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City Planning Commission Sizes Up La Entrada Project
It affects an area many call the “Gateway of Santa Barbara,” and Santa Barbara planning commissioners got a chance to share their thoughts Thursday about new plans for the La Entrada project, a 123-key hotel and timeshare project on Lower State Street.
No formal action was taken, but their recommendations will be passed on to City Manager Jim Armstrong, who ultimately is in charge of deciding whether the project conforms to previous plans for the property granted before that project went bankrupt two years ago. Santa Barbara Community Development Director Paul Casey will not make the determinations as previously thought, because he has a relative who works at DesignARC, the architectural firm handling La Entrada’s plans.
The project involves three parcels on the corners of Mason and State streets. The original project approved by the city in 2001 was for 62 timeshare condominiums, but the permits still apply if the city decides revisions to the plan “substantially conform” to the older ones.
City staff members addressed what substantial conformance actually means, and it requires that a handful of criteria be applied. Questions are asked, and include examining whether the project’s environmental effects are the same or lessened, and whether the project’s conditions of approval still will be met.
Project planner Allison De Busk said two of the three parcels had minor changes to their plans, and that the total square footage of the project would decrease but more rooms would be added.
Busk said the project had been granted more lenient setbacks in exchange for more public space and paseos in the original project. However, the second- and third-floor encroachments have decreased, she said, and are farther from the street.
Environmental issues also have been under scrutiny in determining whether the project would line up with permits. The main environmental issues at stake, De Busk said, are views and traffic.
A traffic study concluded that traffic would not increase by changing the units to hotels from timeshares, she said, and that effects to views would be no greater than the approved project.
After the project’s original developer, Bill Levy, filed for bankruptcy, the Mountain Funding financial group gained control and submitted revised plans for the site this summer.
“After meeting with numerous citizens and groups, and the city as well, we determined that a hotel was what the city wanted, along with some view corridors,” Mountain Funding’s Ray Wicken said.
Wicken maintains that the new project has 25,000 square feet less than the original project, and that its openness is much improved.
Barbara Lowenthal, a planning commissioner when the project was approved in 2001, was on hand to talk about her support for the revisions. Many of the areas they had taken issue with eight years ago, such as views, were addressed by the new plans, she said. The idea of timeshares also had been unpopular with residents.
Of the 12 people who spoke during the public comment period Thursday, only one was openly opposed to the project.
Planning Commissioner Sheila Lodge said she supported the project but expressed concern about the time line. “How can we ensure that this project will start construction ASAP, and that it will be finished?” she asked.
City Attorney Steve Wiley said the city can’t force a start to building, but that there are things it can do, such as setting strict conditions on when the project should start and end.
“We’re going to insist that that happen within its fixed time frame, and if it doesn’t, it’s then back to white space,” said Wiley, referring to the fact that the proposal’s permits would lapse and the project would return to “square one.”
“We’re all trying to avoid that,” he said.
Other commissioners also expressed concern that the project wouldn’t get built. Commission chairwoman Stella Larson supported the project, saying it conformed, but was particularly formidable in her statements to La Entrada’s backers.
“It’s gone on for years and years ... I would feel gypped and ripped if this was immediately put up for sale because it got a substantial conformance,” she said. “I will be furious if the California Hotel gets demolished because of neglect and because somebody didn’t do what they said they were going to do.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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» on 10.09.09 @ 07:32 AM
Does this project still call for the narrowing of State Street? Most of SB was upset that State St was going to be narrowed to one lane in each direction at the intersection of Cabrillo and State St. Is that still going to happen in this new version? It still seems like a terrible idea.
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» on 10.09.09 @ 08:16 AM
“Streets R Us” went all the way to the coastal commission to ask that Lower Sate Street where this project lies not be narrowed. We lost our appeal but it needs to be said now and over and over, beware of the consequences of narrowing a main artery into Santa Barbara. Consider the difficulty of ingress and egress of emergency vehicles; consider the impairment of traffic movement on State Street on the weekends, and, most of all, what would we do if an earthquake out in the Pacific created a Sunami condition on our shores? This will be the mother of all bullbouts!
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» on 10.10.09 @ 08:22 AM
Well they need to do SOMETHING down there…
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» on 10.11.09 @ 09:07 AM
So this is the new approach to real estate development and to get what you realy want in the end; planning and development by attrition.
You plan and propose a project that was only welcomed by the political pals of Bill Levy and the business and development community looking to bring in the bucks and at the same time teach that obstinent Fess Parker a lesson or two in “cooperation” with the City Council and staff!! (Lunch with Bill every day at the El Paseo Resteraunt on me guys)
A project with so many aspects of it which were vehemently opposed, including the senseless and dangerous narrowing of State street. Then you let it mire in financial purgatory (a condition that could easily have been forseen for “time-shares” before the ink on it’s approvals was dry) just as was the bankruptcy of Levy and company who borrowed millions from from everyone even his fellow members at the La Cumbre Country Club and who was being sued by a dozen creditors at the time.
You get all your lunch buddies at the City to forego enforcing the earthquake retrofitting of the landmark California Hotel, long overdue, while they are holding their breath, between bites of salad waiting for the marvelous time share project with its adequate parking and “pedestrian friendly” amenities. Aaahhh, behold, “Entrada de Santa Barbara”
Then after the project wallows and becomes an ugly undeveloped blight, a REAL blight, because the earlier description of that area by the redevelopment agency [same City Council wearing a different hat] as “blighted” to allow such a stupid project, was an inside joke.
Then you come back to the same City Council (only slightly different political hacks in office) and pitch a different equally ugly and senseless project on the basis that it is now an improvement over the existing undeveloped blight that has slowly evolved there.
You can now ignore the promises made to obtain approval from the Coastal Commission, that is, to create an equal amount of the transient and affordable housing elsewhere, as that being eliminated by the original project and then without blinking an eye, come up with something totally different.
This approach is a testement to the audacity and persistance of real estate developers who will always find some way to evade sound planning for a buck.
“Remember the Miramar” will become their cry to arms. Buy land, propose a massive but unattainable project. Once approved do nothing to actually build it except perhaps demolish some of the existing buildings and perhaps fence the ugly remnants with an equally ugly fence, then come back after a few years of fallowing and propose something else, without all the conditions and restrictions originally included to render it more suitable for sale to a new developer at a profit.
Even the staunchest preservationists will then succumb because, after all, whatever gets built at this point is better than the ugly blight that has been created while awaiting the fictitously planned, “pipe dream project” that was originally and ostensibly supposed to be to be built!
“Remember the Miramar” and hang in there boys persistance is money in the bank!
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