Kevin Frank owns K. Frank: Designer and Luxury Clothing for Men and Women on Coast Village Road.
He moved the business to the corridor on the edge of Montecito and Santa Barbara from State Street downtown about six years ago.
“Downtown, we had regular street cleaning,” Frank said at Tuesday’s Santa Barbara City Council meeting. “There’s a lot of attention to detail.”
It’s not the same on Coast Village Road, he said, adding that the medians are barren and the sidewalks are aging.
“There’s no beautification,” he said.
Frank is among Coast Village Road business owners who want to form a property business improvement district to raise money annually for enhancements to Coast Village Road.
The Coast Village Association on Tuesday asked the City Council for $30,000 to kickstart the effort to form the district. The group is willing to put in $30,000 of its own money, too.
“It can really increase the enjoyment and usability for everyone who comes to town,” Frank said.
The City Council, after peppering the group’s president Bob Ludwick with questions, agreed to loan the group $30,000 to start the assessment process.
Members of the council had several questions about whether there’s enough support for an improvement district. The threshold for approval is 30%, according to Marco Li Mandri, a consultant with New City America.
“Thirty percent to me is way too low,” Mayor Cathy Murillo said. “That means a small amount of people can make it happen.”
Although in the end she was supportive of loaning the money, Murillo said she was worried that other business areas would come to the city for money at a time when “we are not flush.”
“We would be setting a precedent for other business organizations that want to come to us and borrow money,” Murillo said.
Li Mandri said it was too early to know what the actual cost to the property owners would be because it will be based on square footage of the parcel. In a survey he took of the property owners, he said he received about a 50% positivity rate on the idea.
The area includes about 60 property owners, 350 businesses and 500 employees on Coast Village Road, Li Mandri said.
Santa Barbara City Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon strongly supported the idea.
“Coast Village Road is really a gem of our city,” Sneddon said. “It does provide a heavy tax base. It is out of sight, out of mind because it takes care of itself very well.”
She said the business owners are “resilient.”
“They are, right at this moment, where they could elevate it and get it going,” Sneddon said. “It could be of benefit to anyone.”
If the property owners reject the assessment, the city — as of now — would lose the $30,000. The group would pay it back if it can raise the money to do so and if the assessment is approved.
“There is a risk that if it doesn’t go forward, it is a loan,” City Administrator Paul Casey said.
The City Attorney’s Office also plans to hire outside legal counsel to assist in the review and preparation of resolutions and other documents at a cost of $5,000 to $10,000.
The city and the Coast Village Association still must work out the details of what the improvement district would look like, but Ludwick said the group would like to form the district by this spring.
City Council Pauses On Specific Plan
The American Indian Health & Services Clinic is in the process of acquiring the former Army Reserve Center at 3237 State St. in Santa Barbara.
It went to the City Council on Tuesday in hopes of obtaining a specific plan for development of the site.
A majority of the City Council objected and referred the proposal for conceptual review to the Santa Barbara Planning Commission.
The clinic intends to relocate its current center from 4141 State St. to the site, and change the zoning from parks and low-density residential to medical office use and a higher-level of housing to possibily build affordable housing.
The City of Santa Barbara, however, has long wanted the site for itself, seeing it as a key corner with multiple development opportunities.
“This is an awkward situation we are in,” Casey said. “This is a very important corner for the city. We have been actively working to acquire it as a city since 1998.”
The Indian Health Service, however, negotiated a deal to acquire the site first.
Murillo and Councilman Oscar Gutierrez indicated that they wanted to move ahead with a specific plan to allow the zoning.
“It’s a health clinic,” Murillo said. “It’s an independent health clinc. This is a group that has been functioning and provides low-cost or no-cost health services, dental, behaviorial health. I am all for them, and I am surprised to hear that there’s reluctance to do a specific plan.
“These folks went through the process and this is going to be their property. We should be helping them.”
The council voted 6-0, with Gutierrez abstaining, to send it the Planning Commission. The City Council eventually will have to decide whether to initiate a specific plan.
Beth Collins, an attorney with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which represents the American Indian Health & Services Clinic, affirmed that the property was the clinic’s and not the city’s.
“We have this property,” she said. “This property is ours. It is going to be transferred to us from the federal government.
“We are coming to the city in the capacity of zoning. This is a zoning moment.”
The rest of the council, however, said they needed to know more about the specifics of the plan, and what exactly the organization wants to do with the land.
“With all due respect, changing zoning from housing matters,” Sneddon said. “I would be comfortable with the Planning Commission looking at that.”
She said she was “conceptually very supportive of this project.”
Councilman Mike Jordan also expressed concerns about the future of the site.
“All I want to see there is some health service use or some low-income housing or a park,” Jordan said. “I don’t want to see anything else there, but I don’t know if I have the tools to work on that here and now.”
Scott Black, CEO of American Indian Health & Services, said the center served 7,000 patients in 2019.
“My goal is to bring a sustainable business model to community health and more specifically to American Indian Health & Services,” Black said.
Wildfire Plan Approved
The council also voted 7-0 to approve the Community Wildfire Protection Plan, a 202-page document that outlines steps from protecting people and property from the threat of a wildfire.
The document outlines climate change as a significant contributing factor for wildfires and identifies everything from vegetation managment and water supply to locations of fire zones and evacutation routes for the city.
Despite the three years of staff work put into the project, the council declined to rename certain areas of the city from “High Fire Hazard Areas” to “High Fire Hazard Severity Zones,” and the “Foothill and Extreme Foothill Zones” to the “City’s Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone.”
The staff wanted the change to make it more consistent with CAL-FIRE’s terminology. Homeowners, however, expressed concern that changing the name to the more serious-sounding description would hurt insurance rates or force companies to drop policies altogether.
“There are fire insurance needs to come up, and we need to give time to address that,” Councilman Eric Friedman said. “They could lose fire insurance if they make that change at this point.”
— 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.
