Architect Detty Peikert Draws Attention On, To Housing Issues

» steve cushman on 06.29.09 @ 03:41 AM

Design by referendum is never a good idea. With the current ballot measure, should there be another major earthquake, we could not rebuild the Arlington or Granada Theaters,the Lobero Theater, the Mission or the Courthouse. That just makes no sense to me.

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» Change MIssion Creek's name on 06.29.09 @ 05:37 AM

...to “Denial,” for surely, that is what runs through the town and much of the South Coast. Detty Peikert is a true visionary and SB needs more like him. Those like “Earl Meyers” laughably want to think that population can be controlled by limiting housing, caring not a fig that growth denied here just pushes it elsewhere. There was a French queen who had the same “let them eat cake” attitude. It is simply not fair, moral or just, and state law agrees, for one city to push its share of growth to other parts of the state.

If Mr. Meyers wants to control population growth, Planned Parenthood is a great organization to support.

One thing he and I do agree on: the “if you don’t grow, you die” mantra is something espoused only by the ignorant and short-sighted. But until we get a handle on the national and global factors fueling the lemming-like growth of the human species, we are forced to deal with the realities of population growth as well as possible. And that means no one, no city, should get an exemption.

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» east side resident on 06.29.09 @ 06:57 AM

A few years ago, Peikert was hired by an Orange County developer to destroy five perfectly good homes on Laguna Street in order to build an overly dense and out of character project of luxury condos. The neighbors fought very hard, and for once the planning commission listened. Three of the homes were saved, and the project’s whole look was changed to be more compatible with the neighborhood (and the saved homes sold for the highest prices, of course). The thing is still an ugly embarassment to the neighborhood, but better than it would have been. Interesting that Piekert doesn’t mention that debacle when touting his wonderful vision of service to the community. The neighbors’ protests probably made him a lot of money.

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» Paved Paridise on 06.29.09 @ 10:05 AM

“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got tell it’s gone. They paved paradise put up high-density housing.”

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» SMALL TOWN SB on 06.29.09 @ 10:37 AM

IF YOU WANT TO PRESERVE SMALL TOWN SANTA BARBARA, CHECK OUT
http://WWW.VOTETEVIS.COM

THIS GUY WILL NOT SELL OUT ONCE ELECTED TO CITY COUNCIL.

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» AN50 on 06.29.09 @ 01:11 PM

Mr. Peikert may be a visionary, though I am at odds with the vision he alludes to in public. However, he is also a professional architect and has much more qualifications than most of his worst critics when it comes to building design. Where he goes off the rails along with most of the housing advocacy in this town is the concept of urban infill. Simply developing a left over piece of property to its highest use may not be in the surrounding neighborhoods best interest. This has been the root of much of the hostility between the development community and the general public. Government has played a decisive role in playing the two sides against each other in order to extract the most revenue for any given development. For Mr. Peikert and the housing advocacy to move forward and do what is right they need to design to a grand vision of what SB should look and feel like. Here is where things get dicey.
Much of the public’s perception of Santa Barbara is inherently skewed. This perception is rooted in a desire to see Santa Barbara as a small town, which for better or worse it will never be unless there is a catastrophic decline in human population. This is a big problem because if you cannot see your city for what it really is you are not going to apply the correct planning tools to deal with the needs of the community. Santa Barbara can grow quite a bit and still be a great place to live. It can add many thousands of people with little impact on infrastructure and services (may even be a net benefit in getting commuters of the regional transport system. But to do so you need to plan for it and you need to be realistic about the effects. Right now the city is growing, albeit very slowly, but infrastructure and services are actually being reduced (yes, putting in a bulb out to slow traffic, reduces street capacity and adds to overall reduction in infrastructure efficiency) thus the population is seeing things get much worse than say a fast growing area like north San Diego County or Riverside where infrastructure is always developed ahead of growth rather than as a reaction to it. This aids in the hostility toward developers which in turn allows the city to extort more from them in fees and give aways and thus forces the cost onto the market. Remember our market prices here are not only a function of supply and demand but also a reflection of the tremendous cost of doing anything here (base loading). This high cost of building in turn forces developers to seek the highest use of the property.  Ok see where we are going? We can develop that small lot in the neighborhood for like uses, but then the government is going to have to give the property developer a concession on the fees and perks in order to improve the marketability of the end product. This can be made up where highest use is acceptable and that is another dicey area, downtown.
Santa Barbara is blessed with one of the few downtowns in southern California where you actually have a downtown. This is lost on a suburban population of small minded people who see a downtown not as a cultural, commercial, financial, residential and governmental “center” but as nothing more than an extension of the shopping mall. The city has actually lost its status as a commercial/financial center by forcing major office occupiers to go elsewhere (ever wonder why the city’s flagship bank headquarters in Goleta?). The city sold out its commercial core to be a trendy tourist shopping center, which may be exciting for all the pop cult crowd but leaves one wondering what’s so charming about it.
So the solution is, stop calling the city what it is not, a charming small town. Acknowledge the historic place SB once had and can be as the center of culture, commerce, finance, etc… and allow the downtown to develop a true core with a variety of uses and functions rather than the 9-5 shopping center. Place buildings where they belong. Peikert’s Citrus village would be most comfortable on the outskirts of the SB’s downtown core rather than the parking lot of a 7-11 in suburban Goleta. That means accepting taller buildings downtown not shorter ones.  It means when building on an infill lot allowing the developer cost breaks so that buildings of similar scale and use can affordably be done.  It also means the people have got to come to grips with reality. Calling developers names because they are doing their job is just plain stupid. But then so is developing a property without considering its neighbors.

