HomeMy WebLinkAbout06_28-29_2017 PC Correspondence - Avila Ranch (Wilkens)
From: Mark Wilkens < RECEIVED
Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2017 3:11 PM CITY OF SAN LUIS OBISPO
To: Davidson, Doug
Cc: Advisory Bodies JUN 2 9 2017
Subject: Avila Ranch Development
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
To whom it may concern,
I write to you today to express my concerns with using annexed land on Buckley Road to construct the Avila Ranch
project.
I find it jarring that a city so renowned for balancing the wants of developers with the aesthetic and lifestyle needs of
its citizenry while keeping a watchful eye on its necessary status as a watchdog of the natural beauty of the Central
Coast, would, in the name of "much needed housing" look to this area to build a variable -density project of this
nature.
Buckley Road is, by virtue of years of agricultural use in the area, and the nearby airport, small, fast, and dangerous. It
is full of blindspots, it floods, and to add thousands of cars to it every day endangers them, not to even mention the
agricultural vehicles and trucks pulling trailers in the area. Barring a complete redesign of the traffic patterns in the
area, this project is not feasible from the standpoint of safety or civil engineering.
To put that many homes near the airport, is in my opinion at best a grey area in the city's own agreed upon Airport
Safety Plan, and at worst turning a blind eye to the potential dangers fostered by having so many residents in the flight
path of a still -growing airport. Again, I see this as the city's attempt of having their cake and eating it too.
Safety and traffic issues aside, I ask what the purpose is of this development? What are we selling people? A slice of
the country life? They certainly won't be able to enjoy that, being in a massive mixed development such as this.
People move to San Luis Obispo because it's different. Its heart beats like no other. Take it from me, I am not a native
here. I grew up in San Diego,- then spent most of my adult life in the Bay Area. San Luis Obispo has just as much, if
not more culture, more soul, more vitality, than any place in California, while maintaining the natural beauty that has
brought people here for centuries.
People choose San Luis Obispo because it isn't the big city, because it isn't millions of nameless people returning to
the nameless, identical boxes at the end of the night. San Luis Obispo isn't miles of surburbia clear on into Edna. This
greenbelt matters.
San Luis Obispo is beautiful, it is safe, and it is unique, and Avila Ranch goes back on all of that. Please do what is
best for the people of this city, and the heart and soul that draws people from all around.
Respectfully,
Mark Wilkens