A former department store building will become home to 104 apartment units in Santa Maria amid ongoing efforts to revive the downtown area.

The City Council unanimously approved The Vernon Group’s Heritage Walk Lofts proposal for the anchor building at 201 Santa Maria Town Center West.

Councilman Mike Cordero said he has been skeptical about the proposal to convert commercial buildings into a residential use. The architect’s rendition for the project helped change his mind along with a trip to San Jose where a similar conversion occurred, he added.

“I still have a level of skepticism about whether or not this will completely fly, but I’m a lot more comfortable with it now than I was,” Cordero said. “I look forward to the challenges that we’ll all face in entering into this new phase of accommodating our community needs.”

That 84,000-square-foot building finished in 1989 once housed Mervyn’s and later, despite controversy, the Fallas Discount Store.

“It becomes one of the keystones in the Town Center West redevelopment and puts you on the leading edge of what adaptive reuse looks like for big box stores,” said Randy Russom from RRM Design Group. 

The proposal tackles the challenge of converting the huge square building into a new residential use, leading to the decision to incorporate a loft design with lower ceilings in parts of the unit. 

Plans also include creation of a central courtyard open to the sky along with the installation of windows and a rooftop deck. 

The design will mix Spanish and contemporary styles, using elements such as arches, wrought iron railings and wood window frames.

Parking, including for the nearby First United Methodist Church and the Santa Maria Gastroenterology medical office, also raised concerns. 

“Parking has become such an issue with all the building that’s going on and I think it’s really important to respect the needs of the parking of the church,” Mayor Alice Patino said. 

The area has hundreds of parking spaces for the various businesses and church. 

The church and medical office privately own parking in the area with other spaces being owned by the city but granted for exclusive use to the department store building. Those rights will remain with the land despite the new use, City Manager Jason Stilwell said. 

“There’s some comfort level that within the 600 spaces, they can accommodate 104 apartments, a church and a medical office building,” Community Development Director Chuen Ng said.

City Councilmember Maribel Aguilera-Hernandez suggested installing signs to ban apartment-related parking on Sundays so church-goers have access to the spaces.

“I think it would be a burden to the churchgoers to have to worry about parking,” she added.

Vernon Group representatives said they could put up the no-parking signs, but suspected the apartments would use significant fewer spaces than the 380 spaces allocated for the department store’s employees and customers.

Before the city issues the building permits, a parking agreement between the city and the applicant must be in place, Ng added.

The project to convert a former commercial building into residential use comes as the city’s seeks to fulfill its Downtown Specific Plan which aims revive the dormant area.

“I think what’s going to be really important for making the downtown vibrant and busy and successful is people,” said Brad Vernon, a partner at Santa Barbara-based Vernon Group. “And I think getting the housing downtown is key.”

Heritage Walk Lofts is one project among several designed to evolve the downtown area.

Vernon Group has a mixed-use project planned for city land on the southeast corner of Main Street and Broadway (highways 166 and 135). 

Developer Ben Nikfarjam’s planned three-story mixed-use project on the northwest corner of Main Street and Broadway (highways 166 and 135) should be done before the end of 2023, according to the city. The project calls for 18 apartment units and ground-floor retail space.

Additionally, Santa Maria developer Mark Fugate proposes the six-story, 104-unit Cook Street Apartments with a restaurant at the northeast corner of Cook Street and South McClelland Streets, near the mall and City Hall.