Hometown News Since 1916 Making Communities Better Through Print.™ VOL. CIV, NO. VIII
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2020
atascaderonews.com • $1.00 • WEEKLY
EDUCATION
DOWNTOWN
Science Bowlers
City Asking for More Public Input on ECR Narrowing Four workshops scheduled for March By LUKE PHILLIPS luke@atascaderonews.com ATA S C A D E R O — Atascadero City Manager Rachelle Rickard announced at a City Council meeting Feb. 25 that the City will be conducting another round of workshops to gather more public input on the City’s proposal to institute traffic-calming measures along El Camino Real in the downtown area, including narrowing the street to one lane and adding diagonal parking in the middle of the street. The City hosted several well-attended workshops on the topic last year and, according to Rickard, that public input was taken into account and changes to the project were made based on the feedback. The Atascadero News reached out to the city’s manager’s office to ask for clarification on the exact nature of those changes but didn’t receive an answer in time for publication. “This is where we’re looking at the potential of narrowing
From left, Atascadero Middle Schoolers Charlotte Jones, Isabella Pecharich, Mya Nielson, Mia Nunez, Anna Lilly competed in the Central Coast Regional Science Bowl at Cal Poly Saturday. Contributed photo
AMS sends all-girl team to regional competition By LUKE PHILLIPS luke@atascaderonews.com SAN LUIS OBISPO — Three teams from San Luis Obispo County competed alongside 13 other teams from all over California at the National Science Bowl’s Central Coast Regional Middle School Science Bowl at Cal Poly Saturday. Local teams included those from Templeton Middle School, SLO Classical Academy and Atascadero Middle School which boasted the only all-girl team at the competition. The competition includes teams of four facing
off in two eight-minute halves with a two-minute halftime at which time a fifth member can be subbed in. The students hit a buzzer and have five seconds to answer questions in categories including life science, physical science, earth and space science, energy, general science and math. “These questions are high-level, very challenging,” said Sarah Iba, a seventh-grade science teacher at Atascadero Middle School. “My Cal Poly tutors who were helping us study often commented that they hadn’t seen this content until college! The math questions are crazy — very difficult to solve in the five-second time limit.”
CITY
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Z Villages to Build Shipping Container Development Downtown complex will be home to beer garden, custom hat shop, Negranti Creamery
Trades three small spots for one full billboard
ATASCADERO — The City of Atascadero is changing its approach to enticing motorists off the freeway with a new billboard contract that will concentrate advertising efforts to one billboard near Curbaril Avenue. The City’s previous contract with billboard owners Cliff Branch and Jim Smith gave them 14-foot by 18-foot spaces on three billboards located along the city’s stretch of Highway 101. Under the new contract, the City will get an entire 14-foot by 40-foot billboard, located at 8981 La Lina Avenue, for $4,200 in yearly lease and maintenance costs. The billboard is located on land owned by Donald and Linda Messer. “There are a lot of benefits to advertising for the city,” City
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BUSINESS
City Changes Billboard Strategy By LUKE PHILLIPS luke@atascaderonews.com
There’s also a “toss-up” question where all eight competitors can buzz in and try to answer. There are no penalties for wrong answers but if a person gets a question wrong, the other team has five seconds to hit their buzzer and provide the correct answer. Each correct answer earns the team four points and the chance to answer a bonus question worth 10 points. “There’s quite a bit of gamesmanship involved,” Iba said, adding that the game also has some interesting penalties such as “the blurt.” “If you blurt out the answer before the moderator calls on you, the other team automatically gets the
Manager Rachelle Rickard said. “We want to get people off of the freeway and into our businesses and into our restaurants.” The previous billboard agreement juxtaposed advertisements for the city’s events and zoo with advertisements for unrelated businesses including breweries and marijuana dispensaries, providing a context that was not always ideal, Rickard said, calling the new agreement “a very good thing for the city, a very good thing for our residents.” “This will allow us to control the message a lot better,” she said. “This allows us more freedom.” The new agreement will not only keep the City’s messages free from accidental association with unrelated businesses, it will also prohibit the billboard owners from adverCONTINUED ON PAGE A10
LOCAL NEWS
By LUKE PHILLIPS luke@atascaderonews.com ATASCADERO — An efficient and stylish new commercial development will bring three new businesses to downtown Atascadero later this year. Z Villages Developments Co., Inc., the company behind the La Plaza project, announced last week that they will be building the new development in the empty lot at 6090 El Camino Real, next to the Colony Market & Deli, using a unique and novel construction method. Made out of shipping containers — also known as cargo containers or seatrains — the new development will be home to three businesses including Ancient Owl Beer Garden, Stellar and S.U.N Hat Co. and Negranti Creamery. Z Villages representative Zoe Zappas said that the unique construction method will mean that the development will be constructed very quickly and should be finished by the end of the year.
AGRICULTURE
A shipping container development designed by RAD LAB of San Diego, will soon be installed in downtown Atascadero and will be home to a beer garden, a custom hat shop and Negranti Creamery. Contributed illustration
“The cool thing about pre-fab and these shipping containers, what it offers is it shortens the construction time by almost half,” Zappas said. “So you can be working on all of your ground utility improvements and also simultaneously have your shipping containers manufactured off-site so that all you have to do is, with a crane, drop these things onto their paths and then you’re good to go. So we’re pretty excited to test that out.” Although most Z Villages developments contain a housing element to
SPORTS
go along with the commercial aspects, Zappas said that the company preferred to fast track this project rather than going through the lengthy process of getting the housing element approved by the City. “For Z Villages, our goal is to provide more housing to California,” she said. “We’re in a huge deficit for providing housing as a state which is why rental prices are so high, why home prices are so high. So we like to do residential with every project we do, but with this project
ENTERTAINMENT
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WEATHER
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