The Santa Barbara City Council gave the nod Tuesday to a commercial project on Victoria Street that, once complete, will allow people to purchase small offices as if they were condominiums.
The approval came in the form of a 5-1 vote to deny the appeals of a developer’s proposal to build 50 commercial condominiums at 101 E. Victoria St., at the corner of Anacapa Street. The city Planning Commission approved the proposal in July.
Construction of the three-story project won’t begin for at least a year, because the site at one point harbored a gas station, and a leaky underground fuel tank polluted the soil and groundwater. The area is being cleaned up under the watch of the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.
The offices, whose average size would be about 320 square feet, could open in as soon as 18 months, officials said. The plans involve demolishing an existing structure, and still need to be approved by the Historic Landmarks Commission.
The appellants, Rolf Kowal and Virginia Rehling, are residential neighbors of the proposed development, which will be a tiered three-story building that reaches no higher than 35 feet, officials said. The applicant, represented by a company called Turenchalk Planning Services, was listed in city documents as “101 E., LLC.”
The appellants objected to the July approval of the Planning Commission on several fronts. For instance, they said the building would dwarf the houses next-door, and thus be incompatible with the surrounding neighborhood. They also argued that the site’s contamination warranted further study, and that the project wouldn’t include enough parking.
According to the city’s zoning laws, the project needs 50 parking spaces, but the proposal includes just 37, all of which will be underground. City staff members recommended waiving the parking requirement on the grounds that a 2007 parking study conducted by a consultant indicated that the demand for parking would be 37 spaces.
Siding with the appellants Tuesday afternoon was Councilman Dale Francisco, who cast the lone dissenting vote.
Francisco said the city is allowing too many under-parked projects to go through, citing, as an example, Peet’s Coffee in the La Cumbre Plaza area, where he said a parking shortage is hurting the business. He said he also had problems with the 17,000-square-foot project’s size, though he acknowledged that the developer did “as good a job as one can” in keeping the three-story project relatively compact.
Still, he said, “Looking at that block, it’s very much a mix of residential and commercial. … This will introduce a very massive structure onto that corner.”
On parking, most council members seemed to trust the conclusion of the traffic study.
“I frankly don’t think you’re going to have 50 owner-occupied owners at the site from 8 to 5 Monday through Friday,” Councilwoman Helene Schneider said. “I don’t see that happening right now in the downtown core.”
Mayor Marty Blum added that the 2-year-old Granada parking garage a half-block away on Anacapa Street should be able to absorb some of the parking.
Officials said it isn’t known yet how much the office condos would cost, or whether they would sell well in Santa Barbara.
“We’re thinking there is a niche audience for this, but we don’t really know,” said Blum, adding that she doesn’t think the city has ever seen a project quite like it.
Write to rkuznia@noozhawk.com.
