Anonymous
Story poles showing the size and magnitude of the new AUD proposal (Photos: John Palminteri / KEYT News)
By Steve Hoegerman
A huge AUD project is proposed for our neighborhood. It is one of the largest residential projects in the history of Santa Barbara.
This gargantuan proposal is bounded by Anapamu, Garden, and Figueroa Streets. For a good view of it all, walk up the courtyard at 223 E. Figueroa (next to the Police Station).
It would utterly transform and destroy our neighborhood. It involves combining 8 separate parcels on 3 different streets, demolishing almost all the existing 1920s craftsman buildings, and then building 6 stories (4 up and 2 underground).
It goes to the Planning Commission this week. “Story poles” to show its size are up now. Take a look, then, after the shock, take action to stop it.
Here’s what you can do:
1) Show up at the PC meeting this THURSDAY JULY 19 at 1pm at City Hall, and speak for two minutes. It is imperative that we have a full house! “Talking points” are below; pick the ones important to you and put them in your own words. Say clearly why you don’t want this, and from the heart.
2) Write an email. Send it to 2SaveSB@gmail.com and we will forward it. Do this NOW.
Please end an email if you have questions. CONTACT: 2SaveSB@gmail.com.
We are counting on you. This will affect YOUR future!
Here are TALKING POINTS you can use:
- The size, bulk and scale is inappropriate to this neighborhood, historically one and two story craftsman-style wooden structures.
- The architecture is inappropriate for the neighborhood. The project destroys the neighborhood (of craftsman bungalows) and creates a new one.
- The neighborhood is already a healthy, human-scale functioning neighborhood. This will displace many tenants.
- This would severely impact PARKING in an already difficult area. Do NOT allow two-story underground “stacked” parking (no one wants it). Do NOT allow F-Permits (it’s already too limited).
- The bungalow courtyard on Figueroa St s a unique mini-neighborhood. Do NOT demolish the back two cottages.The context of the courtyard must be considered in its entirety to preserve its personality. 2 cottages are Structures of Historical Merit and 2 more are eligible and pending.
- The residents of the courtyard positively do not want access from the project to the courtyard, or balconies looking down on them, or easements through their drive way.
- The 8-lot “voluntary lot merger” is only voluntary to the developer, and does not benefit the neighborhood. More smaller lots with a variety of owners makes for a healthier community.
- This would severely impact TRAFFIC in an already difficult area (Garden St feeds 101).
- The height of this project cannot fairly be compared to the Methodist Church which serves a different function, anchors the neighborhood, and is supposed to be tall.
- The height of this project cannot fairly be compared to Villa Santa Barbara. which was ill-advisedly built in the 1960s and displaced (probably) two Victorian structures.
Do you have an opinion on something local? Share it with us at ed@edhat.com. The views and opinions expressed in Op-Ed articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of edhat.
This AUD law is going to transform all of our neighborhoods and is another successful attempt by the local affluent to build more housing, create more congestion and ruin the quality of life in California.
And more to come. This from the city’s web site: “The AUD Incentive Program has an initial duration of eight years or until 250 new units under the Program have been constructed in the High Density Residential or Priority Housing Overlay areas, whichever occurs first. Any application for new units that is deemed complete prior to the expiration of the Program may continue to be processed under the AUD Incentive Program.”
Voters agreed decades they did not want this city to grow beyond an advisory 80,000 population. This project spits in their faces. Time yet again to elect a solid no-growth slate, just like they had to do back in the 1970;s when developers had corrupted this city from within. We do not owe Goleta workers housing within our city limits. We do not owe out of town SBCC students housing within our city limits. We do not owe city workers higher tax revenues just to fund their bloated benefits. In fact we owe no one housing here, just enough for those who can afford to live here. Go away. Leave us alone.
This was inflicted on you by Das Williams, Hannah-Beth Jackson and Monique Limon. Why do you keep electing and re-electing them to do even more damage. Get a grip folks. This is their agenda.
What the hell happened to this town? Let’s get rid of Murillo asap. She doesn’t care about Santa Barbara, it’s history or it’s real residents.
These are ALL a big scam on the people of SB. The one going in on Haley is a perfect example. Get it approved as res. units, then change the permit at the last minute under the cover of darkness when nobody is paying attention to transform some of the units into VHR’s. For the low info voter, that means vacation rental or short term rental. Absolutely no benefit to the community. All benefit to the developer and the TOT recipients. You people having been voting these folks in, now you have to live with it. It’s over for SB. Welcome to Newport annex.
Get out of SB while you can… I wonder how many units will be available to the “Chronic Homeless” and other SB subsidized individuals…? Does the Santa Barbara Housing Authority have their hand in any of this?
Maybe when they tear down the Police station they can build craftsmen-styled bungalows.
nice try…Murillo has been a council member since 2011-17 until being elected mayor and has always been pro AUD and despite admitting that “the Marc”was not exactly going as planned continues to sell out our city at our expense and quality of life. She needs to go back to LA.
None of those people had anything to do with it. Don’t let NoFactTotum snow you.