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» Richard Foster on 06.29.09 @ 04:32 PM

Mr Peikert is a developer, as such he has a right to seek to gain the maixmum he can under the city rules.  Similarly the public has a right to oppose development if they do not feel it conforms.
Open dialogue, not name calling is what is called for.
All development is done under zoning restrictions.  One city says only two stories, others say twenty.  Get involved in the political process if you want a say in how Santa Barbara and Goleta might look in twenty years.
Secondly get involved in the hearings when a project is coming up.
I filed the appeal of the Citrus Village project for a number of reasons stated elswhere, however Detty Peikert and I have had several pleasant conversations looking for common ground.  Talk, not name calling, is what we need.
This article does have several red herrings though,  Suppose all 20,000 people who commute drive alone?  That is 40,000 car trips per day.  Half of them to the north where there is limited congestion.  Now suppose we provide housing for all of them?  That would generate 8 trips per day per household or 160,000 trips the majority of which would be on city streets.  Is this an improvement?
We probably have a job imbalance as much as a housing imbalance.  It may not be that Santa Barbara has failed to provide housing but that Ventura and Santa Maria have failed to provide high paying jobs.  Who would commute to Santa Barbara an hour each way if they could make the same wages elsewhere?  Is not the flourescent light in all cubicles the same?
As for zoning arguements, a zoning of 12.3 is a max.  But what if there is a creek through the property?  What if the ground is at the maximum angle of repose, is it still 12 units?  Are twelve 600 sq. ft studios the same as twelve 2,500 sq. ft. condos?
As to height limnits, why not seventy feet?  Or one hundred?  It is all a part of a dialouge within our community.  Get involved and be heard.
Simply building denser is no guarantee of affordability.  Look at the major urban centers of the world.
The biggest danger to Santa Barbara and Goleta is that it is so attractive, that billionaires are interested in developing here.  They have the resources to fund candidates in local elections and sway the ballot,  They can afford to hire lawyers and litigate against the local communities until they bankrupt the cities to their will.  The only thing stopping rapacious development is a vilgilant populace who care enough to be involved.  However the only thing putting a roof over your head was also a developer.
It a struggle to seek a balance.  But make it civil, please!

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» LongTimeGoletaResident on 06.29.09 @ 05:22 PM

What Mr. Peikert fails to represent is the history of this peice of real estate, (Citrus Village). The property was originally zoned shopping center just like the 711 property next door. Then the County of SB decided to use Isla Vista redevelopment money, to purchase the land for the Community Housing Corporation, (CHC), to develop a 100% low income affordable 16 unit apartment. The property was re-zoned by the County to accomadate CHC. This re-zoning did present a problem for the owner of the 711 shopping center in that the County wanted to down-zone the 711 property to make legal the conversion of shopping center property to residential. The County also vacated the Calle Real Road right of way, (approx. 30 feet by 143 feet), and donated to the CHC so the El Encanto Apartments would have enough land. By the way Mr Peikert was the architect for CHC. After much protest by Goletans, the El Encanto Apertments were not built, due to funding and other legal problems. Isla Vista wanted their redevelopment money back, and the Grand Jury investigated why the County would use Isla Vista redevelopment money to fund a project in northwest Goleta. Somehow without this property going up for sale, Mr. Peikert suddenly has ownership, and wants to develop three stories and as high a density as possible, to maximize profits. Why was this property sold to Mr. Peikert without going on the market to the highest bidder. There are rumours that someone would have paid substantially more than Mr. Peikert did. Being the owner was the CHC, a NON-PROFIT should they have been required to publicly advertise this proprty for sale? Rezoning this property to shopping center would bring 711 back into compliance with zining laws as well as bring much neede services to El Encanto Heights area of Goleta.

