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She Said, Z Said: Turn Downtown State Street into a Promenade
Z: You know what Santa Barbara needs?
She: Summer.
Z: Beyond that.
She: More cheap ethnic restaurants with that one perfect dish that makes your taste buds dance?
Z: Sure. But we also need to turn State Street into a pedestrian promenade.
She: OK. But wouldn’t all those people walking around in their special promenade clothing get run over by the cars?
Z: We’d close it off from Victoria to Haley streets. We would leave most if not all of the side streets open, like they do for the car show or the farmer’s market.
She: I was going to protest that I need my State Street to drive on, but it turns out that I don’t drive on State Street when I’m downtown.
Z: There’s no reason.
She: The only time I ever find myself driving there is purely by accident. I’m on State Street for some reason, and I forget to turn on to a side street before I get downtown.
Z: That’s also the only time I ever enjoy driving on State Street downtown, when I’m kind of spacey and don’t care how long it takes me to get to Paseo Nuevo.
She: So none of the locals would care if State Street was closed. We don’t use it as a real street already and people who do use it are still confused by all of those No Left Turn times.
Z: Plus, tourists aren’t exactly making long car trips down the eight-block section I’m talking about. It’s a beautiful area, and would be even better if we could enjoy the whole expanse for a stroll.
She: It seems like we’re closing it all the time anyhow. If there’s not a parade or a car show, then there’s a farmer’s market or a festival.
Z: And once it was closed permanently, it would be even easier to have more and more of those festivals and bands playing right in the center of town.
She: Plus, people wouldn’t complain about the traffic backing up because there would be only foot traffic.
Z: I can just hear the radio jingle, “This is Palminteri Is Primetime bringing you all foot traffic, all the time.”
She: Remember when we took the architectural tour of downtown, the guy told us that there used to be a central walking area through the middle of town. It was halfway between State Street and Anacapa Street, and wound through De la Guerra Plaza and El Paseo.
Z: Look at that. We’re advocating the retention of the city’s integrity. We’re historical preservationists.
She: I don’t really think leaving a dish in the sink for three weeks makes us historical preservationists.
Z: Still it would be cool to shut down State Street and plant some more trees. It also seems like closing off the street would be great for businesses. I know that the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica totally revitalized that area.
She: Do we own property downtown or something? Have you been holding out on me?
Z: No.
She: Then why the interest in this?
Z: Really, I just want more al fresco dining options.
She: Hmm. I love sitting outside but it always baffles me that the prime seating in most downtown Santa Barbara restaurants involves watching the traffic drive by.
Z: Exactly. If we close down the street, then restaurants could stick a bunch of tables all over the sidewalk, creating a great place for people watching and an even more vibrant nighttime scene.
She: Ah. I get it now. You want a beer garden.
Z: I’m just saying. Would it be so terrible if there were some outside dining options where cars weren’t driving by you all the time? And maybe there was a little beer available?
She: Don’t forget the margaritas. And those warm sunny nights that we usually have in the summer. Those would be good to have again. I bet we could get the city to shut down State Street in exchange for some warm summer nights.
Z: Yes, dear.
— What do you think about State Street Promenade? Share your thoughts with She and Z by e-mailing .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Comments
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» on 08.16.10 @ 06:20 AM
I love the idea of no cars on Downtown State Street. However, there are three things to deal with. Keep the electric shuttles that visitors love. Keep it open to bicyclists because the parallel side streets are full of cars parking on-street, turning into parking lots, and all the bicyclists’ destinations are on State (note all the full bike racks there). Third, some stores have no rear deliveries, so trucks would have to somehow access them, maybe before 8:00 AM?
Bikes and electric shuttles are quiet, don’t pollute, so somehow keep them. Maybe widen the mid-block pedestrian crosswalks. Remove the right-turn lanes and widen the sidewalks there too. It can be done and will be better.
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» on 08.16.10 @ 07:47 AM
Great idea! And I totally agree with comments by “quail”.
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» on 08.16.10 @ 08:34 AM
I think this is a great idea - long overdue. Santa Monica and San Diego both have good examples of how to do this and the benefits associated with going to a ped only downtown.
Wonder why this hasn’t gotten traction in the past - any idea?
-P
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» on 08.16.10 @ 08:58 AM
Issues:
1) Locals don’t cruise State St. but we DO use the parallel one-way streets… if State is closed then all that tourist traffic will gridlock Chapala and DLVina and Anacapa and SB Streets.
2) Combining foot traffic with electric bus and bicycle traffic is a sort of breath-taking proposal.
3) Panhandlers and take-your-picture-with-a-snake guys would proliferate.
