Santa Barbara residents want more trees and greenery along State Street, additional places for art and performances, more diverse seating areas, some food and coffee kiosks, and places for “street play.”
That’s according to a consultant and a Santa Barbara city planner, who both painted a rosy picture of the plan to overhaul State Street during Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
Santa Barbara hired an $800,000 consultant to help create a State Street Master Plan, and so far the work has focused on a website, workshops and community surveys.
The goal of the master plan is to create a vision for the street for the next 20 to 30 years and to “transform the right of way into a lively urban place that reflects our community’s values and is safe and vibrant.”
“I think it is a great success,” said Tess Harris, the State Street master planner.
Perhaps the most significant finding was that 79% of 4,000 people who responded to a survey said “no to cars” on State Street.
“The most clear direction or trend we are hearing from the community is to keep State Street closed to cars,” said Matt Shawaker, a consultant with MIG, the firm the city hired to help with the master plan.
He called the percentage of people who want the street closed to cars “astounding.”
City planners closed about 10 blocks of State Street to vehicles shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020, and it has remained closed since.
The city’s team and the public speakers gushed about the level of community engagement.
“I have been involved for over 45 years. This is in the top 1% of community engagement, absolutely off the scale, beyond my community expectations,” said Dave Davis, chairman of the State Street Master Plan Committee.
Davis has advocated for taking a slow approach to the master plan in order to create something meaningful that will last for decades. As it stands now, the master plan effort is expected to last through 2024.
Davis said the council should not concern itself with the issues of the day or get stuck in the past, but think about what works for the future.
“When you are looking at long-term visioning, you got to get beyond today,” Davis said. “Start thinking about what we can do for the next 20, 30 and 40 years.”
Davis also left the council with some alliterative comments, saying the new State Street should be “flat, flexible and fun.”
“Flat, meaning basically curbless. Flexible — there are so many things that are going to change in the future, we need to be able to be totally flexible. And if it’s fun, it will succeed,” Davis said.
The council took no action on the issue, but some members offered their thoughts on the progress.
“It’s one of the few things that community members have been able to maintain focus on and continue engagement on, and to me that just shows we are absolutely on the right track,” Councilwoman Meagan Harmon said.
Councilwoman Alejandra Gutierrez said the residents of her district appreciated that the city reached out to them to participate in the survey.
“They felt like they were actually seen,” Gutierrez said.
The councilwoman, who represents the Eastside, said her residents told her that the city usually makes decisions for the businesses or the tourists. She said the residents told her that it felt nice that the city cared enough to ask them what they thought of the experience of going downtown.
“I am just really impressed,” Gutierrez said. “Thank you so much for your hard work.”
