As a longtime resident of Ocean Beach, I am dismayed by the Ocean Beach Planning Board’s (OBPB) failure to honor the integrity of our beachfront on Abbott Street. By approving a 10-unit, three-story condo project on the west side of Abbott Street and just north of the parking lot at the lifeguard tower, the OBPB has wiped out decades of local struggle to keep an open view and free feeling along our precious shores. Though the space is currently occupied by a few single-story beach rentals and an abandoned restaurant, local residents and visiting admirers of our lovely Ocean Beach can walk or ride along Abbott Street and see the ocean, pier and shore with its people playing in the surf. A three-story condo project will create a huge obstruction to the open view, as well as increase traffic problems, and create inaccessibility to that portion of the beach from Abbott Street. When I was on the OBPB in the mid-1990s, we received several requests to develop that particular section of the beach. We followed the Ocean Beach Master Plan, which prohibits commercial and other development on that section of the beach. In fact, the existing structures west of Abbott were grandfathered in, and any future development on that site was expressly prohibited by the Ocean Beach Master Plan. Ocean Beach will lose one of its only open areas along the beach when this condo project develops. A huge barrier to our view of the beach will be erected right in the heart of what is symbolically and, in reality, Ocean Beach’s greatest assets: its beachfront, surfing, swimming and sunset-enjoying community. Shame on the OBPB for selling out to individual and commercial interests and stealing from its community our most cherished beachfront!