Pacifica apartment owners feel hopeful following meeting

By Julia Scott
San Mateo County Times

Posted: 05/05/2010 09:24:47 PM PDT

Updated: 05/05/2010 11:08:16 PM PDT

Apartment owners on Esplanade Avenue agreed Wednesday in a meeting with city officials and the California Coastal Commission to collaborate in protecting their buildings from losing any more ground to systemic blufftop erosion. 

After months of stalemate, the owners of more than a dozen apartment buildings and condominiums on upper Esplanade agreed to pursue a uniform engineering approach to prevent further blufftop loss, although the design is still up in the air.

"We need a fairly cost-effective upper bluff repair across all of the properties," said Bart Willoughby, a resident of 310 Esplanade and a spokesman for the apartment owners of 310, 320 and 330 Esplanade. "It will be interesting to see what everyone comes up with and what the costs are going to be."

Things have gone from bad to worse since 330 Esplanade was evacuated in December. City officials red-tagged part of 320 Esplanade a few weeks later. They evacuated the rest of 320 Esplanade last week after engineers discovered that the soil "nails" they had installed peeled away from the cliff instead of holding it together, taking out several feet of soil and dragging part of the building down in the process.

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Posted by Steve Sinai