At a recent Santa Barbara City Council meeting, some of the city’s elected representatives finally gave voice to the communitarian origins and inspirations of the, now five-plus-year State Street “promenade” closure.

Rejecting requests from downtown property owners and some businesses to reopen State Street to automobiles, council members voiced the following:

Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon: Regarding the Downtown Santa Barbara Improvement Association’s “petition” to partly open State Street, “we have no business making decisions about State Street being open or closed, or one way or not one way,” she said. Without the COVID-19 pandemic, she added, “we would never have had the courage to dream so big, that we could close the street.”

Councilwoman Wendy Santamaria: The “public good” outweighs private interests, she said. Property values are not important, she added. 

Councilman Mike Jordan: State Street is no longer a ‘street’,” he said. We should change the name to something else. “It is NOT a STREET,” he said. “It is a ‘park’ or a ‘space’.”

Jordan: Bricks-and-mortar retail business is no longer viable. Investors who own downtown commercial property need to realize their real estate portfolios are based on an “antiquated business model.”

Councilman Eric Friedman: “Ultimately our city is going to have some portions of State Street closed to cars,” he said.

You see where this is going?

After more than five years of pretending to be concerned about all downtown Santa Barbara “stakeholders,” the City Council pulled back the curtain on the ideology that was always behind the State Street closure.

In this ideology, The Collective always outweighs The Individual. Always.

The majority of our elected city leaders largely subscribe to these notions. Most, of course, have never worked in a customer-facing business, or owned a business, or managed a commercial property.

Unlike many of us, they have never built a single thing. Never improved a single property. Never created a single job.

In 1925, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit downtown Santa Barbara, destroying much of the city center.

In the aftermath, city leaders and property owners mobilized and rebuilt the downtown in its current Spanish Revival style. Within a dozen years. Almost overnight in the lifespan of a city.

It was largely paid for by private property owners and private/corporate donations and led by the civic-minded Pearl Chase and others.

The nearly spontaneous creation of an ersatz Andalusian “city” was imposed on the community post-earthquake. Meant to mimic the then-popular Southern California design trends, it was a very successful redesign of a small downtown.

Now, ironically, exactly a century later, a different kind of earthquake has put downtown Santa Barbara again on a path of probable destruction.

City leaders, staff and much of the community seem committed to the notion of a “car-free” State Street. In fact, they are hostile to even continuing to designate it as a “street.”

This, despite decades of failures of downtown “pedestrian malls.” Since the 1950s, close to 90% of these experiments have failed around the country. No “main streets” have been successfully closed.

If private property owners and businesses are harmed in this process, their property rights violated, that will be called the price of “progress.”

The destructor this time will be Man not Nature.

The driving forces behind this destruction are a combination of younger millennial idealists anxious to reject the past and elder, entitled baby boomers who imagine themselves sophisticated and hip.

Unfortunately, both prize their self-indulgence and communitarian ideals at the expense of the history and traditions of Santa Barbara.

They will find that destroying a city is much easier than rebuilding one.

The process of decay has already begun: Blight. Widespread vagrancy. The smell of urine and cannabis in the streets.

Restricted and confusing circulation. Anxious conflict between e-bikes and pedestrians. Late-night chaos of illegal vendors and drunken partiers in the lower blocks. Empty, dark streets elsewhere.

Declining property values and the private divestment that follows. Banks holding loans on downtown properties will be tested.

The ample evidence that city leaders and staff are ill-equipped to manage even the “interim” operations of a closed State Street does not bode well for their abilities to design, fund and manage a complex project, such as the Paseo Nuevo redevelopment.

The assumption that politicians, city employees and serial consultants can impose a vision of beauty and order on any city is an exercise in hubris.

After five years and a few million dollars, they have still not settled on a “master plan.” They have not begun to identify the probable costs of implementation and maintenance of the nonexistent plan. Nor have they shared any idea how they will fund a $100 million-plus major infrastructure project.

The City Council closed State Street and downtown without a plan. The council has now chosen to disparage a primary tax base of the city’s finances by rejecting private property owners’ advice.

The City of Santa Barbara is acting without the consent of the people who will inevitably pay the bills for their fantasies.

These are irresponsible and unserious people. We are at their mercy.

God help us. Pearl Chase has left the building.