Veronica Meadows Approved

[ Excerpt from "Third Time’s the Charm" By Nick Welsh, December 14, 2006, SB INDEPENDENT ]

Veronica Meadows Approved

For developer Mark Lee, visits to the City Council chambers have been occasions for genuine dread. During his first visit, councilmembers pointedly told Lee to drastically redesign his controversial housing plans, proposed for the Las Positas Valley alongside Arroyo Burro Creek. The second time, the same councilmembers told Lee they liked his original plans for Veronica Meadows better. But this Tuesday, they gave Lee the five-vote supermajority he needed not only to annex his property into city limits, but to build 25 new houses.

Lee’s victory came in the face of a last-minute blitz orchestrated by environmentalists, who dismissed his creek restoration plans as nothing more than “channel stabilization” and predicted that the entrance bridge Lee has proposed building across Arroyo Burro Creek will become a highway to hell for all the critters and wildlife that rely on what everyone agrees is a seriously degraded channel much in need of improvement. Lee also weathered a firestorm of criticism from affordable housing advocates, who questioned why City Hall was bending over backward to accommodate a developer who proposed building what they characterized as oversized homes for people with oversized incomes.

While Lee and his attorney Steve Amerikaner were ready, willing, and able to defend themselves, their biggest sledgehammer, it turned out, was the residents of nearby Alan Road, who showed up en masse... as they have at every meeting of significance — to oppose any and all efforts to locate the entrance road through their street. From the beginning, Lee sought to avoid Alan Road, proposing instead the entrance bridge across the creek. And from the same beginning, environmentalists — concerned about preserving the Las Positas Valley as “the lungs of Santa Barbara” from a host of projects big and small — sought to force the entrance through Alan Road. They were aided greatly by an environmental report that identified the bridge’s impacts on wildlife as the one significant and unavoidable negative impact of the project.

... the Alan Road residents have been in a constant state of political mobilization. Based on their pressure — coupled with a satchel full of public improvements that Lee has promised — the council approved Lee’s project with the bridge. Chief among Lee’s promised improvements is the rehabilitation and restoration of both banks of the creek. (Exactly what has been promised has yet to be seen, however, as the final creek plan has not been adopted. The final plan will have to be “peer reviewed” by a biological consultant, and the feelings of the city’s own Creeks Committee explored, before the final plan can be approved by the city’s community development director.) In addition, Lee is on the hook to build new bike and pedestrian pathways linking the Westside and Elings Park to Arroyo Burro Beach; to pay for a new Las Positas traffic light by Elings Park; and to contribute to the costs of a new roundabout at Las Positas Road and Cliff Drive. In addition, Lee promised to include two affordable units.

Opposing the project were Councilmembers Helene Schneider and Das Williams. Williams said he felt “very sad that the soul of Santa Barbara is for sale,” but Councilmember Brian Barnwell suggested that City Hall had extorted concessions from the developer, rather than the developer bribing the council. And Councilmember Grant House gushed, “This is an unprecedented creek and habitat restoration plan.” From the outset, however, the fate of Lee’s project lay in the hands of Mayor Marty Blum, whose vote was essential...

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Full Text of article at:
http://www.independent.com/news/2006/12/third_times_the_charm.html

"Salvation By Design"

[ Excerpts from: "Salvation by Design" By Nick Welsh, December 7, 2006, SB INDEPENDENT ]

Architects Join War on Global Warming

For a carpenter, so the saying goes, there are few problems that can’t be fixed with a hammer and nail. Similarly, in Santa Barbara, where architectural review is practiced as civic fetish, there are precious few problems that can’t be solved by more intelligent design. To this end, Santa Barbara’s chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has thrown itself into the battle against global warming, teaming up with the Community Environmental Council (CEC) to lead the charge on City Hall beginning early next year. Together, the two organizations hope to convince the city to decree that as of 2030 all new buildings approved within Santa Barbara city limits — both public and private — will be carbon-neutral, meaning they will emit no greenhouse gases. They also hope Santa Barbara will establish more limited goals to be achieved within a decade: namely, that all new or revamped city-owned structures must reduce their emissions by 50 percent and all new or remodeled privately owned structures must achieve a 20 percent reduction.

“This is the Holy Grail,” exclaimed City Councilmember Das Williams. “This is the most substantial change we can make.” Williams said the architects he consulted told him that the first 40 percent reduction should be relatively simple. “The next 10 percent might take some effort,” he said, adding that the discrepancy between public and private improvements was not as stark as it seems since state law already requires private homes to achieve a 30 percent reduction in such emissions.

The 2030 Campaign is spearheaded by architect Joseph Andrulaitis, who three months ago helped sponsor the forum featuring internationally known green architect Edward Mazria. Speaking at a packed Marjorie Luke Theatre, Mazria explained how homes and buildings are responsible for 48 percent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. These are the structures most desperately in need of attention and redesign, he said. By contrast, Mazria said factories nationwide have produced basically the same quantity of greenhouse gases over the past 50 years despite a huge increase in the number of factories; this is largely because of design improvements.

