Edhat Staff
By edhat staff
The owners of the former Sears property have proposed 550 rental housing units to be built on their 9 plus acre land off La Cumbre.
At a Santa Barbara City Council meeting on Tuesday, a lawyer representing the Sears property owner’s and local officials discussed whether to review changes to the entire La Cumbre Plaza shopping mall or the Sears property itself, reports The Independent
Macerich, the company that owns the La Cumbre Plaza minus Sears and Macy’s, stated it will not cooperate in creating a new development plan and has a “lock on the property for the next 78 years,” reports The Independent. Macy’s has a lease for the next 9 years.
The Sears owners proposed to build 550 rental apartments stating if the council didn’t approve their offer, the owners would need to lease the space to commercial tenants.
The city council voted 6-1 for the Sears owners and development director to come back with a proposal for the entire area and including an agreement for the Sears property.
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Will this housing actually be affordable? If so, get rid of that Sears and build what’s needed for our lower and middle classes. And no $3,000/mo for a 1 bedroom is not “affordable” for those that approved The Marc apartments.
That amount of rental inventory would likely flood the market and thereby lowering prices everywhere. Especially for overpriced units right now.
Is “affordable” really the problem with rental prices? “In seasonally adjusted current dollars, median usual weekly earnings rose from $232 in the first quarter of 1979 (when the data series began) to $879 in the second quarter of this year, which might sound like a lot. But in real, inflation-adjusted terms, the median has barely budged over that period: That $232 in 1979 had the same purchasing power as $840 in today’s dollars..” Pewresearch. Salary/wage hasn’t moved in decades, while rent certainly has. Is the problem the price of rent or the pay of jobs?
It’s definitely the low wages here in SB. Somehow employers get away with lowballing everyone because it’s a desirable place to live.
Good I hope they are for low income seniors..
The vast majority of public low income housing is already for low income seniors. Why do you want even more? Plenty to choose from and they do have a built in higher turnover rate than the rest of the public housing.
If someone rents or buys, the market is affordable. What people really want is someone else to subsidize them so they can live in this premium area. Everything is affordable – that is the way the free market works.
Overpriced units do not sell or rent. So there is no such thing as an over-priced unit. Housing units by the freeway in an old shopping mall are hardly a threat to the rest of the city’s rental market. Don’t waste your time waiting for the local market to come down; build up your own skill set to match the market is the better alternative, if you choose to live in a premium area..
Absolutely, CS805. Just like all the new housing in Goleta flooding the market lowered the prices everywhere. It’s amazing! /sarc.
Emergency vehicles staged in the parking lot of Sears during the Thomas Fire. Good idea to keep that as an option. View mountains from there. More fires to come? Video shows that frightful December Saturday when the Thomas Fire came onto the S.B. side: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=solekt4Pt9Q
LOL! All the lawyers representing the Sears Property Owners need to do is sit down and “Strike a Deal” with the most powerful organization in the City…. The Santa Barbara Housing Authority! They do what they want, to what property they want and do ANY way they want… All on the backs of the taxpayers who subsidize everything they do… Just what Santa Barbara needs- more subsidized housing… There are a greater % of the population subsidized by the taxpayers/government than those who PAY into our government in SB… A very unhealthy situation.
Because of Amazon that is what will occur. They will need another stop light leaving 5 points at State st.
There will never be enough supply to meet the demand. This is a given. What has to give in a low vacancy rate area is to choose to live someplace else. This is a given as well. Applies to all premium areas. Fact of life. Not sure where this “right to live in Santa Barbara” at someone else’s expense comes from. I have heard it comes mainly from UCSB grads who don’t want to leave but don’t have skills or resources to stay. I for one am not interested in subsidizing purely selfish demands. You can start with a manufactured home like many have done who want to stay in the area. You can commute to where you can afford to live. You can come back after you have established the resources that allow you to choose a premium area. You can double up with someone. You can reduce your current living expenses until you can make a downpayment. That is what has to give in a low vacancy area.
Macerich, the company that owns the La Cumbre Plaza minus Sears and Macy’s, stated it will not cooperate in creating a new development plan and has a “lock on the property for the next 78 years”.
This is GOOD news. Hopefully they prevent any housing being built on that property. If you can’t afford Santa Barbara…. move where you can afford it.
Am I the only one that doesn’t want Santa Barbara, to have these high rise apts..they are an eyesore…tacky, high rent.
Goleta, looks awful
Understand the need for housing
but the area is not helping seniors, just developers..
traffic bad too.
Look at Tree Farm, off Patterson..that is Goleta, for a million bucks..
