Buccaneer Park Workshop Thursday

This Thursday at 6pm in the Community Room of the downtown library, the City will unveil its latest thinking on the “Buccaneer Park Re-visioning.” There are a few problems:

• The meeting is scheduled against the weekly Sunset Market (5-9pm), so parking will likely be difficult.
• One of the two plans is unsafe, something that the consultants and the city didn’t notice before drafts were shared with South O reps this week.
• The proposal says nothing about how the revised park will connect to new parkland on the site of the (soon to be closed) La Salina treatment plant — the whole point of Save South O’s repeated calls for a Buccaneer Park master plan.

Still, the proposal give the community a chance to see the city’s thinking and offer feedback for the existing Buccaneer footprint east of Pacific and south of Loma Alta Creek.

Reject Concept #2

The consultant prepared two concept proposals. Save South O recommend immediate rejection of Concept #2, because it moves the playground (for 2-5 and 5-12 year-olds) next to Pacific Street. Any parent who’s lost track of their child for 30 seconds — or watched a kid chase a ball into the street — would understand why this is an unnecessarily dangerous plan for exactly those families it intends to serve. It is inexplicable that this idea has gotten this far without someone calling out the potential risk.

Concept #1

Below are the “Concept #1” plan, along with an aerial view of the existing park

The major changes

• Moving the restroom from the west to east side of the parking lot
• Expanded/reworking of the playground area
• Some additional space around the concessionaire (Buccaneer Cafe).
• Space at the east end of the park to connect to the final segment of the Rail Trail currently being planned.

Some potentially controversial choices (based on informal discussions):

• No more shower in the bathroom. The city could have a shower inside, a shower outside, or no shower (relying on the existing shower on the beach to shower off).
• The option (during busy times) to move the coffee cart away from the Cafe.
• The addition of a basketball court reduces the existing park area.

The city has a series of questions about the proposed design.

Survey – Concept #1Download

Begging the Question

Save South O has been pushing the city since 2019 to reveal the complete picture of what is going on around Buccaneer Beach and Park. This workshop

• Does not show reuse for the La Salina plant. Our consistent position has been that South O needs to know what uses are planned for north of Loma Alta Creek before rebuilding the existing park. (For example, basketball, tennis or pickleball are separate uses not tied to the existing beach or picnic area that would make more sense in the La Salina location).
• Does not show the Creek restoration (where the city already has a grant)
• Does not show the rail trail (although it leaves room for it)

The Save South O recommendation: the city should hold off implementation of any Buccaneer Park redesign until it can share a complete vision for all of Buccaneer Park—including any expansion until the former La Salina plant.

Attend Buccaneer Park Workshops: July 10, 22

Save South O has been pushing for more than two years to have the city provide a holistic plan of the various projects plan around and near Buccaneer Park:

1. Completing the rail trail across Loma Alta Creek
2. The Loma Alta Creek restoration project, including creation of a pedestrian trail on the north side of the creek
3. Upgrading the bathrooms/restaurant building that serves Buccaneer Beach and Park
4. Redevelopment of the unused 7 acres freed up by the planned closure of the La Salina Wastewater Treatment Plant

In particular, the city has (repeatedly) refused to commit to using all (or even some) of the WWTP land for parkland, even though both parkland (and parking for visitors to use the park) need to be expanded.

Representatives of Save South O met with Park & Rec staff, the city manager, and council members arguing that the city needs to develop a master plan before building anything at the site. The development of the site (like other projects) was slowed down due to COVID-19, allowing the planning process to catch up with the schedule for these various projects.

Update: The city has posted a survey about existing and future uses of the park. We encourage South O residents to push to expand Buccaneer Park using the land freed up by the closure of the WWTP.

