When the Coast Village Association goes before the Santa Barbara City Council on Tuesday, the Montecito advocacy organization will be looking to pull off something monumental.
Can the resourceful and ambitious association convince the council to allow it to assess itself to improve Montecito’s commercial corridor and the eastern gateway to Santa Barbara?
It’s a move that could lead to other Santa Barbara neighborhoods choosing to form improvement districts of their own.
“Our constituents say ‘why are these medians so hideous,’” Bob Ludwick, president of the Coast Village Association, told Noozhawk. “‘Why are there weeds everywhere? Why do we not of have flowers? Why are our sidewalks filthy? Why do we have an unmitigated increasing homeless situation?’”
Ludwick and supporters are asking the council to adopt an ordinance that would grant property owners the ability to assess themselves to pay for improvements to the area.
State law already allows for groups to form assessment districts, but the association wants the ability to lower the threshold for launching a petition. Rather than 50 percent as required by the law, Ludwick and supporters want to be able to launch the process with the consent of just 30 percent of property owners. A nonresponse is considered a “no,” and may not be representative of the support for the initiative.
The association also wants the city to approve the benefit for a period longer than five years because the changes are “decades-long initiatives.” Ludwick said it will take years to make infrastructure changes and leverage the dollars.
As a compromise, city staff has recommended a 40 percent support threshold to begin the process and a term of 20 years. The association also is asking for a loan of $30,000 to help fund the petition process. The money will be paid back once and if the benefit district is approved. The association already has raised $30,000 on its own to launch the process.
From Ludwick’s perspective, everyone wins with the passage of the improvement district. The alternative, he said, is for property owners to continue with an annual “pass-the-hat” mentality to fund holiday events and decorations.
Although many people mistakenly believe Coast Village Road is in the unincorporated Montecito area of Santa Barbara County, it actually is within Santa Barbara’s city limits. The mile-long street supplies the City of Santa Barbara with about $2 million in revenue a year from sales tax and transient occupancy taxes.
The neighborhood is a popular destination for local residents as well as tourists looking for niche retail shopping experiences beyond downtown. It’s also a dynamic and vibrant area for dining, from coffee shops to steak houses and virtually everything in between.
In recent years, Coast Village Road also has been body slammed by insufferable traffic jams during the afternoon commute. Ever since Caltrans and city officials worked to close the southbound Highway 101 entrance ramp at East Cabrillo Boulevard, motorists following apps like Waze and Google Maps take Coast Village Road in an attempt to bypass the daily “Montecito crawl” on Highway 101.
Ludwick calls the street “the third lane of Highway 101.”
All of the additional traffic has worn out Coast Village Road, with service trucks daily parking on medians, further wrecking the landscaping. For all these reasons, Ludwick says, the association would like to take matters into its own hands.
“Since the city doesn’t have resources or the ambition to deal with it, we want to manage our own community,” Ludwick said. “That’s what a community benefit district does.”
The money would be used in a variety of ways, including installing new landscaping, irrigating the medians, realigning intersections to help with traffic flow, creating a rotating banner system, marketing and promotions, and addressing safety problems related to the growing challenge from transients.
Santa Barbara is “late-to-the-party,” Ludwick said.
In his Coast Village Circle office, Ludwick has printed out oversized photographs of the early days of Coast Village Road, back when the late Michael Towbes, co-founder of Montecito Bank & Trust, organized fellow property owners to form an assessment district that has long since lapsed.
It’s time to do it again, Ludwick says. Little Italy San Diego and Old Town Monrovia are just two of the dozens of areas in California with benefit districts, he adds.
“If we all contribute something, we can do significant things here,” Ludwick said. “I need to be able to have a sustainable, generations-long funding source.”
The City Council got its first look at the proposal three weeks ago and will tackle it again Tuesday, first during the afternoon ordinance committee meeting, and then later at the regular council meeting.
The council seemed opened to the idea, but raised questions about the 30 percent threshold to start and how an assessment fee would be passed on to business owners.
“Coast Village Road leads the way on thriving businesses during turbulent times, through fires and disasters and pandemic,” Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon said. “This PBID would allow them the freedom to further invest in the safety, capital projects, beautification and events, funded by property owners who see the value in these improvements.
“It would benefit the district and benefit the city. I fully support this direction and hope it can be applied to other areas of the city as well.”
If the assessment is approved, the amount that property owners will pay varies. Engineers will decide how much each parcel will contribute, based on a variety of factors, including the square footage of the property and structures, and lineal frontage on Coast Village Road. It could be anywhere from $25 to $250 a year for some property owners.
Trey Pinner, president of Santa Barbara Property Group, said Coast Village Road needs a consistent stream of funding to improve.
“It will bring stability,” he said of the improvement district. “I don’t know that we get much attention from the city. We want to create a better sense of place.”
Pinner called Coast Village one of the gateways to Santa Barbara, and therefore deserving of more attention.
He’d like to see landscape improvements and a banner or flag system similar to the State Street flags program downtown.
“We are looking to help our area be a successful area for the businesses and the employees who work there,” Pinner said.
In some ways, Coast Village Road could pave the way for other areas in the city.
“This is a not just a Coast Village Road ordinance,” Pinner said. “This is s a Santa Barbara-wide ordinance. You can use this very small area as a test case.”
Ludwick agreed that if it works on Coast Village it could work in other parts of the city. He observed that Milpas Street, Upper State Street, mid-State Street, San Roque and the Westside would all benefit from the ordinance.
Kevin Frank, owner of the K. Frank designer and luxury clothes boutique at 1150 Coast Village Road, Suite H, said he welcomes an assessment on his store if it means neighborhood improvements.
Frank used to own a men’s clothing shop on State Street before he moved his business to Coast Village Road.
“There’s a huge benefit,” he said. “For what we are going to pay, the benefits outweigh the small assessment.”
For decades, Frank said, Coast Village Road has thrived on its own because of the uniqueness of the area.
“Coast Village is a victim of its own success,” he said. “There’s very low vacancy. It’s a thriving street. It produces a lot of tax income for the city. Virtually every business on the street is local.”
Frank said Coast Village Road is a great example of an area that functions well, and that a partnership with the city will go a long way.
“We could be a great test for the city,” he said. “We are investing a lot of money in it. Hopefully, it is beneficial to the city, and it can be used in other places. It can do great things for retail shopping and areas like ours to make them more sustainable.”
— 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.
