Bettina, a gourmet pizza restaurant, opened less than a year ago in Montecito Country Mart, but already has an established following. 
Caffe Luxxe is one of Montecito Country Mart’s newest tenants. A cup of its dark roast coffee will make your day. 
An array of shops, boutiques and services may be the initial draw of Montecito Country Mart, but the inviting courtyard keeps locals coming back. 
When Jim Rosenfield acquired Montecito Country Mart almost a decade ago, he ran into Santa Barbara’s notorious bureaucratic challenges to improve the properties at the roundabout intersection of Coast Village and Hot Springs roads.
The shopping center — excluding the Vons market, which Rosenfield does not own — was in need of serious updating. It was just the kind of project he is known for.
A Los Angeles native and real estate developer, Rosenfield prefers to call himself a preservationist.
“I love old things,” he said in an early morning phone call with Noozhawk.
Rosenfield also owns the iconic Brentwood Country Mart, built in 1948 when western Los Angeles was just a sleepy community, and the Marin Country Mart in Larkspur.
All of his shopping centers have a roster of resources for his tenants and their customers, and he prefers to take his time to seek out the right types of merchants, ones with great back stories.
Tenants typically range from mom-and-pop one-offs; style-worthy clothing boutiques; shops selling resort wear, fine leather goods, toys and home furnishings; yummy restaurants providing pizza, coffee and ice cream; and essential services like barber shops, dry cleaners and postal offices.
“I have a passion for these small retail centers that create a ‘village of merchants,’” Rosenfield said.
In fact, Montecito Country Mart’s vibe is very much like you’re walking down Main Street in a small town. There’s an inviting inner courtyard where customers are encouraged to linger with a green juice, a cup of dark roast coffee from newly opened Caffe Luxxe or a gourmet snack from chef Elizabeth Colling’s newly opened Merci to Go. Kids of all ages love Rori’s, which is known for its salted caramel ice cream cones and root beer float — among other things.
Montecito Country Mart is an easy, safe hangout, and I love to go there with my two young granddaughters and my doxie, Hardy. There are pony rides and lemonade stands on Saturdays, and holiday weekends feature trunk shows and special food offerings.
While some businesses have come and gone, there are new ones that are luring me back more than ever. I’m in good company with a new generation of 30- and 40- and 50-year-olds. I run into many young adults like my children, who grew up here and are now back in town and raising their own kids. Others have migrated to Montecito for all the same reasons I did — weather, great schools, small town rural ambience and a neighborhood-friendly panache.
Rosenfield and his wife, Heather, and their four children are currently part-timers, but they’re smitten with the American Riviera and hope to spend more time in Montecito this summer. Heather is herself a co-owner with Jennie Belushi of Poppy Marché, the 93108’s newest children’s boutique, which has sister stores at both the Brentwood and Marin centers.
Being a walking and shopping retail barometer, on a first-name basis with almost all Montecito’s shopkeepers, I’m encouraged by the buzz and optimism I encounter as the community recovers from the 2018 disaster.
Keeping things as they are is sometimes a romantic ideal of some older residents, but when upgrades are done right — as in the case of Montecito Country Mart — the entire community benefits … eventually.
— Judy Foreman is a Noozhawk columnist and longtime local writer and lifestyles observer. She can be contacted at news@noozhawk.com. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are her own.