I am going to go against the majority in this one and say that I agree with the idea of Apartments there. I think that they will be people who spend money in La Cumbre Plaza and help keep it alive/relevant and prevent the stores from being empty like downtown is, and it’ll provide more housing. As a renter in this town I approve of more housing, there is so little vacancy and it is so hard and so competitive when you have to find a new place to live. I was born and raised here and I’ll probably never be able to afford to buy a home here but with my ties, my family and friends mostly here, I’ll probably never leave and I think that more housing is essential to us having a quality of life. As renters anyways. I suppose if you’re a homeowner who is comfortable you will have a different opinion.
If they build more people will come instead of calling our city SB will be called little LA aka SB stop building more place for people to live!
I do appreciate your comment…
Owned many homes, now a renter with a husband,dog, grown daughter, she can’t afford an apt. here..
Unless you inherit a house from your family here, which most of my friends have, it is super expensive ..
This is no longer an affordable issue, the people running Santa Barbra want to increase the amount of people living here because they need us to pay for their outrageous over inflated pension because there was no real oversight of government in this town. It’s was spend baby spend and now it’s build baby’s build. I hope this doesn’t happen but I know it probably will.
It all depends on who you choose to elect to city council – build and destroy, just to feed city employee pensions, or elect another slow growth and fiscal sustainability coalition like back in the mid 1970s’ . This build and growth is only a new phenomenon. Post year 2000, when public pensions started going through the roof. Voters created this mess and voters can undo it. Put in a new slate of candidates, starting with the city council elections this very year – November 2019.
Can someone please in one paragraph tell me why we need more affordable housing? To me it seems like the tax base can’t take care of what we have. The schools are so-so, the roads suck, what do we get out of 500 or even 2000 affordable units when the vast vast majority of lower income workers commute in from down or up coast? Just sit on an overpass and watch the white pickup trucks coming in from ventura/oxnard or the commuters coming down from Santa Maria or Lompoc.
sorry for the follow up, but it just seems like the more and more people living here that can’t contribute to the tax base just makes no sense.
The state government has mandated housing as a priority in SB. I personally like this proposal, but there is no way in hell the current befuddled group in City Council will be able to move quickly enough to make this deal work.
If we have to have to build a bunch more housing in SB, and the State says we do, this seems like an ideal spot for it. It won’t ruin any other neighborhoods, and it would be convenient to live right near a mall–it might revitalize the mall. I hope it happens. That said, unless the rents are subsidized, they won’t be truly affordable. We live in a market economy, and the market says people will pay big bucks for even small apartments in this town. There is no way to build enough apartments to flood the market and thus bring down rents. Unless something happens to make SB a less appealing place to live, housing prices will remain unaffordable for most people.
Did the state say we taxpayers had to subsidize units to meet their mandated numbers? Or that developers are forced to build under-market rate units? BTW the state in fact are Hannah-Beth Jackson and Monique Limon with prior help from Das Williams. Have they ever explained this mandate they supported to their local constituents? The states is only the people we elect to represent us. There is no universal outside authority demanding we are required to build these units – just our own elected officials. So why the complaining, if these are the people you elected to do this to you?
Since the City of SB is getting rid of their commuter parking lots and parking in general there will be fewer of us drive into SB for a night on the town. A far better use for the Sears building would be a Cinemaplex showing movies. Those of us who have/will leave SB to the bums and tourists still need places to spend our money. Once people start going to movies then the whole of La Cumbre Plaza will come back to life with shops, bars, and restaraunts.
Poor Santa Barbara. World population grows, CA continues to take in illegals by the score. People want to live here, but they don’t have the money to do so. Haven’t we destroyed it all enough already? We need to continue subsidize those who can’t bear the expense of living here? We build and build. Where does it end? I say we stop the development and try to cope with the over-growth that we already have.
I can’t even believe this. The city of Santa Barbara is literally insane
For all you over privileged who think you’ve arrived because you own a house here, and to all you entitled who think you have more of a right than anyone else, you had better take a better look at the rest of the world to see what’s happening in all the overpopulated places in the world. The issue is housing FOR NOW. Soon, your housing won’t be worth the paper your title is printed on because all the overbuilding is going to leave us without any WATER! No place, large or small, urban or metropolitan can exist without an adequate supply of WATER. WE DON’T HAVE ONE. It took us twenty years, two droughts, and a new water agency to run our supply down to
You are missing the big picture. The city and developers use the terms “affordable” housing for all the new apartments to be built but in reality they are 4,000 dollars a month and only the people making 100,000 plus a year are living in them. I’m sorry you’ve been fooled to believe these apartments are being built for the poor but you couldn’t be more wrong. You need to get outside more often if you think illegals are living at the Marc, La estancia, The Tree farm, hollister village or will be living at the proposed sears project.
