An Airstream food truck on the Pismo Pier is set to close in the next few months but according to the city, it should have never been allowed to begin with.
The City of Pismo Beach is pulling the lease for Sunsets at Pismo because of a paperwork issue from 20 years ago.
Local Steve Burke has been eating at Sunsets twice a week for the last three years.
“This is... I'm so sad,” Burke said. “I'm so sad. I wish I could do more, but what are you going to do? ”
The latest city staff report states that a paperwork issue between 2003 and 2006 is the driving force behind the decision to close Sunsets.
While it’s been years since the pier's zoning was first changed from open space to commercial, enabling Sunsets to operate, according to the report, that change was never officially approved by the city council. Last week’s 3-1 vote solidifies the area as open space, meaning Sunsets can’t stay.
Brian Appiano, the owner of Sunsets at Pismo, says they should have changed the law instead.
“We're out here,” Appiano said. “We've been here for six years. There's got to be some kind of, you know, grandfathered in… but it seems to be pretty silly to go backwards than moving forward.”
Appiano says he was putting together a bid to continue their lease once it was up in the fall, hoping to keep Sunsets on the pier. He says he heard secondhand about the council’s decision.
“I thought they had made a decision on who won the bid and she said they’re getting rid of the Airstream completely and I was in shock,” Appiano said.
During last week’s city council meeting, Councilmember Marcia Guthrie said her decision to deem the area as open space had nothing to do with Sunsets itself, but the inaccurate information they had when offering the license in the first place.
"My opinion isn’t based on anything having to do with the personality or the entity that’s leasing the space, it has to do with when we originally made the decision, we had incorrect zoning and I think some other information was not accurate, but I’m not going to go into that now,” Guthrie said.
Still, many locals are feeling disappointed.
“They've been operating here for a long time and then come back and say, oh no, we made a mistake,” Burke said. “That ain't right. Why should that, why should Sunsets at Pismo have to pay for their mistake?”
Councilmembers say the change back to open space for this portion of the pier aligns with the end of Sunset’s lease in October.
