••• Milpas Gardens, the huge apartment complex proposed for 418 N. Milpas Street and 915-923 E. Gutierrez Street, goes before the city’s Planning Commission on March 20. “It’s a new four-story, 108,698-square-foot (gross) mixed-use building with 90 residential rental units and 850 square feet (net) of commercial space. The project includes 29 studio units, 46 one-bedroom units, and 15 two-bedroom units […] with an average unit size of 632 square feet. Nine units would be restricted to very-low-income households and six units would be restricted to moderate-income households. The project includes 65 residential parking stalls, three commercial parking stalls, and one loading parking stall for smaller size delivery/service vehicles. Vehicular access to the site is from E. Gutierrez Street.” (The five “bed and breakfast” hotel rooms previously included have been scrapped.) The materials submitted offer a better look than we’ve seem in the past; in 2022, I called the architecture “very Courtyard by Marriott,” and I’ll stand by that, but the massing, as seem in these renderings, takes it into state penitentiary territory. All of the current buildings will be demolished. According to a reader, that includes the “eight cottages located at 915-923 Gutierrez Street [that] are home to senior citizens on fixed incomes who will be permanently displaced.”
••• After eight years in Montecito’s Upper Village, Marc Normand Gelinas has decided to close his retail shop, the better to focus on his interior design business. (Antiques will be available online or by appointment.) And Maison K is taking over the space—look for it to open in the next week or so.
••• Last June, the San Ysidro Ranch went before the Montecito Board of Architectural Review with an 867-square-foot addition to the hotel’s pool house. The plan appears to have changed, because a much more extensive spa is on the March 20 MBAR agenda:
Conceptual review of proposed spa pool facilities including a pool house gym addition of approximately 1,776 square feet, reception area of approximately 717 square feet, treatment areas (locker rooms, spa) of approximately 3,888 square feet, and associated spa pools, pergola, deck, and landscaping as well as pathways and expanded parking.
••• Readers of the Walk With Me post about Santa Barbara City College may recall the Lifescape Garden, which has—by its own description—“‘silly’ labels placed throughout the garden, that (1) are not real plants (2) have made up facts, and (3) are meant to make you laugh or chuckle.” T. went and found one:
••• The Junior League of Santa Barbara‘s annual rummage sale is March 22 at the Carrillo Recreation Center, with a pre-sale event the evening before.
••• According to the Montecito Association, “the County Board of Supervisors recently approved new outdoor lighting regulations [that] set limits on outdoor lighting temperatures: outdoor security lighting, maximum of 4,000 Kelvin; all other outdoor lighting, maximum of 2,700 Kelvin. Additionally, the County did not grant an exception for Montecito, meaning unshielded string lights will not be allowed, and new uplighting is prohibited to maintain consistency across the region. These changes aim to balance energy efficiency, community aesthetics, and wildlife protection while ensuring well-lit and safe outdoor spaces.” I’m all for discouraging outdoor lighting, especially when it’s overly bright, but the Kelvin part isn’t really the problem: that describes the temperature (i.e., color) of the light, not the brightness, which is measured in lumens. Also, who’s going to enforce it?
••• “Whimsy abounds,” says the website for Hermitage Santa Barbara, Theodore Roosevelt Gardner II’s museum of his own artwork and others’, and boy, does it ever! I finally took the free two-hour tour, but I won’t say more because the museum requests that guests not post about it on social media or user-review sites, other than to say that the book-shaped building (visible from W. Mountain Drive, below) is alone worth the trip. As is the mailbox!
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I support the project. But an AB 1287 project would be even better: same building envelope, but 120 instead of 90 units. The 55 units without parking would all rent at moderate or lower levels. The limited parking would likely improve (not worsen) local parking congestion.
Will the string light police be peeking over backyard hedges?
Drone Patrol by the noisy neighbors? Or by their Private Security Operatives?
Outdoor lighting is already enforced by Santa Barbara County Planning & Development’s zoning enforcement, which is a reactive, complaint-driven program. Roughly 5% of their annual complaints are outdoor lighting related and most of those are in Montecito.
Despite the monstrous nature of this project, what’s up with demolishing 8 low-income units? Even if those 8 income-restricted units are replaced in the project, will this be another loophole where those eight count toward the required low-income allotment? The other market rate units in the project will drive the need for additional local services that pay minimum wage. How does this project help our real problem of insufficient worker-affordable residences? Projects should be required to replace removed low-income housing units PLUS meet their other inclusionary housing mandates.
For me, the aesthetics of this project are terrible. I think that’s what needs to change. However, if you add more low income units to this project it would never get built. Construction is just too expensive. Even the current incentives to build are not enough in many cases. Take the old Jiffy Lube site on Carrillo/De La Vina. The owners got a big apartment approved. Would have been great, another community of people living and shopping downtown. But it got sold. So now a Valvoline Oil franchise will go it and for decades it will be there – until cars don’t run on oil. Great fit? Good use? Nice look? Not so much. Take your pick: No development at all or more market rate apartments. I do agree 100% we need a balanced community. Having a bunch of spoiled trust funders or only elite income types isn’t what SB is about. Adding in 15% of lower or moderate income units helps a bit at least. Let’s not see the glass as always 85% empty. The Housing Authority has been hundreds of units in town over the last 10 years for low income workers. It’s wonderful. We need more and so let’s set aside land for them. The City, BTW, has tons of sites which are not needed or else underutilized, like downtown parking lots. Build apartments over these surface lots which maintaining much of the parking for the public. There are 6 ways to Sunday to fix things and yet we are stuck here on Monday morning. Keep in mind also that the more units are built, the more prices will stabilize eventually. Supply-demand, micro economics basics do hold true over time. Lastly, if we don’t get more people downtown, how is State street, the retail scene ever going to bounce back? How it will downtown ever be vibrant again? It’s not a fertile land with a few dead zone. Quite the opposite. It is a desert with a little oasis of people and activity here and there. I’m pretty sure nobody wants this. Let’s not keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Most
Where is everyone going to park their cars who move in to the new (unappealing) apartment building on Gutierrez at Milpas?????