The Cambria Christmas Market can go on for years to come.
In a unanimous vote this week, county supervisors denied an appeal that would have pulled the market’s permit.
The Cambria Christmas Market has been drawing visitors to the Cambria Pines Lodge for many years.
Approved for a 15-year permit back in February, Mike Arnold, the event market coordinator for the Christmas Tree Market, says planning was paused following a resident’s appeal to the permit.
“It just does kind of put a stop on us, us doing too much until we actually know what the official permit is going to say because they do make changes,” said Arnold.
Claudia Harmon Worthen has lived in the town for 38 years and tells me she first filed the appeal with the county's planning commission.
“It's a big number and so the appeal was against the Christmas market,” said Claudia Harmon Worthen, Cambria resident. “There are many people — I had somebody call me yesterday and they said we should not have a Christmas market at all.
She tells KSBY the 3 million lights flashing from the lodge at night for more than four weeks at the end of the year is not ideal.
But with the market operating since 2012, San Luis Obispo County District 2 Supervisor Bruce Gibson during this week’s meeting called the event a significant benefit to the business community but understands others’ concerns.
“It provides significant benefit to the business community of Cambria,” Gibson said. “It likewise imposes significant impacts on, particularly, the residential areas of Cambria and it's up to this board to assure that those impacts are properly mitigated.”
Worthen feels the approval will have a negative impact on people in the community.
“We can't stop it, so that's that's an awful thing to be in that place where the quality of your life is being so disturbed, and we have the right to peace and tranquility in our own homes and when that's violated,” said Worthen. “It's wrong.”
Arnold tells me the long-term approval will allow for more planning.
"Our previous permit was for five, and it actually got cut short because of COVID when we actually had four years of that, and since then it's been a lot of like one year, one year, one year, so to kind of be able to kind of be able to do plan in advance is going to be a huge help for us,” said Arnold.
Beautify Cambria is also trying to certify the city as a dark-sky community.
According to Dark Sky International, a dark sky community is a town that has shown exceptional dedication to the preservation of the night sky through the implementation and enforcement of a quality outdoor lighting ordinance, dark sky education, and citizen support of dark skies.