The AUD program was approved by the City Council in 2013: https://www.santabarbaraca.gov/services/planning/mpe/aud_program.asp
None of the people being blamed for this here were on that city council.
Well, what’s it going to be? Not allow any new residential construction and complain bitterly about sky high rents and home prices? Or allow higher density residential construction and complain bitterly about changing neighborhoods, poor parking, and worsening traffic congestion? Being Santa Barbara we’ll do both! Being a gemini, I reserve the right to have highly contradictory opinions on the same subject.
Ah, created to confuse. (AUD)
What a nightmare for the neighborhood. Absolutely not acceptable.
Please remember that the AUD idea is a concoction of the fantasies of developers who coopted the politicians into allowing them to build these incredible anthills of density on the promise to provide ‘affordable’ housing. Of course the affordable part is so little per development that the speculators can keep this scam going for decades. Which politicians took the bait? Which got money from these donors? Normally one would suspect the more conservative defenders of ‘free enterprise’ but I don’t know what is happening for sure.
AUD and ADU were inflicted on us from Sacramento by “progressive” politicians who now own the agenda – Das Williams, Hannah-Beth Jackson and Monique Limon. They have names and are accountable to the voters who keep electing and re-electing them, regardless if they are funded by developers.
And just who are the “TOT recipients? No one other than your own city employees whose pension demands have now bankrupted city finances now and well into the future. Be aware of what has been going on right under your noses and what 20 years of “progressive” city government has done long-term.
If you are truly interested in what happened to this town you need to haul in Mayor Marty Blum and Mayor Helene Schneider into the past two decades of failed city decision making errors. They handed the city over to the city employee unions and now those bills are due. Do not escape responsibility for voting for this scheme over and over again, regardless of warnings this day would come and the city ran out of money.
If you have to hide a hulking mega box-like building behind trees, you failed in its original design.
The average workforce in this town does not need “affordable” housing. They work for the government, or government funded and are paid extremely well. The rest are mainly hanger-oners who graduate from UCSB and don’t want to move from the area but have no marketable skills which indeed means can’t afford to live in Santa Barbara. But that is their choice so we have no duty to subsidize their string of poor life choice decisions. Stop saying this area is not “affordable”. Identify who is saying it is not affordable and who is responsible for their situation. It is not the local taxpayers.
OMG the pearl clutchers and chicken littles of this town are at it again. If anyone bothered to take an aerial look at this “neighbourhood”, that is being destroyed by this project, they’d notice a slew of two story apt buildings and even 3 story buildings all around. It’s not all craftsmen and bungalows. The renderings and story poles show 2-3 story elevations, not 6, and the building is NOT out of character with others of similar scale only a stone’s throw from there. The county courthouse is a block away, as is Villa Santa Barbara, the District Attorney’s Office (y’know, where you go for jury duty), the Morgan Stanley building and others!! There’s a slew of them along Garden and Santa Barbara Streets. But whine and complain if that’s what gets your blood flowing and brings you a little joie de vivre.
Why are landlords declared greedy, while tenants demanding a sweetheart deal for themselves are not?
The city does not have a “and or cost problem”. If may in your mind, but that is our choice of thinking. Not ours. The city is what it is. Leave it alone.
Venice is not dying; it just got over run with tourists. Building city budgets based upon ever-increading tourism revenues could do the same thing here. Destroy the local retail sales tax base with more subsidized low-income housing units and degrade city housing values through continued high city expenses requiring even and higher city property and sales taxes and you too many need to become more wholly dependent upon tourism like Venice. The sole driver of what happens to Santa Barbara comes from your elected city council. They alone decide who to reward and who to punish. They set the standards for the city general plans. Get to know what they collectively have done to you and this city these past 20-30 years. And more importantly, why. There was a slow-growth revolution back in the 1970’s. What happened to it. And why was its revival rejected in the last mayor race?
The City Council approving AUDs was composed of 5 liberals and 1 moderate (Rowse) and 1 conservative (Hotchkiss). The current Council is 6 liberals and 1 moderate. Sadly, local Liberal Leaders do not understand how to develop and sustain our community’s needed supply of affordable rental housing — with affordable determined and defined each year for SB County by HUD guidelines.
Santa Barbara has proportionate to Population the highest number of subsidized units in the United States, made available at taxpayer expense. People choosing to live here are lucky so many subsidized and affordable units are available within our community.
Disappointing article, strongly biased and full of speculation rather than information. Our hometown has a housing problem and a cost of land problem. Density makes it possible for people who are not as lucky as the author of the article to have a decent place to live. Change is not always bad, and the crummy small building this replaces is no loss to the community. Let’s get together as a community and look for solutions to the problems in our community. Let’s recognize that change is an inevitable part of being alive so instead of tearing something down because it is different, come together to support progress. A city that is not comfortable with transformation is a dead city. It is Venice rather than any other European city that is filled with history, but unafraid of allowing ideas that belong to the future to be built. Venice is dying, let’s not let our beautiful Santa Barbara do the same.