The city has now committed to hold two public hearings about plans for the future of Buccaneer:

Workshop #1:

Date: Saturday, July 10th
Time: 10am – 2pm
Location: Buccaneer Park – 1506 S. Pacific Street, Oceanside, CA 92054

Workshop #2:

Date: Thursday, July 22nd
Time: 9am-1pm
Location: Main Street Farmer’s Market – Corner of Coast Highway and Pier View Way

We encourage South O residents to turn out en masse at these meetings to advocate both for expanding Buccaneer Park, and for a design that maximizes the availability for park land for use by South O and the community more generally.

buccaneer-park-flyerDownload

The future of Buccaneer

The future of Buccaneer Park was on the agenda of the South Oceanside Community and Merchants Association. The city has three projects going forward:

1. Redeveloping the La Salina Wastewater Treatment Plant
2. Restoration of the Loma Alta Slough
3. Repairing/replacing the Buccaneer Park restrooms

The first of these three items was the subject of the today’s presentation at Beach Break Cafe, by Lindsay Leahy, principal water engineer of the city’s water utilities department.

The specific project presented was the decommissioning of the La Salina WWTP. Rather than upgrade the plant built in 1949, the city decided in 2014 to close it. However, closing this requires building a lift station to take all the sewage that flows via gravity to from South O, Fire Mountain and downtown, and pump it back to the San Luis Rey WWTP built in 1972.

This will require building a new return pipe under Oceanside Blvd. to Garrison Blvd. It also requires building a pump station at the La Salina site, and both have to be working before La Salina can be decommissioned in 2022 (perhaps by the end of 2022).

Future of Buccaneer

On the west side, the future of Buccaneer depends on getting sand back on Oceanside beaches. Currently the city is prioritizing sand around the pier over the rest of the city.

However, the La Salina decommissioning will free up 2/3 of the 10.6 acre side, located between the railroad tracks and Pacific St, north of Loma Alta Creek. The current sketches show 66 parking spaces as part of the pump station construction. The city has not announced (or even decided) its plans for the remaining 7 acres.

The creek (slough) restoration one of the 100 or so sites being restored by the Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project. In addition to wetlands restoration, it will also include additional walking and/or bike trails along the north side of the creek. The wetlands project is the subject of an August 15 workshop from 5-7 p.m at the downtown library.

Finally, the city is long overdue to fix the decrepit bathrooms at Buccaneer. Leahy said the city will issue an RFP to study this remodeling.

Public input for all three projects will be sought in the remainder of 2019 and throughout 2020. It appears that the use of the unused part of La Salina — crucial to the future of Buccaneer and South O — will be subject of later hearings.

Next step in completing Rail Trail

One of goals of the Coast Highway “road diet” is to make lanes for bicycles. But as California bicycle safety standards make clear, a Class II bike lane is not as desirable (or as safe) as a Class I separated bike path.

The Coastal Rail Trail is a planned 44-mile route from Oceanside to San Diego’s Santa Fe Depot. It is one of the major bicycle priorities for SANDAG and the coastal cities along the route. Oceanside is doing better than most of the county, with most of the stretch completed from the Oceanside Transit Center to the city’s southern border.

In April 2005, the city completed a stretch from Vista Way to Morse (along Broadway and then Myers). A second stretch, from Oceanside Blvd. to Tyson St. (the OTC) along the east side of the tracks, was built from 2012-2015. At the south end of the city, there is a physically separated lane that parallels Coast/Carlsbad Boulevard across Buena Vista Lagoon.

The one gap is the stretch between Morse and Oceanside Boulevard, across Loma Alta Creek. The long-distance cyclists ride on Pacific Street, but between beachgoers and auto traffic, this is hardly optimal — and makes it hard to rejoin the trail at Oceanside Boulevard. Completing this stretch also makes a safer (Class I) path through South O than any Coast Highway bike lane can ever provide: as long as there are cars driving along (and entering and leaving) Coast Highway, these bike lanes will never be as safe as a fully separated bike path.

Completing the trail across the creek has been on the city’s planning radar for several years, and it now appears that the project is once again moving forward. On May 13, the city will hold an open house about the missing segment from 10:00-12:00 noon at Buccaneer Park. The city and its consultant, Dokken Engineering, will be discussing alternative locations for the connecting trail and bridge across the creek, and is inviting cyclists, community members and other interested parties to attend. For more information or to RSVP, see the city’s flyer.