Cambria Christmas Market is closed to the public — again. This is why
Here’s some bad news for fans of the Cambria Christmas Market.
The only people able to attend the popular holiday event in 2021 will be people who stay at the Cambria Pines Lodge, dinner patrons who partake in a special German-style dinner at the hotel or guests at two other lodgings owned by Moonstone Hotel Properties.
That’s similar to the way the market operated in 2020 during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, when San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department guidelines made it difficult to open the event to the public.
This year, however, there was another cause: The market doesn’t have a permit that would allow members of the public to attend.
“We are not required to obtain a permit to decorate for Christmas,” Cambria Pines Lodge owner Dirk Winter confirmed by email early Sunday morning.
However, he added, “We will not be selling tickets for light viewing only.”
The Christmas Market was originally scheduled to begin on Nov. 26 at Cambria Pines Lodge, 2905 Burton Drive in Cambria, and run through Dec. 23.
Based on traditional German Christmas markets, the Cambria Christmas Market traditionally features more than two million lights, elaborate holiday-themed displays and traditional German foods and drinks, as well as live music, an open-air market with vendors and a chance for kids to meet Santa Claus.
The market applied for a San Luis Obispo County permit to operate this year, requesting an extension of a previous permit that expired at the end of 2020. That application was approved by the county Planning Commission in a delayed hearing on Oct. 22.
Then, in the first week of November, three appeals were filed against the commission’s decision, according to Russell Read, a Cambria attorney.
The appeal process apparently didn’t leave enough time to get the hearing onto the county supervisors’ agenda, and then allow for the required 10-day period in which the supervisors’ decision could be appealed to the California Coastal Commission.
Read was one of the people who filed an appeal.
He said via phone Saturday that his 10-page appeal “lists in very stark order the reasons why the Christmas Market does not comply with the coastal land use zone” regulations.
For instance, he said, the market’s “illumination doesn’t comply, the signage doesn’t comply, having the market with 1,000 feet of residences doesn’t comply ....”
In the appeal, Read listed issues of non-compliance with the county’s time limits on temporary events as well as noise levels, water use, inadequate fencing and screening and traffic control at Burton Drive and Patterson Place.
He also asserted that the market is a “COVID super-spreader event.”
As of midday Sunday, more than 230 people had signed a petition titled “Stop 2021 Cambria Lodge Christmas Market.” Read’s appeal is on that site; he wrote in a Sunday email that “momentum is increasing..”
Market coordinator Mike Arnold notified Cambria Chamber of Commerce board president Mel McColloch by email on Friday to tell him that “the permit was appealed, so we will not be operating the Christmas Market for the public this year.”
McColloch said Saturday that Arnold told him the 2021 event will not include vendor booths.
As of Sunday, the Christmas Market website at CambriaChristmasMarket.com had not been updated with information about making the event only being open to hotel and dinner guests.
The website does note that tickets are “sold out” and that “at-the-door tickets are unavailable.”
“Don’t worry, you can still attend the event by making dinner reservations” for one of four seatings per night at the lodge or by booking a special overnight package,” the site says.
According to a desk clerk at the Cambria Pines Lodge on Saturday, it’s not uncommon for tickets to already be sold out by early November.
Asked what what happens to people who have already purchased Christmas Market tickets online, Winter referred The Tribune to Arnold, who had not replied to several requests for information as of Sunday morning.
This story was originally published November 7, 2021 at 9:35 AM with the headline "Cambria Christmas Market is closed to the public — again. This is why."
