Pismo Beach Pier restaurant forced to close due to city zoning error
A one-of-a-kind Pismo Beach restaurant is heading for closure this year, but it’s not because of a lack of business — it’s due to a mistake by the city.
Sunsets at Pismo Beach is unlike most businesses in the popular tourist town.
Located on Pismo Pier in an Airstream trailer, Sunsets is the third restaurant venue owned by restaurateur Brian Appiano — a number that has been recently reduced first by the closure of the Rib Line in Grover Beach due to prolonged street construction, and now by the unexpected closure of Sunsets.
His remaining restaurants are The Switch and the Rib Line in San Luis Obispo.
“I had a surgery in October, had complications, and so I was hospitalized a little while and I had home health care coming for a while, and then the Grover Beach thing happened,” Appiano said. “I’m thinking, ‘From here on out, it’s sunny skies, right?’ so if things happen in threes, this is the third whammy.”
Appiano said he was confused when he got the news from the city that his business’ lease for the city-owned Airstream trailer on the pier was not going to be renewed — mostly because his latest application to extend the lease for two years was on track to being accepted.
Sunsets at Pismo has been open on the pier since the city put out a request for proposals to lease one of a handful of Airstream trailers lining the pier for a visitor-serving vendor in 2019, Appiano said.
Other trailers house city-operated visitor kiosks and an older Pismo Beach business, Sheldon’s Bait Shack, which doesn’t face the same zoning issue as the part of the pier closer to land.
However, an unnoticed clerical error by the city dating back more than 20 years has led to the unexpected end of Sunsets’ business, he said.
“I don’t want to make it sound like we’re upset or mad at the city. We’re grateful and thankful for the time we’ve had out here,” Appiano said. “We’re just kind of feeling like it was kind of weird how it all happened — they didn’t put it on the agenda because we would have went down and spoke on our behalf.”
Zoning issue prevents business from operating
The unexpected closure of Sunsets at Pismo started with the Aug. 19 City Council meeting.
At that meeting, the City Council discussed whether or not the business would be permitted to keep operating in the city’s Airstream trailer, which was added in 2018 as part of the Pier Plaza Upgrade project.
But unknown to the council at the time, the piece of beach that the Airstream sits above on the pier was zoned as open space in 2003, meaning a business is not allowed to operate there.
According to the meeting staff report, at some point between 2003 and 2006, the General Plan designation for that piece of the pier was changed from open space to resort commercial, which allows for a visitor-serving business.
Sunsets at Pismo initially signed a three-year lease on the trailer after winning the city’s request for proposals for the space in 2019, and it renewed its agreement with the city for a yearlong lease twice following the initial lease’s expiration.
According to the staff report, over the past five years, Pismo Beach has collected more than $217,000 from the business from licensing fees, along with 2% of gross sales revenue paid to the city as part of the lease agreement, fully covering the city’s initial $151,458 expense of buying the trailer.
More recently, the city put out a new request for proposals for the property in July, for which Appiano said he and five other businesses applied.
Pismo Beach city manager Jorge Garcia said this was when city staff noticed a clerical error on the city’s behalf that made the operation of a business on the pier unlawful without the city ever realizing it.
“Sometime between 2003 and 2006, an old map with a draft version of zoning on the Pier showed the first diamond as being Resort Commercial zoned, however, that was never finalized and it is zoned open space,” Garcia said in an email. “When the city put together the plan to have the airstream trailers on the Pier following the Pier rebuilding and the Pier Plaza improvements, it relied on that zoning map, which we know now to be erroneous.”
Garcia said when the city noticed the mistake in zoning, staff brought the issue of whether or not to make a concession on the restaurant to the City Council on Aug. 19.
At the meeting, City Council members showed hesitancy to end the lease on the business but ultimately voted 3-1 to cancel the latest request for proposals and terminate the lease, with Mayor Ed Waage voting against the motion and Councilmember Stacy Inman absent.
With the City Council’s vote, the pier’s zoning will be corrected to open space, and the Airstream trailer will be auctioned off following the business’ closure.
Councilmember Marcia Guthrie said she wasn’t in favor of “subsidizing a business for parking,” as other Pismo Beach businesses must either pay for or have some form of parking, which the trailer naturally lacks.
“My opinion isn’t based on anything having to do with the personality or the entity that’s leasing this space,” Guthrie said during the meeting. “When we originally made this decision, we had incorrect zoning, and I think some other information was not accurate.”
Councilmember Scott Newton said for him, it came down to equal treatment of businesses, even if the error was on the city’s part.
“My concern is, if this was private property, and the zoning was identified as being incorrect, I don’t know if we’d be as flexible, and so I’m not comfortable giving special rules for government (property),” Newton said. “Just because we control it doesn’t mean that we should grant ourselves more authority than we would grant a private-held property.”
What’s next for Rib Line owner?
Appiano said he’s spent the past few weeks trying to organize the end of the business at the end of October and preparing for his next steps.
The Pismo Beach resident said he’ll miss being able to use the business to run fundraisers for local causes such as youth sports teams and making auction item donations to causes such as the restoration of the Chapman Estate.
He said he’s trying to make sure that his staff at Sunsets can land at The Switch, the Rib Line or as part of Rib Line’s catering team, and he will focus all of his attention on the San Luis Obispo restaurants for now.
But Sunsets at Pismo will always have a special place in his heart as his personal favorite restaurant he’s owned, Appiano said.
“You don’t get to have a location like this — this is a unique situation, and we were so excited when we won the original RFP back in 2019,” Appiano said. “When I think about it, I get pretty emotional.”
This story was originally published August 28, 2025 at 12:00 PM with the headline "Pismo Beach Pier restaurant forced to close due to city zoning error."
