Nearly four hours into Tuesday night’s Santa Barbara City Council meeting, developer Ed St. George had enough.
He grabbed his 14-year-old son, Lucca, and wife, Claudia, and the trio marched out of the second row of the City Council chamber with a look of disgust on their faces.
St. George could see the way things were headed. The council seemingly was about to deny his 3-story, 32-room hotel project near West Beach.
“Mr. (Ariel) Calonne just lost $3 million,” St. George huffed in the hallway of City Hall. “The city of Santa Barbara, what they are doing now, is depriving me of what this property is zoned for. I honestly don’t care what all the negative people say.”
After St. George fled, and after the lengthy discussion, the City Council voted 4-3 to give St. George more time to develop a smaller hotel project, and come up with a plan to build four rental apartment units, either on site or somewhere else.
Council members Jason Dominguez, Randy Rowse and Meagan Harmon and Mayor Cathy Murillo voted to give St. George more time, while council members Eric Friedman, Oscar Gutierrez and Kristen Sneddon voted no because they want housing on the site, not a hotel.
St. George has one month to come up with a plan.
The city’s Planning Commission had previously also rejected the project, and St. George appealed that decision to the City Council Tuesday night.
It wasn’t a flat-out denial of the project, but the council made clear that it would not approve St. George’s current hotel proposal because it was too big for the neighborhood and would result in the loss of four apartments currently at the site.
“I would just love for this to be housing,” Sneddon said. “I just think that our housing crisis and where we are with the amount of hotels we have in the area, we may be at a tipping point with having too many.”
The council deliberated for nearly an hour, bouncing back and forth between outright denying the project and giving St. George time to redesign the project.
In fact, it looked like the council was going to reject the proposal, before Harmon flipped her position from denying the project, to giving St. George more time.
City Administrator Paul Casey also played a role in swaying Harmon, interjecting himself into the council deliberations to suggest letting St. George have until Dec. 17 to revise the proposal.
Harmon initially said that the hotel’s size, bulk and scale seemed “out of step with the character of the neighborhood.
“I, too, will be voting to reject the appeal and uphold the Planning Commission’s decision,” Harmon said. “It is a difficult decision, by the way, but I am convinced by the impacts, the loss of housing. We need to focus on building housing.”
Harmon added, “I don’t know what a continuance would accomplish.”
Minutes later, Harmon changed her mind after Casey suggested the council could wait “two or three weeks” to allow St. George to repurpose the project, and after Dominguez raised the possibility that St. George could sue the city if he is denied the project.
She reiterated that she was still concerned about the size, bulk and scale of the hotel.
“These are big concerns for me,” Harmon said. “I would really be looking to see some changes, a very, sort of, minor shift, I don’t know if that’s going to necessarily get the job done for me. So to Mr. Casey’s advice that we give you some clarity, those are concerns for me, though of course the replacement housing condition is of primary importance to me.”
Her switch served as the swing vote.
The charismatic St. George, known for his casual dress and the black cap that he wears on his head, was sort of a rock star at Tuesday’s meeting.
Several people spoke on his behalf, offering stories of what a great property owner he is, and how he cares for the community. A speaker showed a video to the audience with testimonials from people who know St. George, either as a tenant or an employee.
“I’ve come here to day to support this project, and support Ed St. George, a man who I would honestly consider like a second father to me,” said speaker Cole Cervantes, St. George’s CPA. “He takes exceptional care of his employees.”
Jarrett Gorin, principal of Vanguard Planning, said St. George earned the right to build at a hotel at the site because the project complied with the city’s zoning ordinances.
“This is a commercial area,” he said. “It is zoned for commercial. It is a bad place for a housing project.”
St. George wants to knock down the four-unit apartment building at 302 and 308 W. Montecito St. and build the hotel, a 1,674-square-foot coffee shop, and a parking garage with 11 surface parking spaces and a mechanical parking lift system to accommodate 33 more spaces.
For St. George, however, his next move is unclear. He told Noozhawk after the meeting that “I cannot be rational given my current state.”
He proposed the project in 2016, and estimates that it will cost $25 million to build.
“I can tell you this, that property will never be housing as long as I own it and that decision was made four years ago, ” St. George told Noozhawk. “I will not be blackballed by the Planning Commission into making a poor business decision.”
Friedman led the effort to deny the project completely Tuesday night.
“I think we are out of balance in terms of housing and jobs,” Friedman said. “I support the Planning Commission’s decision. I think housing is such a critical issue.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.