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» AN50 on 06.29.09 @ 07:08 PM

Sorry sbnative, anyone with common sense stays out of politics. The project you speak of is exactly the kind of infill that we don’t need. I would have preferred they stick the affordable units on top of the Granada garage and try to hide the hideous façade of the Granada Theater fly tower (the ugliest building in the whole city and after the height limits drop to 40 feet, it will be there for everyone to see for the next 100 years). Instead they build the cheapest bug guts thing they can and slap it across the street from the homeless camp, oops I mean library. I guess it goes along with that ole small town charm.

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» sbreader on 06.30.09 @ 01:54 AM

To continue my debate with AN50 and make my point about his commentary here in general. His perspective is not one shared by the majority of voters in the City of SB. My perspective is based on a lifetime lived here, communicating with likeminded and engaged lifetime or at least very longtime residents and voters.

AN50: “SB can grow quite a bit and still be a great place to live.”

sbreader: SB can grow very little and maintain our quality of life as one of the best urban areas in the world to live and that is what I want to preserve for the rest of my life and that of my young child.

AN50: “It can add many thousands of people with little impact on infrastructure and services.”

sbreader: This is patently false and instead of listening to this blogadrivel, we will soon have an expertly prepared EIR for the City General Plan Update that will explain, using evidence and not drivel, the true facts of any proposed significant level of new development in the City limits.

There is a relatively small group engaged here but I sometimes hope that it may one day offer a true local forum to engage the public. Richard Foster’s perspective is correct. We need an engaged public. In just a couple of months we will have one of the most important elections of my lifetime here. Not just the height Initiative but also a majority of the City Council who will then soon after, vote on the new General Plan. My bigget concern is lack of voter turnout. I know if the people who live here and vote turnout, my perspective and not that of people like AN50 will prevail.

We shall soon see.

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» concerned citizen on 06.30.09 @ 04:24 AM

Zoning regulations are in place for the piece of land.  Mr. Peikert said “If the land is zoned and approved at 12.3 units originally, then we should be able to have the reasonable expectation of building within those guidelines,”  Why bother with zoning if the community can whine and the elected officials ignore the regulations that they have already approved.  Elected officials need to enforce the law not roll over everytime a citizen has a complaint.  If citizens don’t like the zoning then participate in the process to re-zone an area.

The article states that “it has taken 5 years to get to this point in development.”  This kind of delay is why building is so costly here and why we can’t house our low income families.

Why not just come out and say you don’t want to house our low income residents instead of using stalling tactics to prevent construction of affordable rental housing.

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» joer on 06.30.09 @ 07:16 AM

All this talk about our need to build housing to accommodate our own working people - and the “housing shortage” - totally ignores a reality that changes the whole discussion:

Santa Barbara is one of the most desirable places to live in the world, and hordes clamor to live here.

Unless we invent some kind of restriction that can effectively do otherwise, the new housing we build here is much more likely to be occupied by new residents from other places than existing ones (including our “internal” growth).

The discussion should center around the question of whether we have some kind of obligation - moral, social, economic or otherwise - to provide housing for these new residents. And also whether housing imbalances are simply inevitable in places as desirable as ours and can’t be “cured” by building “up”, “out” or otherwise.

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» Richard Foster on 06.30.09 @ 02:48 PM

It is as illogical to say we have to build affordable housing for commuters, as it is to say we need to force business’ to pay enough in wages for all of their employees to live here.
If a business wishes to locate in one of the worlds more desireable locales they should develop a business plan that allows them to compensate employess well enough that they, like the owner and top management, do not need to commute.
The best way to develop subsidized housing is to build it for single people only.  If you couple up, you are out.  This allows home grown kids to get a start, but it avoids the welfare mentality of entitlement to a lifetime of housing, which then also guts local tax rolls by it’s inherrent price cap.