Don’t make me LAUGH with these comments that it is not economically feasible to have lower rents! LOLOL! Please – if you cannot afford to buy a home here and pay for it, we, the renters, are not responsible. The Marc just sold for $56.2 million. You think that investment firm bought it b/c it made less or more money? Of course some money shoudl be made but c’mon now – they are getting rich while lying to the rest of us about “economically feasible” rental rates. PUH-LEAZE.
Ignorant and racist people have turned Santa Barbara into what it is today congratulations…
Santa Barbara could allow skyscraper condos and in twenty years the city would resemble Honolulu. There will never be enough housing here to satisfy all the people who would love to live here. High California taxes is probably the biggest barrier to wealthier baby boomer retirees who would fill those buildings (and Cottage Hospital, etc).
If the City of SB would sell City Hall and the downtown Police Dept HQ, they would have a good start to consolidating City Hall, the PD and FD HQs, vehicle maintenance, conference facilities, etc, at La Cumbre. Work with an innovative developer who could also add additional Hotel and condo units at the site. (There’s space for that.) Think smart and long-range.
So what’s the answer? I just see a lot of problems here.
One answer is to control your local stork and stop bailing out those who refuse to control theirs.
Simple supply and demand. That ain’t gonna change. You can put a dent in the demand by turning the city into a hell hole instead of a tourist destination (Oxnard anyone?) and that seems to be the policy of the city council.
Lowest level is how SB will evolve. What makes Santa Barbara desirable is the same idea of why wealthy people hang out with other wealthy people. They have money and can buy a round once in a while, they up their game around each other, manners and standards used to be higher amongst other benefits. I don’t care if I sound elitist. Santa Barbara used to be inspirational to strive for excellence. “The land of the beautiful people”, few people smoked and everyone exercised. Haircuts were regular even if the messy beach hair was the style. Step up your game and let’s get the “Santa Barbara magic” back.
I agree, Factotum, it is up to the voters; unfortunately, district elections makes it much more likely that the councilmembers will adhere to Cathy Murillo. As Jerry Roberts wrote a week or so ago, the mayor has her “trained seal” caucus; two of them are up for election: one, district 3, never strays from her side and the other, appointed, has not done so, either . The first district race will be interesting, someone independent or another Murillo handmaiden. The 2nd District present front runner has a voting record on the planning commission of talking of the SB quality of life and voting with Schwartz, Campanella, Higgins and Wiscomb for more and more tall developments.
Col-
Have you been to Beverly Hills?
Sounds like you would love the town. Gated communities, millionaires & billionaires only. Conveniently located next to Sunset Blvd. where you can wine & dine until senseless, and Wilshire Blvd., where you can find an abundant supply of plastic surgeons and psychiatrists.
Sounds like you might like it!
Two things really stand out in this thread: 1) Many people have practically no understanding or grasp of basic economics 2) Many people have almost no understanding of the actual costs of development, property and land management. We as a society have failed miserably in our duty to educate our people if we have so many lacking even the most basic education and understanding of today’s life. That must change if we are to grow our way out of the mess. Something you cannot do with the majority of citizens living off of the government either directly, or indirectly. ————————————— The best comment in this entire thread is Thomas John’s. He nails it. We import our income and our workers. They do not live here and they do not contribute to the underlying tax base nor the community. Nope. They live in Ventura County or in the North part of SB County. They clog the roads, use the resources and make our city less desirable. They spend the income they earn in our town, in their own cities and towns. They spend their time and their efforts towards a better community, in their own towns. Not in SB. ——————————————– Our city has in fact, been run without oversight and accountability for the last 30 years and has built up such a large amount of debt that your grand kids will be paying for yesterday’s projects for their entire lives. The local managers, leaders and elected officials have literally stolen your kids future so that a few government employees and contractors can live a comfortable life while you work harder and harder for less and less. Yet here we are, with dozens of comments asking for the very people who put us in this mess to fix it… As one commentator said, SB is literally insane.
pot to kettle ?
