Edhat Staff
302 and 308 W. Montecito Street (Google Maps)
By edhat staff
The Santa Barbara City Council has approved the proposal for a new hotel on W. Montecito Street after revisions include rental units.
Developer and owner Ed St. George submitted a proposal last month to tear down the existing apartments at 302 and 308 W. Montecito Street for a 32-room hotel and coffee shop, as well as a three-story parking stacker system 33 vehicles and an additional five parking spaces.
The City Planning Commission denied the project stating they preferred housing as opposed to a hotel since the city’s goals are to create more affordable housing instead of removing it. The City Council also expressed concern over the height and overall size of the building and asked St. George to revise the plan.
The new proposal includes six housing units that will replace the four units slated for demolition, an overall reduction of size for the hotel, and a Spanish-style re-design.
The City Council voted 6-0 to approve the hotel. Councilmember Oscar Gutierrez was absent.
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Santa Barbara is short on “low income work”?
People go on vacations … velly interestink!
Three story anything there is out of character with the rest of the neighborhood. ‘Nuff said.
It’s got a ways to go, yet. The new design has to go to the ABR (architectural board of review); there’s also questions about the water table and excavation that will be done – and proximity not only to the property next door but the Genealogical Society and its redwoods. And someplace in the city bureaucracy will have to pass on its physical characteristics, groundwater plus floodplain plus runoff considerations. In room size and amenities, it looks suspiciously like student housing and not a hotel. (There was testimony yesterday about how many hotels there are in the general area and how room occupancy has been significantly down.) It was also said that new councilmember Gutierrez said that it will be good to have a new hotel so as to provide low income work for her eastside constituents (can that be true?). Also interesting was that councilmember Oscar Gutierrez was again absent from the council meeting——–
It would be pretty good for everyone who lives in this town to have enough decent, affordable housing for all those who work here. All the folks who talk about how wonderful SB used to be (including me!) need to remember that it was possible to have a low-paying service job and still afford a decent apartment thirty years ago. No more. When people don’t live in the city they work in, there is much less civic pride, much less concern for others who live in the town, much less civility and desire to protect and improve the place. Concerns become more self-centered. It’s not good for the health of the place culturally, socially, and eventually economically.
Pitmix, I think people can change. But first they have to get their heads out of the sand!
Either we build up or we keep destroying critical ag land and wildlife habitat with low density developments. Do you like the Gaviota coastline the way it is, or do you want it to look like the current Goleta chaos?
Many tourists who have come to SB for vacation no longer want to return because of their bad experiences with many of the homeless. I was told this by a lot of different people, and some tourists that I have met told me this that never again they will never come here to vacation.
The more they build the more will come to a place with high rents and not enough jobs which the taxpayers & property owners will end up supporting.
With respect to the city council, I think they blew it on this one. I am not only of the opinion that St. John is the worst kind of fraudster and that his plans should be viewed with suspicion but the plan he first submitted (sort of mid-Century or Bauhausian style) seems to me much more appropriate to the neighborhood than does the Taco Bell redesign. Ugh. Hopefully the ABR or somebody can make this into something not immediately offensive. With regard to the idea that the city wants to cram a few more apartments into this next-to-the-freeway island, really. Are we going to demand air filtration 24-7? What about the noise. Why would the city encourage full-time residency in this space? Seems fairly ad hominum to me.
Aragon–so the disreputable locals are performing a public service in reducing the tourist impact on our community! Good for us. (Why would we want more of this tacky business?)