A gaggle of Santa Barbara’s most influential political leaders and policymakers gathered Friday at the Faulkner Gallery to talk about the future of the city’s iconic main strip — State Street.
The joint Planning Commission and Historic Landmarks Commission meeting shined a light on the deep divisions and internal struggles over whether the 11-block State Street promenade should be a place for vehicles, bikes, people, parades, street dining or retail shops.
Two factions are emerging. One is a group that wants to embrace the closure of the street to cars, and create a cogent outdoor space for dining, bikes and cars, sort of an urban Shangri-La. But there’s another stable of people who want cars back on at least part of the 11-block State Street promenade, saying that bikes and people on the promenade don’t mix, and that city should also plan for retail, not just restaurants.
“I would like to suggest that we immediately put every effort into putting our dining back on the sidewalk,” said Cass Ensberg, an architect on the Historic Landmarks Commission, “and that we return to how it was pre-COVID.”
Ensberg said the city has “complicated everything” by allowing street dining, bikes and people before developing a master plan.
“Let’s just clean that up, put it back and focus on all these ideas,” Ensberg said.
But Devon Wardlow, a member of the city’s Planning Commission, snapped back swiftly at Ensberg.
“I don’t feel like we should go backwards,” Wardlow said. “I think we should go forward.”
Wardlow then said that a majority of residents she has spoken to are happy about the closure of the street to cars.
“There’s a lot of progress that has happened. How do we fix it to make it work for everybody, but really with an eye toward the future?” Wardlow said. “Given where we are in the time of the year … this is the moment where we plan for our future, where bikes, pedestrians, everyone is there together and it’s on us to figure out how to do that.”
Listening to all the drama was consultant Mukul Malhotra, principal of MIG, the firm that the City Council hired for a $780,000 contract. MIG is charged with leading the State Street Master Plan process, with a focus on outreach to the community.
Malhotra, from Seattle, showed slides on a big-screen projector of other cities that he deemed as examples of attractive outdoor spaces. He showed Bell Street in Seattle, Church Street in Greensboro, North Carolina, First Street in Long Beach and downtown San Antonio.
“State Street has such beautiful stories to be told,” Malhotra said. “If you design it for the locals, and it’s a great space, you attract all the tourists, too.”
As he and the other presenters spoke, the 50 people in the standing-room-only crowd ate doughnuts and drank coffee set up on tables inside the room.
While the members of the two commissions and the half-dozen public speakers expressed strong feelings about the specifics of the design of State Street, the consultant focused on platitudes.
“It is so essential that we recapture and re-establish downtown’s identity,” Malhotra said.
Led by Rob Dayton, the city’s former transportation and parking manager, the city hustled to close several blocks of State Street to cars immediately after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The move allowed restaurants to set up their dining tables outdoors. But the pandemic also provided an opportunity for the city to do what Dayton and other city planners had long wanted: close State Street to vehicles. Overnight, a controversial proposal that otherwise would have taken years of debate before a final decision was an instant reality.
But two years later, COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted and critics contend that the city has pandered to restaurants while ignoring retail businesses. They also say that the outdoor dining clutters State Street, and that there’s now an unsafe mix of cars, bikes and people, especially those with disabilities.
“It’s quite disjointed,” Planning Commission chairman Gabe Escobedo said.
Escobedo said outdoor dining is popular and that the city should keep that feature. It doesn’t have to be on the street, however.
“I got really pigeon-holed into the idea of parklets,” Escobedo said. “But there are other options, and I think there’s a way to really build that into a manner that complements the architecture and the experience going down State Street, rather than distract from it.”
Historic Landmarks Commission member Ed Lenvik also advocated for outdoor dining, but not the elaborate structures that exist on the street.
“We can have outdoor dining, without having structures that turn us away from the boulevard,” Lenvik said.
Lenvik then said that the city ignored retail “but jumped in big on restaurants” when it closed State Street to cars.
“If this paseo is going to work, people want to walk down the street casually, not worried about where they are going to dine, but window shopping,” Lenvik said. “They want to see what the bookstore window has or the dress store window has, or the men’s shoe store, if there was one in Santa Barbara. Strolling and window shopping with retail is important.”
Wardlow, however, like she did with Ensberg, challenged Lenvik’s retail comments.
“If we over-index on retail, when we are looking at a 30- to 50-year plan, I don’t know that that’s the right approach,” she said. “I think retail is changing in ways that are totally out of our control as Santa Barbara. So when we plan for a 30- to 50-year idea, I hope we can emphasize things that we know will continue to be a drive. Outdoor dining is always going to be something that is going to be attractive to people.”
She mentioned the Santa Barbara Axe Club as an example of business that is “experiential,” and that the city should be planning for.
Ensberg, rebutted. She said “we do want retail” and that the city should facilitate smaller areas for retail businesses. Everyone. she said, should have an open mind.
“I just think it is really important that regardless of our own particular patterns or habits, that we think about others and how other people are,” Ensberg said. “My mother’s in a wheelchair. My husband’s about ready to get a hip replacement. It’s not possible for him to walk three blocks. So we have to think of these other people and how do we open it up to everybody. This is the public right of way.”
Historic Landmarks Commission chairman Anthony Grumbine, who often brings an air of optimism to meetings, said the future of State Street should not be planned with a checklist, but a cohesive plan.
“In the end, the only direction is that it needs to be nothing short of brilliant,” Grumbine said, cheerily.
He said whatever is built and designed “will be painted more than the Santa Barbara Courthouse.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
