Construction of the latest UC Santa Barbara residential project will begin next month, launching the university into long-term plans to increase on-campus student housing from 33 percent to 50 percent by 2025.
Crews are expected to break ground on the San Joaquin Apartments and Portola Dining Commons project in early January, and residents who live near the site — adjacent to the existing Santa Catalina Residence Halls at the corner of Storke and El Colegio roads — soon will be invited to question planners about what upcoming construction means for them.
The university hopes the San Joaquin project’s 178 apartments for 1,003 students, four live-in staff units and four faculty-in-residence apartments will be completed by late fall 2016 and occupied once it’s finished, according to UCSB spokesman George Foulsham.
He said those lunch meetings, dubbed “tabling events,” were tentatively scheduled for multiple Thursdays after the holiday break, an effort to keep communication lines open on housing projects that locals have been worrying about for years.
Gatherings will be informative, but no amount of concerns could stop the project, which was granted final OK by the California Coastal Commission in November as part of UCSB’s Long-Range Development Plan.
The Sierra Madre student apartment complex, currently under construction on Storke Road, will be ready for occupancy in fall 2015.
A third housing project named Mesa Verde is also in the works, but Foulsham said officials hadn’t yet nailed down specifics of construction.
The San Joaquin project will include four villages of three-story apartments and community buildings, which will be built on an empty parking lot north of Santa Catalina.
Two six-story towers along Storke Road with top-floor terraces will overlook a central plaza of courtyards, open space and a market with local and sustainable food options.
The Portola Dining Commons will be built on the east end of the site along El Colegio Road, featuring a large outdoor patio with mountain views overlooking a pool.
Three new surface parking lots of 216 total parking spaces were also planned.
The development plan anticipates adding 5,000 more UCSB students on campus by 2025 — with space to house them all — and accounts for an additional 45 faculty housing units on West Campus Mesa and 125 units on the Devereux site.
Redeveloped Storke, Santa Ynez and West Campus Apartments neighborhoods will serve a mix of faculty, staff, graduate students and students with families.
The university plans to mitigate the population influx by adding bikeways, footpaths, transit lines and small-scale streets to link neighborhoods from main campus to Isla Vista.
Anyone with questions or concerns about the San Joaquin project were encouraged to attend upcoming lunch meetings or to contact project managers directly at projects@housing.ucsb.edu.
— Noozhawk staff writer Gina Potthoff can be reached at gpotthoff@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.