As almost everyone has stated here, most residents do not want more “Affordable” (Hah-Hah!) housing and a lot of important points have been brought up regarding the HA, water supply, traffic, subsidies, pensions, overpopulation, tax base, affordability, and government accountability. I’ve lived in Santa Barbara since 1979 and it goes without saying how much this town has changed negatively in terms of congestion, cost of living, crime, etc., although, sadly, that could be said about virtually all of California. More residents will certainly add to the problems and I don’t see how a $4000 a month apartment is “affordable” for most people. I had hoped that the Sears location would be converted to a movie theater instead of more apartments or condos. However, if you look at the demise of brick-and-mortar shopping centers, thanks to the likes of Amazon and other on-line retailers, especially in California, many of them are being converted to housing or “combined use” properties. This is a very complex and disturbing issue and, I fear, any outcome will not be a good one for the local community.
This town is run by liberals so yea you’re absolutely correct.
When this noisy group demands “affordable housing”, they are really demanding the right not to commute from areas they can afford. There is no right to live in Santa Barbara. There is no right not to commute. This is all about personal choices. Buy or rent the home you can afford and accept you will be commuting if you really need to get to Santa Barbara. Same weather in Ventura and Oxnard. Take the free wifi commuter buses and blog on edhat on your trips in and out of the city. No one is buying your argument we have a duty to subsidize your poor choices.
When we talk “affordable”, we have to be clear. First, I have no great belief that the housing would actually be affordable. I’m expecting another “The Marc”. Second, affordable could mean many things – the “missing middle” ($64k-76k for a couple) or those making a certain percentage over the median income. Those folks are teachers, nurses, firefighters, etc., and hardly “not contributing”. Thing is, we actually need to pay attention, or we aren’t going to like what we get.
Not one comment here about the fact that the small area between Hitchcock to La Cumbre bordered by State & Calle Real (the freeway) already has SO many recent LARGE developments built, being built and approved for building by the “experts” in planning. There are NO access streets here ! No place to divert traffic every time a truck parks for 20 minutes to unload or street & tree maintenance or car accidents and the drive thru restaurants baccking up onto State St. It is already far too congested and air polluted by all the frustrated gridlocked horn blowing angry drivers. But you watch, … the City will bend over backwards to allow even more congestion here and blame the State government for telling Santa Barbara that it MUST build more residential units. Because it just means more $tax money$ for all of the government 🙁
Rich people do find Santa Barbara affordable and have discretionary income to support its tax bases. They will find Santa Barbara desirable only if it remains small, safe and scenic. Catering to current high density subsidized housing for anyone who demands it, destroys this town’s seed corn – rich people who carry the bulk of the city’s tax burdens. Proceed carefully, city council. Be a slave to the revenue demands you created for yourself that only more rich people will provide, as much as the demands of those who want only a free ride and live off the largesse of others.
Master Chief- FYI San Andres Hardware has a surprising variety of goods for a small store. Easy parking and access. I am also frustrated by the lack of industrial supply in Santa Barbara and Goleta. I try to buy local, but have to do more and more business on-line. Ugh.
A fine and sensible plan. Thank you Cathy for your coalition approval. We need affordable housing for the people who do all the actual work in this town. They need to be able to raise their children here and stop burning up gas driving from Ventura and Lompoc. An excellent location for it. Perhaps the plan could include underground parking, although I would not want to see that raise the cost of the apartments substantially. On another note, Cathy Dear, can we replace the ambivalent, confused, undecided waffle major on the board with someone that has both feet on the ground? Please? I suggest one of the many, many choices of intelligent women we have available in Our Fine City. Can we have a low-cost recall of the Bozzo on the bus? Let’s get this done so that we can move forward into our dazzling future. Peter N.
I agree! But the problem is that some commuters are not taking the bus and 101 is clogged. The solution? Santa Barbara (not Ventura) is paying half a billion (with a “b”) to widen the freeway. Personally, I’d rather local tax dollars go towards something besides subsidizing the commute for people that choose to live down south.
Factotum. You are exactly right. If you can’t afford to live here, don’t live here. That difficulty will take care of itself. Free market economics is a tried and true system. Instead, the genius social engineers are ruining the quality of life in SB by chasing the impossible dream of making our community “affordable” by over-building, high density bird houses on every square inch of open space. So wrong headed.
but we have to bow to the prices others set? I dont want to have to pay for your greedy choices. this argument is stale and ignorant, how do you expect a city to run without the service people? without the class everyone seems to ignore and chastise for “poor choices” yet the only choice they have is to struggle and fight for every chance they can do survive in a city where people dictate the rate depending on how much sun hits there porch. seriously, get off the high horse and see if for reality. Someone is manipulating the market when it comes to rents/ housing. because its a commodity EVERYONE needs, so they have a rigged system at their fingertips.
Typical person who has never worked a day in their life demands everything their way or the highway…Ha,ha..