The City recently learned that the proposed San Luis Obispo Skate Park – one of the major city goals – did not receive a $1.8 million grant they applied for from the California State Parks Office, which would have been highly instrumental in the completion of the community skate park.

The skate park was one of more than 475 projects that applied in round one of the grant, which amounted to $1.6 billion in requests for only $184 million in available grant money that went to 62 recipients.  The City Parks and Recreation department intends to apply in the second round, which will be due in early 2011. 

However, since the grants are awarded based on community need, San Luis Obispo may not look as “needy” as other communities due to our median income and median cost of living.  Without the grant, the project will move forward but will probably be delayed by at least one year and the project will need to be financially supported by increased fundraising efforts throughout the community including the current “buy a brick, build a dream” campaign.

The San Luis Obispo City Council began an early discussion Tuesday night about the possibility of creating a hospitality zone in the downtown as one way to address community concerns regarding late-night behavior associated with alcohol consumption. 

Hospitality zones – which have been created in other communities nation-wide – are mixed-used areas with a concentration of restaurants, cafes, bars and clubs, which host festivals, events and markets while expanding the range of activities available to shoppers and visitors through the evening hours.

The zone takes into consideration things like the development of diverse music and entertainment opportunities, planning for outdoor dining, managing panhandling, planning for various transportation options and – perhaps most importantly – is intended to create a collaborative process to manage conflicts like noise, trash and intoxication-related issues.

The concept could be an important step in enhancing the downtown and dealing with existing tensions between daytime and nighttime business operators and neighbors rather than just layering on additional regulation. The city will continue to explore the concept in the coming months and expand stakeholder discussions.

Big Sky Café will soon have several new neighbors on Broad St., between Higuera and Marsh Streets. Tropical Chocolates, a local gourmet chocolate company, is moving from the south end of Broad Street into downtown SLO. 

Next door, Broad Street Tavern – a new steakhouse and seafood restaurant – is slated to open by the end of the year. Finally, Wild Donkey Café, a new restaurant featuring Greek and Mexican cuisine, is expected to open soon in the building that previously housed Tio Alberto’s.

There will definitely be a lot of new flavors to sample in downtown SLO.

Congratulations and a huge thank you to all of those who worked so hard to defeat Measure H. Yesterday’s 80 percent/20 percent defeat of Measure H is the most lopsided local voting result in living memory according to longtime election watchers. Trouncing this dangerous and ill-conceived proposition was critically important.

But the energy and resources expended by a diverse coalition of the business community, youth sports advocates, neighborhood groups and other independent community leaders was also unprecedented. The bad news is that a tiny group of people, unhappy they didn’t get their own way, was able to divert so much attention and energy away from the very real issues the community faces.

The good news is that this tiny group of people didn’t decide how the city’s future should unfold, and that we were able to build a strong, effective and cohesive coalition that might be very useful in the future.

A recent Wall Street Journal report on "Paths to Professions" ranked Cal Poly business graduates on par with Stanford, Harvard, Penn State and Berkeley, and ranked Poly’s engineering graduates on top of UCLA, Rensselaer and Carnegie Mellon graduates.

In the report's "Rankings by Major" breakout, Cal Poly was named No. 22 of the "Top 25" private and public universities for producing business/economics graduates in the nation. Cal Poly was named No. 18 of the "Top 25" best engineering graduate producers in the nation.

These were rankings of all universities in the nation, not just public ones.

Things got heated at last night’s San Luis Obispo City Council meeting when staff provided a five-year fiscal forecast for the city’s general fund. As part of the presentation, they presented interesting data on the city’s total revenues and expenditures over a 15-year period, which showed that general fund expenditures —used to provide basic city services and capital projects — grew steadily from nearly $20 million in 1996 to over $46 million in 2010.

While revenues and expenditures were tracked closely in the earlier years, a more significant budget gap has developed over the last four years, with expenditures exceeding revenues in 2010 by almost $4 million — and the gap appears to be getting wider.

City Manager Katie Lichtig’s Financial Stability Task Force has been meeting twice monthly since summer  to come up with ideas to fix this structural problem.

An eagerly awaited book "Thrive, Finding Happiness the Blue Zone Way" was just released and devoted a whole chapter to SLO as one of the happiest places in the world — and the happiest in the U.S. — based on a 2008 Gallop poll.

And today "Smart Money Magazine" ranked SLO in the Top 10 places nationally to retire. It lauded SLO as a less expensive alternative to Santa Barbara for our weather and lifestyle.

After noting SLO’s ban on drive-through eateries, they said “And while that might not sit well with everyone, the town is also located in the one of the fastest-growing wine regions in the country, which can help take the edge off.” Read the article.

The Chamber’s vision of San Luis Obispo as a nurturing environment for entrepreneurs is coming alive at Cal Poly. The opening ceremonies for the Cal Poly Tech Park will take place at 9 a.m. on Oct 26. Phase I of the Technology Park project encompasses a 25,000-square-foot building that was completed this summer.

The first lease was signed in February with Applied Technologies Associates Inc. (ATA) for 3,000 square feet of space. ATA designs, builds and manufactures technology products for the oil industry. Currently 9,000 square feet of space is leased, with 11,000 square feet of space still available.

Tomorrow at 5 p.m. the brand new Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship opens with a public event, The Cal Poly Entrepreneurship Forum - A Forum on Building Entrepreneurial Success at Cal Poly and on the Central Coast.

The new center seeks to transform motivated students into resourceful, entrepreneurial and innovative leaders through classroom and hands-on experiences.