An underutilized but prominent corner of State Street will soon be home to new market-rate and affordable housing.

The Santa Barbara Architectural Board of Review last week voted 5-1 to approve a 36-unit housing, four-story project at 425 Garden St.

The development will offer no on-site parking for cars. Instead, residents will be expected ride bikes or park in the downtown city lots or garages.

About 40 bicycle parking spaces will be provided.

“We started this process with the goal of building a sustainable housing project with rents that are accessible to people that want to live in the downtown area of Santa Barbara, but have a hard time finding a place or finding one that is affordable,” said Greg Reitz, principal with ReThink Development, and one of the owners.

The project is proposed for near the corner of Garden and Gutierrez streets, near the Highway 101 entrance.

The site is currently developed with three one-story commercial buildings, and a paved yard area.

The structures will be demolished to build the 36 units, 30 of which would be market rate.

Two would be set aside for people earning between 80% and 120% of the area median income at the time, which currently is about $84,000, according to the U.S. Census. Four other units would be set aside for low-income renters.

The average size of the units is about 800 square feet.

Since 2013, developers have built about 45o new housing units, and the city of Santa Barbara has approved another 320 units that are still in the development pipeline.

The project comes at a time when the city is grappling with one-size-fits-all housing mandates from the state that pressure cities and counties to zone for affordable housing.

Santa Barbara must find land to build up to 8,001 new units by 2031.

The city has been trying to incentivize developers to build downtown and benefit from being near public parking lots, reducing their need to build parking spaces with the projects.

The Garden Street project is unique because it sits on a highly visible, highly trafficked site that leads into Highway 101.

The developer received early pushback on the design, essentially that it was too much and too big for the site.

Even though the ABR gave it project design approval, at least one member still opposed the project.

“I do not find this project as proposed compatible,” said board member Dennis Whelan. “It’s overbuilt for the site.”

He said the project has admirable goals and intentions, but falls short.

The central entry is off a very narrow walkway that forces bikes and pedestrians into conflicts, in an area that is already full of traffic, he said.

Whelan also doesn’t like that 16 of the units face blank walls, and that only six units face a smaller 1,300-square-foot courtyard that lacked “any significance.”

“If the design intent is to provide for a healthy and pleasurable place to live, and of an example of carless urban living, I do not find this proposal compatible,” Whelan said.

In giving the project design approval, the board instructed the developer to create more vertical plantings to shield the massing of the building, and install more lush plantings.

“I know this building is going to seem very dominant on this site, particularly with no landscaping to sort of soften it,” said board member David Black. “That’s unfortunate.”