Greetings City of Grover Beach,
I hope you all have had a good start to 2024 and enjoyed the recent holiday season. I was able to spend time during the holidays with my family, which is increasingly important as my kids get older and closer to moving out on their own (we still have some time with our 10-year-old). We moved to the Central Coast in 2016, in large part for its family-friendly nature and the steps being taken to make this area even better for families of all types and ages.
We don’t lose sight of this need in Grover Beach as we plan for the future of our community. Earlier this month, the City Council provided final direction on the Ramona Park improvement project, intended to make our “Central Park” even better. The Council adopted a master plan for Ramona Park in 2021 after substantial public input, and now we're finalizing the design for specific improvements based on the vision in the master plan. These improvements include a playground area, music amphitheater, main plaza, Veterans Memorial Plaza, pickleball courts and new restrooms. While completion of the project would make this park even more of a jewel in our area, there is very limited City funding for these improvements and completion of the design will allow the project to be more competitive for necessary grant funding and allow the City to seek outside private contributions in the future.
We’re also planning for future housing to help provide housing availability at all income levels and to meet State housing production mandates. We recently celebrated the groundbreaking of the 402 West Grand Avenue mixed-use housing development, which will replace a long-vacant lot with nearly 40 new housing units along with street-level commercial/restaurant space. This project will kickstart the transformation of the West Grand Avenue corridor — with other mixed-use and affordable housing projects in the pipeline along with a City-funded roadway project to improve and beautify West Grand Avenue from 4th to 8th streets. Growth is essential for a community to remain vibrant and successful over the long run, though rest assured that Grover Beach will never become a Los Angeles or San Francisco, just a slightly larger version of our charming small beachfront city.
Lastly, I wanted to highlight the release of our 2023 Community Survey results. The City conducts this survey every two years through an outside research firm to gauge residents’ perceptions of key issues, satisfaction with City services and other items. The survey, conducted last October with a representative sample of 400 residents, indicated a high level of satisfaction with City services at 75%, an increase of 5% from 2021 and 15% from 2017. 79% of residents feel the quality of life in Grover Beach has either improved or remained the same over the past five years, and the top-cited challenges are homelessness, transportation and public safety. We’re pleased with these results as they demonstrate residents’ satisfaction with the progress in Grover Beach.
Thank you for being part of our community and if anybody would like to share their questions and concerns, I’d be glad to meet or talk with you. Please feel free to contact me at mbronson@groverbeach.org or (805) 473-4567.
Matthew Bronson
City Manager