We have been waiting more than four decades to have a beach for our community.
Charles Varni, Oceano
Those are large commercial spaces along with large motels. That will be a key driver in pushing out those who don’t high incomes as they slowly but surely get displaced by more wealthy folks from Southern California especially. I don’t know where the workforce for all these low wage jobs service jobs are going to live. Cuyama? Be careful what you wish for.
Once again liberal nonsence on full display….these so called studies are predecided…libby agenda…kill all activities that they dont agree with…create fake studies from brainwashed students….sad
I can’t agree more with Gail Lightfoot. Usually we are on opposite sides on many issues. Atvs and auto were a recreational activity before the state acquired the land from county and private property owners well before 1982. Our Dunes are compromised by well intentioned UNKNOWN and UNPROVEN amateur business executives and immature college students. We cannot in good faith allow these non-residents to dictate our lifestyle choices beginning with planning our open spaces. Never heard of Nick Alter nor does anyone care about his poorly researched public relations campaign. Smart people fall over laughing from the gravitational force of stern turtle necks who claim to be socioeconomic experts on the Dunes. They don’t live here nor do they understand our Dune culture or history.
A guy at a college wrote a paper and that is scientific enough to shut down recreation for people that pay for usage fees, licenses and spend their money in the community? I make my own money and some pencil-neck that wrote a paper can tell me when and how I can spend it? I have never off-roaded at the dunes but I will now. Wonder if I will see any “scientists” on their quads riding around gathering information on their next paper about “impact” on the environment? Probably not.
I have spent twenty years here raised my son and personally reject the Coastal Commissions intervention into to developing Oceano into another cookie cutter town like Pismo. In time Oceano will naturally develop into the next big thing . I came here from the rat race of Southern California and enjoyed sleeping at night with my doors unlocked . I also have witnessed the effects these non vehicle tourism with no regard for private property owners next to the Dune Preserve.