El Granada's Burnham Strip Park Is Settled. The Money and the Land Around It Are Not.

After eight years of community meetings, the park on El Granada's Burnham Strip is the settled part of the plan. The Granada Community Services District (GCSD) submitted its final park plan for permitting in June 2026 and says construction could start as early as summer 2027. The district has already paid for bid-ready construction drawings. Several things are still open: whether a new community building ever gets built, who ends up with the privately owned and Harbor District lots on the rest of the strip, and how much of the district's money the park will take.

Those questions are being decided now, one GCSD board meeting at a time. The budget numbers explain why the park moved ahead and the rest is still waiting.

What the County Has in Hand

The project is San Mateo County file PLN2026-00225, with an application dated July 3, 2026. It needs a Coastal Development Permit, a Use Permit, a Design Review Permit, a Grading Permit, and a Merger. The County's project page says all of these will go to future Planning Commission hearings, and no hearing date has been posted yet.

According to the district's October 15, 2026 agenda packet, the project team is answering agency comments on the Coastal Development Permit application and plans to resubmit to the County later this month. One step has already gone in the park's favor. Coastside News reported from the September 17 meeting that the team found it can permit the site under a statewide general order rather than through federal jurisdiction, because the site's drainage is small enough to qualify. The outlet said this significantly shortens the regulatory timeline.

The GCSD project page describes the design in two sections:

• South end, active recreation: children's play areas, a skate ramp and related skate features, a dog park, a large picnic area, a half-court basketball court, an entry plaza, and a restroom
• North end, passive space: walking paths, fitness stations, natural landscaping, small picnic areas, and ocean views
• Throughout: native plants in place of invasive vegetation, plus ADA-accessible walkways along the full length of the park

Why the Park Went First

At the August 20 meeting, General Manager Chuck Duffy laid out the numbers. The district brings in roughly $1 million a year in parks revenue. After $120,000 for park operations and maintenance and $293,000 for administrative costs, about $650,000 a year is left for debt service, which Coastside News reported "leaves almost no room for a new building."

The board agreed on three phases. The park comes first. A scaled-down renovation of the existing building at 480 Avenue Alhambra comes second. A new building is deferred. Duffy said the first two phases would run alongside each other, according to the same Coastside News report: "They're separate but parallel. Look at it that way."

The renovation estimate is where the figures differ most. A circulating estimate put the 480 renovation at $7.2 million, which works out to $2,300 per square foot. Duffy called that inflated and estimated $2 to $3 million instead, splitting the work into three parts: the parking lot, the exterior cladding, and the interior systems. At the September meeting, Director Nancy Marsh noted that the $2 to $3 million figure has not been vetted either. The district also discussed spending an expected ERAF refund, estimated at $2.5 to $3 million over five years, on amenities and add-ons once the initial construction is done.

The district's project page states that parks and recreation are funded from an allocation of general property taxes, not from GCSD sewer fees. The district says it is also looking for grants and other funding from private, county, state, and federal sources. Until any of that comes through, the property tax allocation is the money the board is planning around, and it is why the building and the land questions are still unresolved.

The Drawings Being Paid for Now

In August the board approved two contracts totaling about $650,000, both drawn from a previously budgeted $1.5 million. KCRH Landscape Architecture will produce bid documents, specify furniture and amenities, and run community input on the playground design for $350,000. BKF will handle civil and structural engineering for $310,000. Once those documents are done, the park can go out for competitive construction bids.

The look of the park is still being discussed. Director Marsh noted the community has been clear that it doesn't want bright colors. Board President Barbara Dye cautioned against designing only for adults, as Coastside News reported: "A lot of those natural playgrounds look really great to the adults and the kids don't play with the stuff." She also described how long the process has run: "We spent eight years listening to the community on the uses of the park, and we came up with a mix of passive and active uses."

The skate features are getting their own process. September 17 minutes in the October packet show staff spoke with skate designer Steve Hawk, and the board appointed Director Matt Allen, by a 5–0 vote, as its liaison to the project team and the community on skate features. Staff is now drawing up a list of community members for a skate-features ad hoc committee.

What the Strip Is Today

The plan replaces a set of informal uses that grew up on their own. A March 2025 district inventory lists an approximately 3,000-square-foot building then leased to Picasso Preschool, an approximately 17,200-square-foot underground wet-weather storage facility, and a skateboard ramp on an informal dirt lot. The same inventory describes the central lot as unofficially used for parking. The district's History of the Burnham Strip records that after the wet-weather storage project was built in 2012, surfers and beachgoers kept using part of the property for parking, and skateboarders built a ramp on Caltrans land at the oceanward edge. Coastside News later reported that the preschool had closed.

