I was a member of the Old Town Goleta Design Guidelines Committee that met once a week for nine months in 1998. Also in 1998, along with professional historian Fermina Murray, I received a grant from The Fund for Santa Barbara and co-founded the Old Town Goleta Culture Project, which collected oral histories from dozens of past and present residents, business and property owners, and community members.
Our interviewees included Ernestine Ygnacio De Soto, a Coastal Chumash descendant who has documented her ancestors going back 10 generations in the Goleta area; former Santa Barbara City Councilman Gil Garcia, who grew up in Old Town Goleta; Jeannie Pitts, who was then 105 years old (and has since died — the sister of Old Town’s blacksmith) and worked at the walnut packing plant at the corner of Hollister and Fairview avenues; Miye Ota, who moved with her husband, Sansei Ken Ota, to Old Town Goleta after World War II and was a co-founder of the Goleta Valley Chamber of Commerce, and operated a locally renowned beauty shop and later the ballroom dancing and aikido judo studio that is still operating; and the Terres Family, whose father/grandfather built most of the buildings in the 5700 block of Hollister (across the street from Wilson Printing and Old Town Antiques).
These interviews, combined with Murray’s architectural survey of Old Town, captured a decent snapshot of the depth and breadth of Old Town’s public history.
During the time of the Design Guidelines Committee, Murray and I gave numerous architectural walking tours to committee members, architects, future Goleta City Council members, Santa Barbara County staff members, community members (including Carol Storke), and many others to build awareness and consensus about Old Town’s potential.
A majority of Design Guidelines Committee members agreed that in juxtaposition with themed towns — “Spanish” Santa Barbara, “Danish” Solvang and “Victorian Seaside Village” Summerland — Old Town looks to many people to be inherently “wrong.” In fact, it contains a mix of nearly a dozen legitimate architectural styles, some that are now rarely found in Santa Barbara, such as Deco, Streamline Moderne and Midcentury Modern. Some buildings that look old and not very pretty are more than 100 years old and have been successfully adapted to reuse decade after decade. Talk about sustainable architecture!
So what does this all boil down to? That because of its rich and varied history, embodied in the multicultural residents and eclectic mix of legitimate vernacular architecture, it is not appropriate to impose a single architectural style or theme on Old Town Goleta.
At the time of the Design Committee, the vision that we agreed could work for Old Town was what Santa Paula had done in its old downtown — street improvements and sidewalk amenities such as street trees, planters and custom sidewalk tile work.
Now that many years have passed, I think Linden Avenue in Carpinteria is an even better, more evolved example. In Carpinteria’s recent redevelopment effort, vine-covered pergolas create shade and a visual theme that is continued throughout the commercial stretch. Trees, planters and built-in sidewalk benches all unify the visual element and add to the human scale of the street, creating pedestrian-level amenities. All but a couple of businesses are small and local, the architecture styles and building uses vary widely. With street trees and wide pedestrian-friendly sidewalks, it doesn’t really matter what the architectural styles are — but the uniqueness of each block on Linden Avenue comes through nonetheless.
A few years ago, members of the Goleta City Council and I walked Old Town Goleta with Dan Burden, one of the nation’s first and foremost urban development walkability consultants (click here for his Web site).
Based on the amount of foot traffic and local businesses, he immediately observed that Old Town was an incredibly vibrant and healthy community. What troubled him greatly was that the number of driveway egresses and ingresses and their width on Hollister Avenue (he counted them and said there were three times the number that would be in a walkable downtown) made for a very dangerous, stressful and discontinuous pedestrian experience that also constrained the improvements that are needed. After dealing with traffic issues, he thought that Old Town simply needed sidewalk improvements and street trees. Several years before that walk with Burden, the Old Town Design Guidelines Committee had come to the same conclusions.
I propose we move toward Carpinteria’s Linden Avenue as a walking-scaled village and away from an imposed architectural strip mall theme geared to the automobile. We’ll achieve the same desired results faster and without sacrificing the sense of the organic way Old Town has grown.
Old Town Goleta is not the inland empire or the steel manufacturing company town created by failed monolith Kaiser Steel that characterizes Fontana’s history. Old Town is the historical center of the Chumash culture; more recently, it’s an agricultural/beach/university/high-tech/services town with nearly equal influences of each one of those cultures. I once saw a Nobel Prize-winning physicist exit an Old Town taqueria. I bet they don’t have those kinds of celebrities in Fontana!
Old Town’s pedestrians, who are mainly workers and residents, are the backbone of its locally based economy. This is the model that cities everywhere are increasingly embracing. We already have that model, and it’s already working. What our redevelopment needs to focus on are those pedestrians — moms pushing strollers to Santa Cruz Market who need wide, safe sidewalks and crossings; elderly people who live in the trailer park behind Santa Cruz Market and have no shade for their daily walks; Yardi employees who need to get to lunch spots; and Kitson Nursery workers who grab a quick bite at Goleta Bakery, La Chapala Market and El Sitio.
Once you manage the traffic infrastructure and create aesthetic, pedestrian friendly amenities, you’ll draw more than the scores of others who pop into the neighborhood for tacos, Larry’s Auto Parts, specialized services and aikido judo and ballroom dance lessons. Once the focus is back on the human — not automobile — scale, maybe the property owners will have a reason to “do something” about their signs and storefronts.
— Laura Funkhouser is a 15-year Old Town Goleta resident and past president of Goleta Valley Beautiful.