The Grover Beach City Council discussed the City’s West Grand Avenue Master Plan (Plan) on February 9 and directed city staff to advance the next phase of improvements from the Plan as part of Grover Beach’s 2022-2026 Capital Improvement Program. Adopted in 2011, the Plan provides a detailed vision for a revitalization of the City’s main commercial corridor to better serve residents and visitors consistent with the City’s Economic Development Major City Goal.
“West Grand Avenue is a vital corridor between Oak Park Boulevard and our beachfront and has evolved into our city’s central hub,” said Grover Beach Mayor Jeff Lee. “Our community is tied in many ways to this corridor, and it is important to continue to make investments in this area.”
New improvements to this bustling economic corridor will build upon the City’s ongoing work to transform and re-energize the area and encourage private investment. The Plan identified three distinct activity nodes along the corridor to concentrate activity into vibrant centers:
- The visitor-serving node extends from Highway 1 to 5th Street as a destination for tourists and locals offering unique outdoor spaces, specialty retail, restaurants, lodging and entertainment venues.
- The downtown node from 8th to 11th Streets provides services and amenities that primarily serve the community, such as personal and professional services, as well as restaurants. • The area between 14th Street and Oak Park Boulevard serves as the commercial node and provides more auto-centric uses such as grocery stores and fast-food restaurants.
The remaining blocks from 5th to 8th Streets and 11th to 14th Streets are zoned to allow for commercial and mixed-use projects, as well as multi-family residential projects to encourage more housing along the corridor. In addition to the development opportunities, the City carried out initial improvements on West Grand Avenue including the addition of center medians with palm trees, bulb-outs, street trees, enhanced crosswalks, and other improvements from Highway 1 to 4th Street and from 8th Street to 11th Street.
Building on this previous work, the Council provided direction to City staff to develop an upcoming project to install additional landscaped center medians and street trees from 4th Street to 8th Street along with considering other improvements such as diagonal parking, parklets, and sustainability features like solar panels and storm water filtration. This project will bring needed streetscape improvements to a key part of the West Grand Avenue corridor and would represent the first set of physical improvements to West Grand Avenue carried out in a number of years. While the timing and cost of this project will be further reviewed with the Council on March 22, the ability to advance this next phase of improvements is made possible by the strong financial position of the City and the additional revenues expected from Measure F-20 and other funding sources.
“These improvements on West Grand Avenue will benefit our entire community by providing a more enjoyable experience on our ‘grand boulevard’ for all those who live, work and visit our area,” said Matthew Bronson, Grover Beach City Manager.