SLO LIFE Oct/Nov 2020

| TIMELINE
San Luis Obispo
AUGUST 2020
8/18
San Luis Obispo’s City Council approves a proposal from Jamestown
Properties to build a mixed-use, six-story, seventy-five-foot tall building in
the heart of downtown, saying the project will create much-needed housing
and stimulate the local economy. The development at 1144 Chorro Street will
demolish the existing structure (home most recently to Sports Authority and
Copeland’s Sports) and replace it with 30,000 square feet of commercial/retail
space and fifty residential units. In comparison, the County Government
Center is sixty-five feet tall and the City’s parking garage at Palm and Morro
streets is eighty feet tall.
8/18
City staff will be using a new screening tool for analyzing investments after the
San Luis Obispo City Council votes unanimously to proceed with a plan they
say better reflects community goals about how it invests seventy-five to seventyeight
million dollars of the public’s money. The more socially responsible
investment approach adds weapons manufacturers to the list of industries in
which the city does not invest, which currently includes tobacco products and
the production of fossil fuels. City staff may take the policy a step further by
expanding into Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) strategies, a
far-reaching philosophy that not only looks at end products, but how products
come to be and how a company treats its workforce.
8/18
A fire starts near Dolan Canyon in Big Sur. Believed
to have been started by arson, the Dolan Fire keeps
growing into the Ventana Wilderness area, where
according to the U.S. Forest Service a California condor
research facility is destroyed. One month and 128,050
acres burned later, the fire has destroyed at least nineteen
structures and is only forty-six percent contained.
Highway One is closed between mile post twenty-five
and mile post ten. Nacimiento-Ferguson Road is closed
to all traffic from Highway One to the Fort Hunter
Liggett base boundary line. Smoke driven by offshore
winds causes the SLO Public Health Department to
issue air quality advisories for several weeks.
8/21
The SLO Arts Leadership Roundtable announces the
results of its audience perception survey concerning the
future of live performances in SLO County that was
distributed in mid-July. More than 3,400 SLO County
residents responded to the survey, the second in a series
that the Roundtable intends to repeat every two to
three months until performance venues can re-open in
the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Respondents are
being asked their opinions on public safety and health
regulations, motivators for attending live events, and
their experience with virtual performances. Key findings:
thirty-nine percent say they will wait for a vaccine before
returning to live performances; seventy-eight percent say
placing limits on audience size is very important; fifty-five
percent have attended at least one performance streamed
online in the last month.
22 | SLO LIFE MAGAZINE | OCT/NOV 2020