At a time when the City of Santa Barbara is facing one of the worst economic challenges in its history, architects made a presentation to the City Council on Thursday to talk about their vision for downtown.
The Santa Barbara Chapter of the American Institute of Architects delivered a presentation outlining ideas for housing, pedestrian pathways, a linear downtown park, events, arts, concerts and an overall utopia for what Santa Barbara could look like if everyone worked together.
“I think we are all sort of feeling the weight of this moment, the importance of the year to come, and all the decisions we are going to make for our city, and the consequential nature of this time that we are in,” Councilwoman Meagan Harmon said. “We have an opportunity now to really enact transformational change that will influence the future of our city for generations to come.”
The AIA-SB held a multiday “charrette,” a French word for an intense collaboration session, where more than 160 volunteers formed teams to study State Street. Different teams studied ideas for plazas, paseos and open spaces, and even redeveloping State Street into a linear park. There’s also talk of creating a public-private partnership such as a foundation, which would raise money for events, capital improvements and programming.
The architects have put together a 330-page book of their findings.
“These are ideas,” architect Detty Peikert said. “They are meant to inspire and encourage people to explore, to define that vision for the future of downtown and State Street.”
The city took no action, mostly at the request of City Attorney Ariel Calonne, who reminded the council that only a presentation — not a discussion — was written on the agenda for the special 4 p.m. Thursday council meeting.
The city plans to launch a website soon that will provide information about housing possibilities downtown, which is another goal of the architects.
The group is looking at adaptive reuse of existing buildings as well as opportunities to build on open parking lots.
Nina Johnson, assistant to the city administrator, kicked off the discussion, mixing optimism with the reality of the moment.
“We’re coming to you at a time of tremendous opportunity and challenges,” Johnson said. “This is a very challenging time because of the pandemic and stay-at-home order in place. Businesses are in a very difficult spot to make ends meet.”
Jim Knell, founder of the SIMA Corp. and a critic of the city, spoke at the meeting.
“You can’t help but feel excited, but at the same time I am disappointed with where we are right now,” Knell said.
He said there are more than 60 building vacancies between Highway 101 and Sola Street.
“When you talk about a partnership with the city and stakeholders, I think you are jumping the gun,” he said. “A lot of the property owners have lost faith in the city and the process, especially when you look at the status of State Street now.”
Knell said the economics of affordable housing don’t work in downtown Santa Barbara. He also said the city might be assuming it has buy-in from property owners when it doesn’t.
“State Street has changed an awful lot the past three years, and most of it is for the worse,” Knell said.
Councilwoman Alejandra Gutierrez said she is optimistic.
“As a city, we have to start thinking outside of the box and work with nonprofits and private funders to fund an idea like this and future ideas to better the community,” she said.
— 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.
