POINT ARENA, CA., 7/22/26 — The Point Arena City Council approved permits Tuesday for a 10-site campground on city-owned land at Arena Cove, then said it isn’t ready to build it.
The campground would run seasonally, May through October, on the Rockwall property at Arena Cove — seven tent sites, three city-owned tiny homes and a space for a campground manager’s RV. The city would demolish the existing 550-square-foot restroom and put up a 528-square-foot restroom and shower building in the same footprint. The parcel was once a manufactured home park and now holds winter boat storage, fishing gear and event parking, none of it permitted.
The city is the applicant, the owner and the permitting authority.
The council adopted Resolution 2026-15, approving the project’s mitigated negative declaration — the finding under state environmental law that a project won’t do significant environmental harm as long as the conditions attached to it are followed. It then adopted Resolution 2026-16, approving Coastal Development Permit 2025-04 and Use Permit 2025-01. Both passed 5-0 by council members Jeff Hansen, Jim Koogle and Anna Dobbins, Vice Mayor Dan Doyle and Mayor Barbara Burkey.
Neither resolution was in the council’s meeting packet. Staff put them on screen during the hearing and said the resolutions had been written but never reached the council. Staff asked the city attorney what to do.
The attorney checked whether the agenda had noticed the environmental action, said it had, clearing the council to act on it as presented. Staff added conditions to the coastal development and use permit as the hearing went on, at council members’ request. A 5-foot pedestrian walkway became an asphalt path for walkers and bicycles. The city would have to engineer a fix for the boat-wash drain. And after a question about the recycling center, a condition went in barring the city from decommissioning it until an alternative location is permitted.
Permitting may mean funds—but add the campground to a long list
The approval doesn’t commit Point Arena to building anything. The staff report says exactly that: approval of the environmental document and the permit “does not commit the City to undertaking the project.” But the permits are the condition on the money. Without them, the report says, the city can’t get construction funds from the California State Coastal Conservancy.
One council member said the city has more coming at it than it can carry: wastewater and sidewalk projects are both ahead, and staff is already loaded. The member said the campground isn’t needed now, then voted for the permit anyway — a safeguard, in case the timing later turned out to be right. Staff said a coastal development permit becomes vested once a single improvement is installed, after which it doesn’t expire and can sit unused indefinitely.
The next step, staff said, is a council meeting on whether the campground is feasible, how it would be managed, whether to pursue construction money and where it should rank against Point Arena’s other capital projects. That would be a business item, not another public hearing.
The city’s own record is inconsistent about where its planning money came from. The staff report says Point Arena was awarded a $485,000 grant in 2023 “from the State Coastal Commission” to pay for planning and permitting at the pier and the cove — not to build a campground. Elsewhere the same report describes the overall project as “funded by the State Coastal Conservancy.”
The Conservancy is the construction funder the city is counting on. It has asked Point Arena to apply this fall, the report says, so its board can consider paying for the campground.
An ad hoc council committee met every other month for a year and a half with residents, the fishing community and cove property owners, according to the staff report, and the city held one community meeting that drew more than 50 people. The council extended its meeting by 15 minutes, adopted both resolutions and adjourned at 9:11 p.m.
The decision can be appealed to the California State Coastal Commission, the permitting and regulatory agency, while the Conservancy is the funding arm. Both work under the California Natural Resources Agency.