Of the many public officials, architects, and builders who turned out to hear Mazria speak, one suggested that solar power should be required for all new projects covering 3,000 square feet or more. Santa Barbara City Councilmember Brian Barnwell — inspired by this and similar comments — walked out of the forum fortified with an almost religious sense of mission...

Andrulaitis noted that many of the improvements could be made with more thoughtful design and planning, rather than with expensive new technologies. New structures should be built to maximize passive solar energy, he said, thereby reducing the energy needed to heat and cool buildings. But Andrulaitus conceded that to achieve a genuinely carbon-neutral future, new and better insulation, solar heating panels, and more efficient cooling devices would all be required. These improvements will cost money up front, he said, but will save money over the long haul.

... In the same vein, the Santa Barbara City Council adopted new solar power design guidelines this Tuesday in response to a new state law that removes the authority to regulate and permit the installation of most rooftop solar panels from local governments. In recent years, rooftop solar panels have been the focus of some aesthetic objection from both city officials and neighborhood activists. The new guidelines are designed to identify the best solar installation practices and reward those who follow them with plaques of recognition.

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Full text of article at:
http://www.independent.com/news/2006/12/salvation_by_design.html

CH's Workforce Condos

[ Excerpt from "Bittersweet Victory," By Nick Welsh, SB INDEPENDENT, November 30, 2006 ]

St. Francis Housing Project Approved Amid Council Charges of Arrogance


Victory has rarely left so bitter an aftertaste as it did for Cottage Health System at last week’s City Council meeting. Though the Santa Barbara City Council overwhelmingly approved Cottage’s long-simmering plans to build 115 workforce condos — 81 at substantially below-market rates — on the site of the former St. Francis Hospital, Councilmember Brian Barnwell castigated Cottage administrators for what he described as their high-handed and unilateral approach. “The Cottage board is really lucky that this council is not as arrogant as they are,” said Barnwell, who was one of the proposal’s most enthusiastic boosters. “I think the neighbors were correct. There was an arrogance associated with this.”

Barnwell’s anger stemmed from Cottage’s steadfast refusal to commit to including solar panels on the condos — or even to look into the feasibility of solar power — as a condition of approval. In fact, shortly before last Tuesday’s meeting, the Cottage board of directors voted to withdraw their application and sell off the land if the council voted to include any new solar-based conditions. When notified of the Cottage ultimatum at last Tuesday’s meeting, Councilmember Das Williams commented, “That’s some serious hardball.”

Barnwell — whom Williams described as such a “cheerleader” for the project that he all but carried pom-poms — has become urgently concerned about global warming in recent months, sparking him to push Cottage to include solar panels on the condo roofs. From the start, Cottage officials refused, charging Barnwell’s request was “a late hit” at the tail end of a three-year process...

Responding to Barnwell’s rebuke, Cottage CEO Ron Werft denied charges of institutional arrogance, insisting that Cottage had consistently acted according to its “core values of excellence, integrity, and compassion” in dealing with the council and the neighbors who live near the St. Francis site. “The only thing we did differently,” Werft said, “was we didn’t play the game.” By “the game,” Werft meant that Cottage did not initially propose more development than it intended so that it could make a show of making concessions later. While Councilmembers Helene Schneider and Williams — the only one who voted against the project — sounded concerns similar to Barnwell’s, Mayor Marty Blum sought to distance herself from such sentiments. “You need to know we don’t all feel the same way,” Blum told Werft. Ironically, since last week’s meeting, Cottage officials have been in contact with the Community Environmental Council to discuss the feasibility of installing some solar panels.

Despite his concerns, Barnwell and four other councilmembers took pains to praise the St. Francis project for providing desperately needed affordable housing for Cottage’s employees. Opponents of the project — led by activists with the Bungalow Haven Neighborhood Association — gained little traction with the council in arguing that the project should be scaled back in size and the St. Francis building should be considered for historic preservation. These activists complained that the Environmental Impact Report — which found preservation unfeasible — was compromised because the consultant who did the work is married to a Cottage physician. City Attorney Steve Wiley has advised that this relationship falls considerably short of a legal conflict of interest, though the neighborhood critics’ own ethicist argued it constitutes a breach of public trust nonetheless. Some councilmembers, like Iya Falcone, chastised neighborhood critics for leveling such a personal attack; others, like Williams and Barnwell, suggested Cottage would have been well advised to hire someone else.

Critics also argued the St. Francis building should be retained and redeveloped into housing... No councilmembers expressed much interest in adaptive reuse, however, arguing that the existing building — four stories high in places — creates a huge wall blocking views to and from the Riviera. Cottage officials rejected adaptive reuse as well, claiming their employees were not interested.

Neighborhood critics are still deliberating whether to sue to block the council’s approval. If they do, they will argue that City Hall, in its eagerness to approve one of the biggest privately financed affordable housing proposals in decades, failed to subject the St. Francis proposal to the environmental scrutiny state law requires.


The Santa Barbara Independent :: news :: Bittersweet Victory