The lot at Portola and Obispo works as El Granada's de facto civic parking lot. Recology's quarterly recycling days are held there from 8 a.m. to noon, and the most recent one was October 10. GCSD's Fall 2024 newsletter used the same lot as the meeting point for its "History Repeated" walk and as the County bookmobile stop on the second and fourth Mondays. In September, a County road contractor began staging gravel on part of the dirt lot without asking first. Under the conditions staff negotiated for a retroactive use agreement, the lot had to stay partially accessible, the skate ramp had to stay open, and the contractor had to consolidate its materials over the weekend, Coastside News reported.

The strip has stayed open for more than a century by design. The Ocean Shore Railroad was incorporated in 1905, bought 1,271 acres, and hired Daniel Burnham to lay out its planned town. Its first train reached present-day El Granada on June 21, 1908. In October 1906, Burnham and Edward Bennett submitted a layout that called for large open spaces, views, and parks. The Highway 1 realignment in 1949 and 1950 reshaped the streets around the strip and moved Obispo Road so that it connected to Coronado rather than crossing the strip.

The Parcels the Park Doesn't Cover

The park covers the GCSD parcels. Other lots on the strip and near the post office belong to private owners or the Harbor District, and on September 17 they took up the longest discussion of the meeting. Staff showed a parcel map with these figures, as reported by Coastside News:

Five residents asked the board to begin talks on acquiring these lots. They cited state housing laws that increasingly allow by-right residential development on parcels like these. Assistant General Manager Hope Atmore explained that when a public agency decides it no longer needs a property, it must list it as surplus and send notices to housing developers and to parks and recreation agencies.

The budget numbers from August limit what the board can do here. Director Marsh cautioned that financing the park and recreation center, along with the related maintenance and administrative costs, could take up the district's regular property tax allocation for 20 to 30 years. She said she would put parcels next to the existing park ahead of the post office lot, and she raised a lower-cost idea: "I love the food truck lots in Hawaii and in Portland up north. It could be something that they lease to two or three food trucks which gives dining opportunities to the community."

The board took no action. President Dye said, according to Coastside News, "I am not at this point proposing or even supporting the notion that we'll start thinking about making offers on these lots. But I want us to pay attention." The issue stays on future agendas, and the board will keep talking with the Harbor District.

An Offer on the Deferred Building

At the same meeting, an outside group offered to pay for the building the board had just deferred. As Coastside News reported, Sandi Winter, executive director of Senior Coastsiders, said the 49-year-old nonprofit is looking for a satellite site north of Half Moon Bay. It provides home-delivered meals, transportation, and care management from Montara to Pescadero. Winter offered to fund construction of the planned community building near the former Picasso preschool site in exchange for daytime use: "We're prepared to bring real resources to this project, potentially funding construction of the building in exchange for use of the space. And in the spirit of true partnership, we would collaborate with GCSD to offer the building for community programs on evenings and weekends."

Senior Coastsiders plans a major fundraising campaign for its 50th anniversary in 2027. Brown Act rules kept the board from discussing the offer during public comment, so Director Marsh added it to a future agenda and staff was directed to research it. Separately, the request for qualifications for the 480 building renovation is finalized and will go out to qualified firms.

Dates on the Calendar

1. October 15, 2026: GCSD board meeting. The packet covers the permit resubmission, the renovation RFQ, and recreation programming.
2. Later in October: planned resubmission of the Coastal Development Permit application to the County.
3. To be scheduled: County Planning Commission hearings on PLN2026-00225.
4. December 19: El Granada Winter Festival, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a craft fair, live music, Santa visits, craft stations, and tree lighting and caroling at 5 p.m.
5. As early as summer 2027: the district's earliest stated start for park construction.

Until construction bids go out, the dirt lot at Portola and Obispo remains the strip's working parking lot and recycling-day site. The neighboring parcels and the Senior Coastsiders offer remain on GCSD's future agendas.

Matt Aragoni follows GCSD agendas and County permit files on the Burnham Strip so Coastside homeowners know what's actually planned near their homes. Get a free Coastside home valuation or schedule a consultation to talk through what's planned near you.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.