By Neil Farrell
Work on a master plan for the Centennial Parkway in Morro Bay will go public at a community workshop set for 6:30-8:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 25 at the Morro Bay Vet’s Hall, 209 Surf St.
RRM Design was awarded a $56,600 contract to draw up an, “Embarcadero and Centennial Stairway Concept Plan” to make improvements to the Parkway, which starts at the terminus of Morro Bay Boulevard at a small plaza between Dorn’s and DiStassio’s restaurants. It carries down the Centennial Stairway to the Giant Chessboard Park on the Embarcadero.
Community Development Director, Scot Graham, said RRM has already conducted, “stakeholder interviews with several folks, both business owners and others. We have sent workshop invitations to all Embarcadero leaseholders and sub-leaseholders as well as to several surrounding business owners.”
He added that RRM will produce a draft plan that will make the rounds of advisory boards, eventually going to the planning commission and city council.
The idea being looked at is to create a pedestrian parkway carried down to the street end between Rose’s Landing and Libertine Pub, which is proposing a total rebuild, likely to take several years to complete.
Also part of this is a notion to eliminate the parallel parking spaces on the western side of The Embarcadero from Harbor to Marina streets and widen the sidewalk, creating what the City calls a “promenade.”
All of this is to better connect the waterfront and the Downtown business district, and be more pedestrian friendly through the heart of the Embarcadero. This promenade would be in addition to the Harborwalk, which the City continues to require redevelopment projects to install.
Another aspect is installing an elevator by the staircase, a project the City has said could cost $500,000.
Improving the downtown-waterfront connection was also part of the Local Economic Action Program or LEAP exercise, which the City and volunteers conducted over 2014-15, coming up with a number of ideas to spruce up the Downtown and Waterfront and try to improve the town’s overall economy.
Another key aspect but ancillary to the parkway re-do, is the City’s efforts to find someone to redevelop the DiStasio’s parcel, perhaps into a large, motel with conference center, a concept that was proposed and rejected once before back in late 1990s.
The City Council on May 10 approved a lease with DiStasio’s owners, Ken and Mark McMillan, for just two years, with options for renewal. The terms of that lease include paying $9,000 a month in rent for the second story, it does not include the former-bar downstairs, which has issues with access for the disabled and has been vacant since 1995.
And in even more synchronicity, this problem connects with the elevator or a funicular, which ideally would help reopen the downstairs and let the public get safely up and down the bluff.
According to a May 10 staff report (Item A-5), the City sold the property to George and Charlotte Salwasser in 2011 for $1.5 million (including a parking lot on the corner). Salwasser spent a lot of money rehabbing the upstairs, leasing to DiStasio’s, and creating a new wine bar business, too. He was supposed to put in the elevator, as well.
When the Salwassers filed bankruptcy, the City held two promissory notes against the property for $830,000 and $425,000.
The McMillans tried to buy it through the bankruptcy trustee, but the City intervened and their deal was killed while in escrow. The City reacquired the property for just $150,000 in cash and forgave the two IOUs. So responsibility for an elevator now lies with the City and should be included in RRM’s design work.
Rebuilding the Centennial Parkway, which was built in the early 1980s, has long been a desire of the City, and addressed in at least two Cal Poly landscape architecture class exercises. The most recent specifically looked at the Centennial Parkway and Staircase.
Among the numerous issues LEAP looked at were: revitalize Embarcadero and Centennial Stairway; widen sidewalks; enhance pedestrian areas; and explore parking and circulation options, according to an email sent out by Don Marushka, who was hired to lead the LEAP program.
