The Goleta Design Review Board has recommended that the Planning Commission give preliminary approval to the Santa Barbara Humane‘s renovation plans, which will relocate the historical Beck House and allow the campus to provide more services to the community.
Santa Barbara Humane, founded in 1887 and located at 5399 Overpass Road, is proposing a campus-wide renovation that would demolish and replace 10 buildings and one barn; renovate its existing education building; and relocate and restore Beck House.
“We’re excited about the new campus renovation,” Santa Barbara Humane CEO Kerri Burns said. “It’s a really much needed community benefit. Our vision is to better serve the community for the next 100+ year and build a world-class campus for the animals and the people who love them.
“We’re building modern principles of animal welfare into the design itself, so we focus a lot on the layout and the flow for the entire operation, and we’ve really dialed into programming so that we can expand and meet the growing needs of the community.”
According to architects and project plans, the Beck House is set to be relocated to the back of the campus, and its exterior will be re-painted and “restored to its pre-1962 appearance.”
DMHA Principal Architect Michael Holliday said that non-historical portions of the Beck House will be removed, and the relocation is intended to give the building “its own special place.”
“Balancing the functionality of this important community benefit project while honoring and preserving the Beck House — those are two things we’re trying to do,” Holliday said. “Leading edge campus, 21st century design for an animal welfare environment, but also honoring the Beck House.”
Burns also said that the Beck House will be used as a space to help acclimate animals into a home environment and provide a calm, relaxing space for the pets.
“We’re pleased to show you how we’ve been able to accomplish our vision while giving more life to the Beck House and its history than it’s had since the 1960s when we moved in,” Burns said.
Besides the Beck House and the existing education building, all of the structures on Santa Barbara Humane’s campus will be demolished and rebuilt, recycling the original buildings as much as possible.
Holliday said the education building is really the only building that can be repurposed and renovated.
Some of Santa Barbara Humane’s goals with the renovation include expanding services in order to welcome and serve more people, and having a “function-first” campus.
“We’ll be providing more veterinary services, adoptions, training, and education,” Burns said. “We’re calling this a campus because we’re much more than a shelter, and we want to change the way the public interacts with us.
“This campus will not just be for adopting pets, but it will be a resource throughout an entire pet’s life for what that family needs.”
Burns added that last year, the Santa Barbara campus adopted over 1,000 animals and provided 35,000 surgeries to veterinary patients. With the new campus renovation, adoptions are expected to increase by about 30%.
The renovation project is now set to go before the Goleta Planning Commission before returning to the Design Review Board for final design approval.
During its meeting on Sept. 26, the Goleta Design Review Board also conducted a conceptual review of a project that will relocate and repurpose the Santa Barbara Airport’s Hangar 5.
If approved, the hangar that was built in 1944 would be relocated to 115 Castilian Drive and converted into a two-story office building.
The project applicants said that this project would move the building, rebuild it, and “adaptively reuse it.”
“It’s an odd deal because we’re not moving or reusing the building, but we’re replicating it and bringing the pieces over with the most important parts of it coming,” architect Tracy Burnell said.
All of the roof structure will be retained, and the steel door will be reused, but the exterior material — which is rotted redwood — will not be reused, as property owner Marc Winnikoff said it was not salvageable.
Design Review Board members encouraged the project to include an aspect that will “promote the importance and uniqueness of the building — something to connect it to its airport past.” The applicant team said it is planning to include some kind of plaque.
The hangar relocation project is set to return to the Design Review Board at a later date for preliminary review.