City to define building height
Some residents see meeting as part of discussion on new hotel
PAaInIa rROVi >> A move to define a height limit of commercial projects in Pacific Grove has some residents crying foul days before the Planning Commission is due to discuss different ways to determine how tall is tall.
Alyson Hunter, the senior planner for the city, said Thursday’s Planning Commission agenda item is only to discuss heights of large, sloped commer
cial projects and not necessarily the American Tin Cannery hotel project.
“The critical component of this is that it is a general discussion on how to define height,” she said. “It’s simply an attempt to clarify height definitions in our own code. It’s gotten out of hand and people are up in arms.”
The developer, El Segundobased Comstock Properties, is proposing a 225-room, twowing hotel on the 5.59 acres that will include 20,000 square feet
of retail, a restaurant, lounge and meeting spaces, on parcels now occupied by American Tin Cannery Outlets at Ocean View Boulevard and Eardley Avenue — just a stone’s throw from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Hunter’s report to the commissioners, however, does mention the Tin Cannery project by name, but only in the context of mechanical apparatuses, called appurtenances, such as heating and air- conditioning units that are affixed to the tops of buildings. Their height limit is 8 additional feet from the top of a structure.
But Anthony Ciani, a licensed architect and resident of Pacific Grove, said it is disingenuous to say it’s not about the American Tin Cannery project. He is critical of both the subject and the way in which the height issue was attached to the Planning Commission agenda.
Ciani points to the Tin Cannery project originally being slated to be taken up at Thursday’s meeting, but was then