200 E Cota

February 23, 2004 - The 200 Block of East Cota

We all know that the City of Santa Barbara is more than just the red tile roofs that you see in the postcards and the multimillion dollar mansions that you see in the real estate magazines. In fact there is quite a bit of architectural diversity old and new. And as in any town, there is both sadness and joy when the old, but quaint buildings are torn down for the newer more practical ones. To paraphrase Tom Waits in Putnam County, we have “mixed feelings over mixed use.”

The dedicated staff of edhat.com feels there is one block in town that exemplifies the old and new. That is the 200 block of E Cota between Santa Barbara and Garden. You know the block. You see it when you look for a place to park for the Saturday Farmer’s Market. On the south side of the street there are brick (don’t see much brick here) retail buildings with lots of parking in front, and a very small church that looks like something you’d see in the Deep South. On the north side of the street there’s the Alano Club drug and alcohol-counseling center, the entrance to the Santa Barbara Gym (that is in the middle of the block), and 6 old houses - some with porches. Actually, there are only 4 houses there now. Two have been knocked down to make room for 7 one-bedroom condos and 558 sqft of commercial space.

The brick retail space holds 2 beauty supply shops and 3 photo/imaging businesses.

See a photo show of all the buildings on the block

An edhat subscriber told us that 25 years ago the Alano Club used to be an experimental theater called the Theater of Process and a Chumash Indian named Paulie Flores used to live in one of the torn down houses. The dedicated staff couldn’t find out much about Paulie other than the fact that he had lots of buddies at Mel’s.

The new condos should be complete in February 2005. Architect Jeff Shelton designed them. He has some cool comic renderings and 3-D models in his office of how they are going to look. They aren’t that big, but they are very stylish. The design includes carved animal faces on the exterior of the buildings created by local sculptor Andy Johnson.

The new condos don’t mesh well with the rest of the buildings on the north side of the street, but the dedicated staff would venture to guess that based upon the condition of the other buildings, some day they will. We also venture to guess that the City Planning Department is on top of all this, especially since their office is only a half block away!

For the contest, we had a bunch of guesses in that area of town, but only Edducated, who wins a prize from our edhat goodies bag, guessed the right block. We decided to also name Edducated our “Block-Ed” of the month.

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