It was a fight getting there, and it might not be over yet.

The Santa Barbara Planning Commission, at the end of a four-hour hearing, approved a 250-room hotel at 101 Garden St.

While many development projects are controversial in Santa Barbara, this hotel project escalated the debate several stories higher — all over whether the city should approve a big, new hotel at a time of a severe housing crisis.

Some planning commissioners raised concerns about the number of new jobs the project would create, without creating matching housing units. A developer’s consultant analysis suggested that 70% of the employees would drive from outside of Santa Barbara to work at the hotel.

The vote was 4-2, with Commissioners John Baucke and Devon Wardlow voting in opposition. They both wanted more environmental review and to see more housing at the site. Commissioners Brian Barnwell, Donald DeLuccio, Lesley Wiscomb and Sheila Lodge voted in favor of the hotel project.

The meeting, however, was punctuated by lengthy exchanges between Wardlow and Sean Gilbert, who was representing the developer.

“If we are going to develop this into a hotel, which from my perspective of the needs of this community, it’s not what we need, and it’s quite the contrary of that, we need to get this 100% right,” Wardlow said.

Gilbert kept reminding the commission that a specific plan was in place for a hotel and that the city should not expect to solve the housing crisis by forcing the developer to build more housing. He noted that in the city’s own Housing Element that 101 Garden St. is not identified as an ideal site for housing.

“This is not a housing project,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert and his team, which included architect Brian Cearnal, walked into the meeting agreeing to build six studios for employees to live in.

At the pressing of Wardlow during the meeting, Gilbert also agreed to contribute $500,000 to the city’s Housing Trust Fund. Wardlow noted that she wished Gilbert would have suggested that earlier, and it didn’t have to be haggled during the meeting.

“I actually expected in this hearing you would come back with a component around that since in both previous meetings you mentioned your willingness to contribute to that fund, and today you have mentioned that again,” Wardlow said, leading to Gilbert interrupting her and saying, “Every time we come, you guys ask for more.”

He added, “At this point, if I came back with $1, you’d ask for $2; if I came back with $5, you’d ask for $10.”

Gilbert said that the team would contribute $500,000 if there was assurance of approval.

Wardlow also pressed Gilbert on the fact that the team didn’t do any study to determine how much the new hotel would “cannibalize” from other hotels, suggesting that a new hotel does not necessarily mean new hotel bed tax revenue.

Throughout the four-hour meeting, it was clear that the decision was not clear-cut.

The owners of the property, the Wright Family, received approval in 1983 for a Specific Plan, which allowed for both hotel and housing uses.

In 2008, the Wright family proposed 91 residential condominiums, of which 20 would be for-sale affordable, but they withdrew that project because they said it would not be profitable.

Then, in 2019, a new hotel project went before the Planning Commission and received mostly favorable comments during a concept review.

One of the reasons the commission is pushing the housing issue so hard is because of an agreement in the original specific plan to address housing.

The original specific plan called for a study on housing. After requests, the development team finally came back with a housing study prior to Thursday’s meeting, but the mitigation focused on the local workers, not the 70% of commuters. The agreement at the time called for a mitigation plan for impacts on the housing situation from the building of a new hotel.

Even back then, in the 1980s, planners anticipated impacts on housing from the building of a large hotel.

Some commissioners and members of the public spoke in favor of more housing and raised concerns about a hotel further wrecking the vibe of the Funk Zone.

Cearnal and the developer team noted that in the 1980s, the Wright family donated land so that Garden Street could extend from Yanonali Street to the Cabrillo Boulevard, a contribution that in today’s dollars would equate to $17 million.

The development team grew increasingly frustrated with the commission’s desire to add more housing.

Cearnal said that adding the six units cost the developer $3 million because a new, 500-square-foot-unit costs about $500,000 to build.

“I just want to make that point,” Cearnal said. “It’s not cheap.”

In response to concerns about environmental review, the planning staff said at the meeting that an environmental checklist was completed and determined that the project was exempt from needing an environmental impact report.

Wiscomb said the developers have a legal right to build the hotel and that the commission can’t stand in their way.

“It’s an ethical issue here,” Wiscomb said. “We have benefitted from the Garden Street and Yanonali extension, but we have not given the Wright family the opportunity to do what is in the Specific Plan.”

Barnwell ending up voting in favor of the hotel project, but he expressed great concerns about the need for more housing.

“With the exception of the Hilton, we all need to know we are building the largest hotel on the South Coast,” Barnwell said. “I think it is deserving of a close scrutiny.”

He told the developer that it is not some new concept to provide housing for employees.

Barnwell said he doesn’t believe the city has an ethical obligation to follow through with the Specific Plan.

“It’s old. And many, many old things we can’t follow through on,” Barnwell said. “We just don’t follow through with what we used to do.”

Still, he said, the site will never be good for housing because it would be market-rate housing and out of reach for most people.

“We can’t have housing on that lot,” Barnwell said. “There’s no affordability component to that. We know what they will be if they are market rate and next to the ocean. They won’t go to Santa Barbara people at all. Unfortunately, there is no option for housing. Hotel is it.”

The project is appealable within 10 days.