An agreement that will launch the environmental review of a plan to expand the Grover Beach train station was approved this week by the City Council in its role as the Grover Beach Improvement Agency board.

The board members OK’d a memorandum of understanding with the county and the San Luis Obispo Council of Governments to assess the impacts of building a parking lot and bus stop in a marshy area south of the station on Highway 1.

Grover Beach will contribute up to $25,000 and SLOCOG will provide up to $30,000 to study the feasibility of expanding the Amtrak station onto land owned by San Luis Obispo County and managed by its Parks Department.

In addition to authorizing the environmental assessment, the agreement calls for the county to consider a long-term lease of the land and pledges the city, county and SLOCOG will work with state and federal agencies to complete the project.

The goal of the expansion would be to create a site adjacent to the depot where Amtrak buses loading and unloading passengers can easily turn around.

Currently, the buses load and unload passengers at a lot located across the tracks behind the Station Grill, a situation that sometimes causes confusion for passengers not familiar with the layout.

It is also inconvenient for passengers — especially the elderly — who have to haul their luggage either directly across the tracks or detour to West Grand Avenue in order in order to use paved pathways.

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Some people also consider crossing the tracks a safety hazard.

In addition to creating an Amtrak bus stop, the expansion would provide additional depot parking and another access route to the Coastal Dunes RV Park immediately south of the site.

Although the vote was unanimous, one Improvement Agency board member believes the expansion is unnecessary, will be excessively expensive, may not even be feasible and is simply furthering a county agenda at city expense.

Chuck Ashton said the site is swampland and an “underground estuary” filled with overflow from Meadow Creek and with a very shallow water table that will make the parking lot excessively expensive if not impossible to build.

“I would like to see a big part of the ($55,000) environmental study to be spent on the retention of a hydraulic engineer,” he told fellow agency board members and city staff. “I’d like to get an expert opinion up-front on what’s required.”

Ashton said when the current depot was built, construction crews had to dig down 20 feet, lay four feet of rock base, then seal that up before construction could begin on the waterlogged site.

“This site is lower — it’s 15 feet below street level,” he said. “Before we go too far down along the line, I’d like to find out what’s involved.”

But City Manager Bob Perrault told Ashton the only issue before the Improvement Agency was the memorandum of understanding that would launch the environmental review.

How the funding would be allocated would come back for approval at a future meeting.

“The initial review will look at all aspects of the site,” Perrault said. “That will determine how the environmental impact report will focus.”

After the meeting, Ashton said Amtrak buses don’t need to load and unload across the tracks, as they have since the station was completed in 1996, but can easily turn around in the depot’s parking lot.

Ashton said he served on a committee that studied the current cramped lot and found it has an adequate turning radius equivalent to the area where Amtrak buses turn around at the San Luis Obispo depot.

He also pointed out there would never be more than one Amtrak bus at the station at any given time and no other transit buses would use the stop.

Ashton also said he believes the county simply wants the parking lot developed and a new RV park access road created without footing the full bill.

“That’s my whole take on the thing,” he said.

The memorandum of understanding will now go before the SLOCOG board, the County Parks Commission and the County Board of Supervisors for review and approval.

August 8, 2008