At least one more World Cup. A couple more Super Bowls. Maybe even another Olympics.

It’s not quite last call at The Press Room.

The Santa Barbara pub is scheduled to go before the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission on Wednesday for a new parklet.

Owner James Rafferty said three years ago he signed a 10-year lease for the site at 15 E. Ortega St., but he could be evicted with eight months notice.

The owners of his property and adjacent parcels plan to build a 66-room hotel. They won approval in early 2024. The potential closure or relocation of The Press Room sparked community support for the pub, a petition with more than 17,000 signatures and a documentary by filmmaker Gareth Kelly.

“We are in limbo,” Rafferty told Noozhawk. “I am apprehensive. I can’t make other plans.”

The Press Room’s parklet is one of the few that remain after the City of Santa Barbara in 2024 approved new rules for parklets, including a $514 application fee, a $2,500 fee for a license application fee and an annual license fee at $24 per square foot.

Rafferty said he has spent more than $20,000 on various versions of the parklet, including a rebuild after the original was destroyed by an early-morning driver in a crash.

The parklet is necessary because people “love to sit in it,” Rafferty said.

He said his bar provides a “communal service.”

Jim Knell, owner of SIMA Corp., which owns the land on which The Press Room sits, said the hotel development is on hold for now.

“The Press Room is probably safe for another two years,” Knell said.

He is still keeping the permits alive to build the hotel, but right now “it does not make any economic sense,” he said. “What the city has done has rendered the hotel virtually worthless by keeping the street closed.”

Knell said the lack of vehicles and dramatic drop of vehicle traffic downtown since the city abruptly closed downtown State Street to vehicles during the COVID-19 pandemic has left the corridor economically unviable as a spot for a new hotel.

“The city doesn’t know what it wants to do,” Knell said. “All you have is a bunch of unsophisticated City Council members dealing with economics and traffic patterns which is way beyond their pay grade, and nothing gets done.”

Rafferty, who said he has never met Knell, said The Press Room is a community jewel.

“We take care of people,” Rafferty said. “We are not here to make a quick buck. We are here for the long haul.”

The Historic Landmarks Commission is scheduled to meet at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in the David Gebhard Room at 630 Garden St.