About 2,000 housing units are planned for Santa Barbara’s La Cumbre Plaza. This will add perhaps 4,000 or more people to the neighborhood with a resulting increase in vehicle traffic.

In 2006, I, and other AIA Santa Barbara leaders, led an Outer State Street AIA Charrette at the old Grace Lutheran Church, where The Marc now stands.

The City of Santa Barbara followed up with the 2007 Upper State Street Study, which was used for 2009 Upper State Street Guidelines to supplement the city’s new General Plan in 2011.

Significant to this commentary are the suggestions turned into guidelines for new streets in the La Cumbre area.

Currently, one cannot drive from La Cumbre Road to Hitchcock Way without using either State Street or Calle Real. This is an impediment to convenience, commerce and, most important, safety.

Furthermore, there is not a vehicular way from Hitchcock to Las Positas Road farther to the east.

Consider the downtown street grid, an ancient traffic pattern idea that predates the automobile by 2,000 years. It was resurrected in the Renaissance and became a part of the Laws of the Indies prescribed by King Philip II for governing kingdoms and cities outside Europe. Santa Barbara is but one example.   

Were there a street grid in La Cumbre as there is downtown, there would be as many as three cross streets between State and Calle Real.

Such streets are necessary for safety. What if there was an earthquake that toppled a bride over Highway 101, or felled many trees on upper State Street? How would emergency vehicles get about?

In addition to the design board illustration above, the attached reports explore other possible street changes.

In the first, the city’s 2007 Upper State Street Study First, the report’s last two pages contain Exhibit C’s Near-Term Transportation Improvements and Exhibit D’s Longer-Term Improvements. The exhibits include several new streets transversing La Cumbre Plazas as well as connecting Hitchcock Way to Las Positas Road.

In the second attachment, the 2009 Upper State Street Design Guidelines, a Transportation Improvements map near the end shows a new street connecting Five Points Shopping Center at La Cumbre Road east all the way to Las Positas Road.

As we know, these ideas have been largely forgotten as a “new guard” (many from out of town) are running the city’s administration and planning.

The current City Council itself has few representatives with more than a decade and a half experience in Santa Barbara. How would  they know if not reminded by residents of the area?

Maybe more important, the La Cumbre area has been shunned for 50 years in favor the other four commercial districts: downtown State Street, Milpas Street, the Mesa and Coast Village Road. Why?

For example, the intersection at State Street and La Cumbre Road was constructed well over 50 years ago. Upper State Street is constructed as a “crown road,” which is 19th-century and earlier road engineering that allows stormwater to flow toward each curb.

The intersection itself has a large dip, or swale or drainage ditch, on both sides of State Street. It is reminiscent of a buckboard wagon crossing a creek as travelers did in old Spanish days of yore.

On the other hand, Cliff Drive on the Mesa does not have drainage swales. Look at the intersection at Cliff and Meigs Road, which was engineered in the 1950s and ’60s.

Milpas Street has few, if any, such dips. Coast Village Road was rebuilt in the 1960s.

And when you drive down De la Vina Street, which was formerly the California State Coast Highway, you will not see any dips or “thank you ma’am,” as the cowboys called such drainage swales.

Downtown State Street south of Victoria Street was re-engineered in the late 1960s. At the time, city officials wanted to reinvigorate downtown in response to the newly built La Cumbre Plaza and so eliminated street parking and widened the sidewalks to draw shoppers downtown.

Why has the La Cumbre neighborhood been ignored for so long by our city leadership? Well, actually it was not ignored by the City Council and city staff in the recent past.

Now that there is a “housing crisis” and a state mandate, is it not time to construct the infrastructure necessary to accommodate 4,000 new residents?

Let’s have an honest discussion.