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» on 08.16.10 @ 10:55 AM
I couldn’t agree more with this. In fact, I have been telling my friends this for years. Also as for the, “take-your-picture-with-a-snake guys would proliferate” issue, I wouldn’t mind seeing a little more of this kind of thing. Lord knows, the fake Spanish facade could use something to give it a little more character.
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» on 08.16.10 @ 10:56 AM
Anyone who believes closing State will hurt commerce just hasn’t been to Santa Monica’s 3rd St. Promenade. The revenue per square foot generated by stores there is AMAZING!
Merchants don’t like change but they will be shocked at the amount of foot traffic that would be generated by making this area closed to cars.
Other places that have been successful is State Street in Madison Wisconsin, closed off from the University to the Capital except for bus and bike traffic. Again, what a boon.
We should try it here.
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» on 08.16.10 @ 11:01 AM
In New York, Broadway is now closed permanently through Times Square. It’s really nice.
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» on 08.16.10 @ 11:22 AM
Believe it or not, the main opponents to this idea are the merchants along State Street. They think that people won’t be able to find their stores if they can’t drive past the front of them(?!?). They also claim that many of the store owners on Santa Monica’s 3rd St. promenade lost money when they closed it to traffic and wish it were open to traffic again. I don’t believe either of those arguments at all, and they’ve never provided any evidence to back them up. I think it’s really what the previous comment said - fear of change. And in the current economy, that fear has turned into full-scale panic, and the City is bending over backwards to help the merchants, so their opinion rules.
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» on 08.16.10 @ 11:12 PM
Yea great. Let’s just make Chapala and Anacapa more congested. Brilliantly stupid.
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» on 08.17.10 @ 08:51 AM
I think it’s worth a try. The city loses nothing but giving it a two-week trial and seeing how it works out.
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» on 08.17.10 @ 09:08 AM
The thing that made us think of this (again) was Fiesta. At first it seemed like the perfect week to try it out, since the streets are already mostly blocked off, but it’s obviously not a very good indicator of what it would normally be like. I like the two week trial, sometime in the middle of summer.
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» on 08.17.10 @ 11:43 AM
I’ve agreed with this for years, but maybe only from Canon Perdido to Ortega. During a car show when the State was closed off, I was amazed at the ease with which the pedestrians strolled from the stores on one side of State St to the other… it would be great for business. When people are on foot, they are going slower and much more apt to walk into more stores than they would if they were doing the drive by thing. Also, its good for people. Cars separate us, and walking next to each other encourages more engagement. Plus, it will get rid of that whole cruising thing that is so useless and pollutes the air with excess exhaust from slow moving cars. But I do get the congestion issue on the one-way side streets. Not sure how to solve that.
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» on 08.18.10 @ 10:22 AM
A great idea and one that should be implemented during the Summer months. How about we actually take advantage of our wonderful weather and allow people to enjoy the city - outside?
In addition you could add loads of kiosks/ tiny businesses and offer European like cafes. How nice would that be to sit in the street and enjoy the weather.
I never understood the point that people couldnt find the businesses… with the sign regulations in this town you cant find any biz from the street.
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» on 08.19.10 @ 08:52 AM
I totally agree with the promenade approach, but quintuple the electric busses, make them free. A one month trial is more possible than a two week trial simply from the stand point of logistics and foot traffic metric analysis. Sales analysis would identify the areas that see an improvement in traffic and help to ID the extent of the mall approach. Also, the test should be in the fall to work out any “kinks”, otherwise you are making too many changes during a peak period and that can have it’s own intrinsic problems. Let’s give it a try.
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» on 08.20.10 @ 06:56 AM
Would the quintipled electric bus traffic be routed on sidestreets or on State Street? Would the busses have a designated lane, and if so, how do we keep the pedestrian traffic out of the way? This may seem a trivial issue unless you’ve tried to navigate even a bicycle among the pedestrians and rental buggies along the beach in SB.
No one really knows how the closure would affect local businesses, but I do know that if I were an entrepreneur paying huge State Street rents I would not be very supportive of kiosks and food stands and such competing for customers by renting space from the city on the street in front of my storefront.
Also, comparing Santa Barbara with Santa Monica and NYC or Madison (places surrounded by large urban populations where lots of people live nearby and could travel to a walking mall on the spur of the moment) with an isolated place like Santa Barbara (where out-of-towners have to make specific travel plans to visit) does not seem useful.
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» on 08.20.10 @ 12:47 PM
Actually that is a well identified flaw. So you provide circular transportation on the parallel feeder roads. As for the kiosks I totally agree that it would be counter productive to have them.
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