••• The price of the former Magic Castle Cabaret building at 30 Los Patos Way has been reduced to $3.5 million. (See the listing for many more photos of the wild interiors.) This seems like a swell location for the dedicated bar that Montecito could really use—and it comes with a liquor license.
••• The Montecito Association got a sneak peek of Caltrans’s Butterfly Lane pedestrian undercrossing revamp, in the works for a while now to make it ADA compliant. (It’s also getting brighter lighting.) If you live in Montecito, you really need to be a member of the MA.
••• Taking a break from hyperlocal blogging, I was reading a science article in the New York Times about how “the dentition of the gumboot chiton, a lumbering mollusk, contains a rare mineral never before seen in a living animal.” Imagine my surprise when the mineral in question turned out to be santabarbaraite. But it’s not named for here, says Wikipedia: “Santabarbaraite is an amorphous ferric hydroxy phosphate mineral hydrate that was discovered in Tuscany, Italy in 2000 [and] is named after the mining district Santa Barbara in Italy where it was found. The name also honors Saint Barbara, the saint of miners, which makes the mineral one of few named after women.”
••• Something is moving into the strip mall at 1046 Coast Village Road (a.k.a. the one with the Starbucks). I suppose it could be the return of Lululemon’s seasonal pop-up.
••• Broker’s open houses are a thing again, which means I’m getting to visit a bunch of properties I had only seen online. One that I was especially excited to check out was the Mount Calvary Monastery & Retreat House, right next to the Mission at 505 E. Los Olivos Street ($10.9 million). I almost never say this, but in a perfect world, I think the buildings want to be razed; much better use could be made of the location. (Imagine a small hotel there.) The property is zoned residential, however, and making changes to the exterior will be difficult, so the likeliest outcome is that it gets turned into a retreat of some kind. Although perhaps a big family will fall in love with it….
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