It took 3 years to open quirky new SLO County garden art shop. Here’s what was going on

Bill Bookout’s Cambria Garden Art store has finally opened in a historic Main Street building, three years after his quest began to get the county’s approval.

He soft-opened the quirky and eccentric shop at 1561 Main St. on Oct. 2 — coincidentally but appropriately aligning with October’s equally quirky Cambria Scarecrow Festival.

The store is adjacent to Vineyard Church’s Re-Create Thrift Store.

During the long wait and his negotiations with San Luis Obispo County officials about the numerous fixes and additions they required, Bookout wound up changing the business’ focus and name.

What began in 2021 as Bookout’s plan to put a combo surf-and-bicycle-rental shop in the town’s mid-village area has since morphed into Cambria Garden Art. He bought the property in January 2021, he said.

“Cambria already has a great surf shop and bike rentals at 4015 West St.,” he said of his Cambria Surf Shop. Bookout has owned and operated that store for nearly two years.

Originally, he intended to open what is now Cambria Garden Art a few months later.

It didn’t quite work out that way.

“Different code-enforcement officers and planners kept finding new things they wanted me to fix or more drawings they needed to approve,” Bookout said.

A lengthy flurry of emails and other contacts with officials and others document what he described as an ever-changing litany of repairs the county told him he had to make at the historic 800-square-foot building.

It began with unpermitted concrete work and the height of a fence, extended into “pavers, interior plumbing and interior wall finishes,” according to an email he received early in the process. Some of the work needed “to be drawn up by a licensed professional,” another email said.

It went from there, ending up late this summer with minor “repair of electrical, plumbing and mechanical in the existing bathroom.”

It was a conundrum for Bookout: He needed Code Enforcement’s approval before he could get the county Planning Department’s OK, and he needed that before he could get his business license and the official go ahead to open for business.

He often balked at adhering to the new requirements.

Last September, the frustrated entrepreneur even threatened to sue the county for $1 million because of the delays and to recover fines he’d had to pay.

In the end, Bookout weathered numerous county personnel reassignments, regulations and requirements, he said.

The Tribune reached out to various county staffers and elected officials during the process for clarification on what had slowed the project down.

“I understand that it simply took a while for it to meet the requirements of the building code (and) that staff on this project did change in the course of it,” Supervisor Bruce Gibson told The Tribune.

Gibson’s district includes Cambria.

“I don’t know to what extent (if any) that resulted in delays,” he added. “There are some requirements of code that need professional design — obviously the goal there is safety. “

What you’ll find at the North Coast’s new garden-art store

Cambria Garden Art is one of several shops in the small, coastal town that carry decorative items for outdoor areas (and some indoor ones, too). That makes it a veritable shopping mecca for people with landscaping that needs accents.

While Bookout does still carry some surfboards and other sports goods at Cambria Garden, most of his diverse stock there spans from gnomes, concrete statuary and fairies, shiny aliens and a space ship, turtles, lots of nautical items, wind chimes, succulents and other plants.

Because the building is so small, much of the stock is displayed in front of it, behind a high, black metal fence.

Then there’s the showstopper: a growing herd of sheet metal dinosaurs and other animals that can loom up to 9 feet tall.

Larger ones are on the way, Bookout said.

His Cambria Surf Shop also carries some garden art and other products, but at Cambria Garden Art, “we have everything garden from the other store, but times five,” the inveterate collector said with a smile.

Besides the garden art, the new store sells “antiques, art and gifts, a lot of minerals, fossils, jade and crystals,” Bookout said. Those are the current emphasis of his fledgling website, still being developed.

“We wish to support our local artists throughout our business,” he added.

One large piece of artwork does just that, showing prominently on the north side of the property, a long, marine-life mosaic done by Tom Snyder of Cambria. He taught the craft for decades in Fresno, he said.

Cambria shop’s building has long history

The historic structure that took so long to meet the county’s changing requirements likely dates back to the 1880s when it was used as a schoolhouse, Bookout said.

Through the decades, other businesses — such as The Video Kid rental shop and a previous garden-art business — have occupied the structure.

There seem to be various historical versions about how the building came to be on Main Street, including reports from local historians Dawn Dunlap, Debbie Soto and Melody Coe.

Decades ago, the last North Coast structure that bore the name Washington School was likely moved to the site from the China Gulch area of Hearst Ranch, probably along with a teacherage. That’s a building provided for teacher housing close to a school.

Rancher Ervin Smithers and Loren Williams were perhaps the ones that moved the schoolhouse.

Smithers told Coe that the men divided the structure or structures into three sections, divvying them up between a local church and a real estate office, both nearby. The last segment apparently became all or part of the building from which Bookout is now selling garden art and other items.

According to Soto, her husband’s second cousin, Jimmy Soto, attended Washington School. He’s told family members for years that the school building and teacherage were moved to 1561 Main St..

In her book, “Glimpses of a Bygone Era: One-Room Schoolhouses Along the Hearst Ranch,” Soto details the history of what were probably several different buildings labeled Washington School through June 1946, when the last one closed.

That schoolhouse was subsequently moved. She said the current building appears similar to photos she’s seen of the school and teacherage.

More about Cambria Garden Art

For details about Cambria Garden Art, 1561 Main St., call 805-441-5792 or go to the store’s website and Yelp listing. Other social media sites are in the works, Bookout said.

For now, he plans to have the new shop open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays.

Bookout also owns two surf shops in Pismo Beach and one in Avila Beach. He and his wife, Vicki, live in Arroyo Grande.

Employee Mark Ludwick will help customers, rack up the sales and mind the store when the boss is at his other shops.