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» AN50 on 07.01.09 @ 07:07 AM

Charis, you make a great statement for the “small town charm” argument. You are one of the few who actually sees the difference between the physical environment and what people perceive. The problem I have with that is it is a perception and that is highly subjective. There are many small (physically) towns with loads of charm that have taller buildings. What I have been trying (in vain) to get across to people in this town is that charm you speak of is not a function of physical environment, but the people, types of business and quality of life people who live here have. Since SB already has taller buildings than the current height limit and those buildings give SB’s downtown a quality lacking in most so cal cities (a dense core) one has to wonder what makes killing that charming? You have a rampant vagrancy problem, gangs and vandalism and a crumbling infrastructure designed to torture most visitors so where is the charm? I don’t see where Pete’s taco stand located in a single story tin shack with a red tile roof façade is charming, particularly with the local hobos urinating on the side of it.
It is very interesting that you mention SB’s tourist industry. Once SB decided to say F you to its financial and commercial businesses and become a Disneyland with red tile roofs, its revenue has been tied to a single industry with little margin for business cycles in that industry. Take a look at the revenue streams for SB and Goleta. Both down but SB is way down and the city is now running an $11 million deficit. Goleta, which has a broad cross section of businesses and industries, is in much better shape. Further there is no need to adopt a Disneyland preservation ordinance to keep the tourists coming there, also Goleta enjoys a much higher quality of life.
You might want to think about this. I know you and the rest of the no-nothing-nevers live in mortal fear of over development. And granted after forty years of little or no growth, even adding an awning to Pete’s Taco shack seems like a major development; but your fear is driving a very irrational, suffocating and destructive set of limits and restrictions at a time when no community, city or state can afford it. I also know that the real estate, development, housing advocacy and architectural community is responsible for fanning those irrational fears you people have. I have tried in vain to warn these communities that they need to be more sensitive to the outlying neighborhoods rather than trying to put the biggest thing they could get approved anywhere they can.
In order for SB to become financially viable, it must bring its financial and commercial businesses back and that means taller office buildings down town. It means cleaning up the vagrancy and vandalism and getting tough with gangs (zero tolerance). It means accepting reality and not immersing yourself in a delusion that your city is something it is not. It means some neighborhoods are OFF limits to large scale developments and it means upgrading the infrastructure (mainly transportation) to at least accommodate current population loads. It also means we have got to work together and stop this wall building cat fighting polarization which has done little in the last 30 years but destroy any sense of community we once had.
Building a 6 story office building in downtown will not destroy charm the city does not have. Forcing buildings to be shorter will actually make the often maligned Chapala One project more common not less. I don’t expect you to understand that, but perhaps you could take Mr. Peikert’s offer up and visit with him and get a professional explanation of how going up prevents carpeting your city with uniform elevation structures. Keep in mind as well that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and for every person who thinks a taller building is ugly there is another person who sees it as beautiful. Take the subjective perceptions out of the charm equation and stick to the stuff that really matters, the people.

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» Supply and Demand on 07.02.09 @ 01:35 PM

Just because you build it does not mean they will come.  Building a 6 story office building in downtown may not destroy charm but do not expect financial and commercial businesses to form a line to take over the space.  We have plenty of office space empty right now, partly because of the economy but the economy is not the reason we lost so many companies over the last decades.  Companies leave SB because the cost of doing business here is just too high.  Why have a business in Santa Barbara or California when other states and counties offer amazing incentives, tax breaks and hard dollar handouts to attract and keep businesses.
Santa Barbara is a life style city.  A great place of doctors, lawyers, accountants, small financial companies where ‘workers’ make $200K+ a year.  But there is a limited number of these businesses that cam be supported as they typically serve the local community.  We do get technology start-ups from UCSB but as soon as they get large they either leave or only leave a small footprint in Santa Barbara. 

The City and County appears to favor being a tourist town where they can get sales and bed tax revenue.  Of course the big issue with this is the minimum wage employees it attracts.    Does the city/county really care about housing?  I might be overly cynical but I believe all they really care about is this years revenue and how to pay their own salaries and retirement benefits.  They care about getting the state funding for affordable housing.  They care about getting the builders fees for affordable housing.  They do not care about monitoring people living in affordable housing to see if they are in compliance and freeing up the units for others.

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