Monthly Archives: February 2018

Kampe Crys Insufficiency Asks STRs To Save The City

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Do these businesses in the residential areas have full ADA access like real businesses? What about safety items like fire sprinklers?

Pacific Grove continues to grapple with a revenue shortfall, one that the city’s newly revised short-term rental program is meant to diminish Mayor Bill Kampe said in his State of the City address on Tuesday night.

That’s where the topic of short-term rentals came in with Kampe providing a short history of the city’s program that started in 2011 and was expected to generate $200,000 a year in revenue but now exceeds $1 million in transient occupancy tax. On Feb. 21, the city council passed an ordinance 4-1 that amended the city’s new short-term rental policy adopted in December to include a lottery system, which functions to get the number of STRs down from 290 to 250 and make it so that only 15 percent of housing per block is dedicated to such rentals.

Kampe Crys Insufficiency Asks STRs To Save The City

Mauricio’s Gets Evicted

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No reason given.

After 14 years at the same location on Lighthouse Avenue, longtime Pacific Grove eatery Mauricio’s will serve up its last dish this Sunday.

That’s according to owners Mauricio Mendoza and his wife Luz who confirmed that they were asked to vacate the property at 589 Lighthouse Ave. last December by owners, the Charles F. Giles Family Trust. A message to the Trust seeking comment wasn’t returned.

Mauricio’s Gets Evicted

There Goes The Neighborhood

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An “upscale” recycled attic junk store is opening south of Sinex, an an area usually filled with normal businesses. Looks like high priced garage sale items.

The theatrical production company’s new store called the Neverland Benefit Shop will feature donated fine furnishings, artwork, designer-wear, household items and other collectibles. All proceeds from the shop will benefit PacRep’s non-profit and educational programs, keep ticket prices down and help the company fund its productions.

“We’re trying to make it medium to high-end – sort of upscale,” said PacRep Founder/Executive Director Stephen Moorer. “It’s not a dollar store kind of thrift shop.”

There Goes The Neighborhood

301 Grand Takes “P.G. Remodel” To New Heights

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Usually when someone buys a 600 square foot cottage and adds 3,000 square feet to it with nothing left of the original but the threshold it gets awarded with a historical building sign.

So Doctor buys building, offers to restore it and get waivers on parking spaces required. City discovers building is beyond repair and orders it torn down and parking waivers voided. City Director wants Doctor to make more low income dwellings in new plan. Doc is in it for the money, not social issues.

Doctor should be able to replicate the old building and keep the parking waiver.

543 Laurel Abandoned

“Once a historic building is demolished, it loses its historicity,” explained Pacific Grove’s Community and Development Director Mark Brodeur. That in turn changes certain parameters that accompany such a project. In this case those parameters involve parking.
“I informed the new owner that once the demolition is in place his plans as previously approved are no longer going to work because I don’t have the flexibility to allow five parking spaces off site,” explained Brodeur. Instead, Adeeb would have to change the project to accommodate eight parking spaces on site.

301 Grand Takes “P.G. Remodel” To New Heights

Ill Vecchio Raises The Bar

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And pours the whiskey from it. Owner gets full on liquor license.

“The more quality restaurants we can bring in the better,” he said. “People want choices, and all restaurants benefit from raising the bar.”

He’d like people to think of Pacific Grove before heading over the hill.

“With all due respect to Carmel, they have problems with high rent, small spaces, difficulty parking. It’s Pacific Grove’s time.”

Ill Vecchio Raises The Bar

Fisher And Peake Try And Save STRs

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Remember them at the voting booth.

The revised ordinance included the adoption of a 55-foot zone of exclusion to address density problems and a cap of 250 short-term rentals citywide but the incorporation of a lottery system was eliminated.

Fisher, along with Councilman Bill Peake, voted against the ordinance that took effect on Jan. 20. Fisher said that at the time he didn’t think it was complete enough and that city officials weren’t as clear as they could have been during the November workshop addressing the possibility of incorporating a lottery system into it. During the special meeting, many short-term rental license holders expressed their opposition to the lottery.

Fisher And Peake Try And Save STRs