Proponents of a new North Pacific Beach lifeguard station requested site approval from a local planning subgroup on Sept. 13 for the estimated 3,000-square-foot station to be built at the end of Law Street. The request was made during a meeting of the Pacific Beach Planning Group\u2019s (PBPG) Development Subcommittee meeting. This was the third time the project\u2019s planners have met with the subcommittee, and the third time the applicants have been sent back to the drawing board to seek out alternatives. In 2003, the same planning subgroup approved a site location for the station at the foot of Diamond Street. Since then, however, the demand for lifeguard services has shifted north, said lifeguard representative Lt. Nick Lerma. “Really, what changed our view on that location was the level of activity that we\u2019ve seen to the north,” he said, referring to the onslaught of surfers at Tourmaline in the wintertime and swimmers and beachgoers at Law Street during the summer. “We quickly realized that our position to the south at Diamond Street was nearly a mile away, and for a lifeguard whose primary duty is to observe the water, it\u2019s difficult to request of our employees that they\u2019re a mile from where things happen.” The Law Street site was chosen so lifeguards have a centrally located, commanding view of the area from Crystal Pier to the point near Tourmaline, said Lerma. “The primary reason is just water observation,” he said. “It\u2019s right in the middle of our swimming area. That\u2019s where most people want their lifeguards to be.” An added benefit of the lifeguards\u2019 preferred site location is the existing vehicle access that slopes down from Ocean Boulevard to the sand, which would allow easy ingress and egress for police, fire or emergency backup transit, as well as better access for the disabled community. Following the full planning board\u2019s rejection of the site request at a July meeting\u00a0\u2014 which resulted in a tie 7-7 vote \u2014 architect Alison Whitelaw said she and the lifeguards looked into all of the primary concerns that were brought up by the board members, including the size of the facility, location of the site and a request to locate the facility in the ravine just south of the Law Street access ramp. “We\u2019ve been able to reduce it somewhat by about 300 square feet, and we are looking for some other reductions too,” Whitelaw said. “It was confirmed, however, that the lifeguards do need all of their amenities in the same location, and they determined that it needed to be in this proximity to the ramp at the end of Law Street.” Some board members originally cited concern that there wasn\u2019t enough visualization of the project to approve the site, prompting Whitelaw to return with two conceptual schemes to illustrate the scale and scope of the project at its proposed location. “We have looked at a lot of design issues, and we have a range of possibilities for how this building may get put together and put on its site,” said Whitelaw. “We want to give you an idea of the scale of the building is in context \u2014\u00a0not looking at architecture, not looking at final design.” In both proposed scenarios, the building would stand at about 25 feet tall, assuming a 10-foot floor-to-floor ratio, with the finished floor level base starting at nine feet high to withstand inundation from the tide. In both schemes, the equipment storage facility, first-aid response area and observation tower would be packaged within the same approximate 3,000-square-foot station in different arrangements. Despite a third plea by project advocates, the subcommittee voted to deny the site request and asked the applicants to seek alternatives \u2014 specifically requesting that lifeguards and architects explore the option of breaking down the bulk and view impact of the facility by separating its components. “I don\u2019t like being presented with no options,” said subcommittee member Chris Olson. “I don\u2019t think it\u2019s fair that you have come up with one thing and it\u2019s one size, and this is what it\u2019s going to be. I think the public has provided some potential things to consider.” Subcommittee member and longtime resident Paul Ross presented an alternative plan at the meeting, which gained support from some board members and residents. His plan, which was inspired by a recently approved lifeguard station project at Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, called for the erection of a 12-foot-tall, single-level equipment storage facility atop a 12-foot base in the blighted ravine just south of the access ramp, an access driveway into the facility, a 3,000-square-foot public park behind the equipment storage facility and a separate observation tower on the beach. “The end of Law Street is unsightly,” Ross said. “It\u2019s a mess, an absolute wasteland. It\u2019s not park, it\u2019s not beach, it\u2019s not anything,” he said. “We could turn that ravine into something useful and beautiful.” Subcommittee chair Curtis Patterson summed up the subcommittee\u2019s request at the conclusion of the meeting. “I can\u2019t speak for the whole board, but I think that by reducing the footprint at this location significantly by moving the rescue-vehicle facility somewhat off the beach so it had less impact for beachgoers and less impact for line of sight issues, that the community and the planning group would appreciate it,” he said. The full PBPG board will hear the project again as an informational item at 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 26 at Pacific Beach\/Taylor Branch Library, located at 4275 Cass St. For additional material about the proposal, visit www.pbplanning.org.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Proponents of a new North Pacific Beach lifeguard station requested site approval from a local planning subgroup on Sept. 13 for the estimated 3,000-square-foot station to be built at the end of Law Street. The request was made during a meeting of the Pacific Beach Planning Group\u2019s (PBPG) Development Subcommittee meeting. This was the third […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":260726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Wrangling continues over site of new Law Street lifeguard station","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-260725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}