"Building Height War"

[ Excerpt from "Let the Height Wars Begin," By Nick Welsh, SB Independent, August 17, 2008 - full text, pictures and comments at: SBI: Building Height War ]


Now it’s official: Former city planning commissioner Bill Mahan launched the first blow in what will soon evolve into the main event in the Santa Barbara height wars. He delivered a packet of petitions early Friday morning, August 15, signed by 11,252 people who want to limit all new buildings going up in downtown Santa Barbara to no more than 40 feet, and to limit structures elsewhere in the city to a maximum of 45 feet. The current height maximum for downtown -- El Pueblo Viejo -- is 60 feet...

In the meantime, it’s expected that the City Council will craft a new and less restrictive height limit -- one more flexible, for example, for affordable housing proposals -- and place that on next November’s ballot as well. In that instance, whichever measure garners the most votes will prevail...

Mahan may be very much the man-on-a-mission, but he’s hardly alone. Joining him Friday were Mayor Marty Blum, City Councilmember Dale Francisco, and Planning Commissioner Harwood White. Also present to lend her support was former mayor Sheila Lodge, who said that Harriet Miller, the mayor immediately preceding Blum, supported the initiative as well. One-time planning commissioner –- and now head of the Allied Neighborhood Association —- Judy Orias endorsed the measure, as did representatives from Citizens Planning Association, Santa Barbarans for Safe Streets, the League of Women Voters, and a smattering of prominent neighborhood preservationists, mostly from the upper East Side...

Opposing the proposed new height limit have been Santa Barbara’s architects, affordable housing advocates, developers, and green building advocates who contend that bigger buildings are more sustainable, especially from an energy consumption standpoint. They argue that the height limit would discourage developers from putting affordable units into their mixed-use development plans...

Privately, some of the people who accompanied Mahan to City Hall Friday morning admitted to preferring the interim ordinance the council is now working on to the charter amendment they’ve put forward. “It’s like using a scalpel instead of a ball-peen hammer,” said one. If the council does place a competing measure on next November’s ballot, the unity of the coalition now backing the new 40-foot height limit would be sorely tested...

In fact, Mahan himself seemed eager to embrace the provisions of the so-called interim ordinance earlier this spring, when he held a much publicized press conference declaring that a historic accord had been struck between Santa Barbara’s strict slow-growthers and the so-called smart-growthers who dislike the height restriction. Before the ink was dry, however, the terms of that peace treaty—brokered by council member Das Williams had been publicly disowned and disavowed by Mahan. His supporters from the Citizens Planning Association and the League of Women Voters had not participated in the discussions, and they objected that Mahan should have consulted with them first. The deal was dead on arrival.

Neither of the two members of the current council now preparing to run for Mayor next November -- Iya Falcone and Helene Schneider -- has embraced the initiative as proposed...

Building Height Initiative

[ Excerpt from: "Building-Height Initiative a Step Closer to Spot on Ballot," By Rob Kuznia, Noozhawk, 08/16/2008 - full text, photos, and some very good comments at: NOOZEHAWK: Building Height Initiative ]


... To the chagrin of at least one Santa Barbara City Council member, a coalition of slow-growth advocates submitted signatures Friday to put an initiative on the November ballot that would significantly lower building-height limits in Santa Barbara.

Standing amid a throng of about 30 coalition members on the steps of City Hall, Bill Mahan, chairman of the organization Save El Pueblo Viejo, said they had gathered 11,200 signatures. To qualify for the ballot, the group needs 6,480 credible signatures. Mahan said it could take up to a month for the city clerk to verify all of the names.

As it stands now, buildings in the commercial zones of Santa Barbara can be 60 feet high; the initiative calls for lowering the limit to 40 feet in the historic downtown area and 45 feet in the rest of the city.

“We feel very, very strongly that the charm and the character of Santa Barbara … are in danger,” said Mahan, a former planning commissioner. “We’re in danger of losing those qualities because of big buildings.”

The topic of building heights has emerged as a divisive debate as a spate of tall and bulky condominium complexes — most notably on Chapala Street — has sprung up in the past couple of years. Some believe that these buildings mark the beginning of the end of the city’s low-slung cosmopolitan distinctiveness.

However, affordable housing advocates fear that the proposed initiative would stifle development and produce the unintended consequence of further squeezing out the middle class, who are reportedly moving out of the city because of the out-of-reach cost of housing.

... in April... an improbable coalition of slow-growth advocates and affordable-housing activists announced they had struck an accord on height limits and affordable housing.

That coalition, led by Santa Barbara Councilman Das Williams, included many of the same slow-growth advocates, such as Mahan and former Mayor Sheila Lodge. The group had unveiled a proposed interim ordinance that would, for example, keep the proposed 40- and 45-foot height limits, but grant exceptions to developers who went well above and beyond standards for including affordable units. Such developers would be awarded with 12 extra feet.

On Friday, Councilman Das Williams said he was disappointed. “I’m saddened by the fact that they felt like they needed to continue with this overly simplistic measure,” he said. “I don’t think it will be in the best long-term interest of the citizens of Santa Barbara to pass it. But I do understand there is a legitimate concern about size, bulk and scale.”

However, he added, “The issue of size, bulk, scale and affordable housing cannot all be addressed by height.”

Williams’ compromise coalition formed shortly after Mahan started collecting signatures. It began to fall apart when Mahan refused to stop collecting signatures. At the time, the group had gathered about 3,000.

“It came into my heart that each one of those signatures is like a sacred trust, and we couldn’t just throw them away,” Mahan said Friday. “I think it’s fine for the City Council to put out an alternative initiative if it wants to. The people, then, could make the choice. This is all about the people making the choice.”

Meanwhile, the interim City Council ordinance isn’t dead. On Tuesday, it will be discussed by the city Ordinance Committee. Hypothetically, however, if both passed, the ballot initiative would trump the city ordinance, because the ballot initiative is an attempt to amend the city’s charter, which is akin to a local constitution, Mahan said.

Mahan added that he believes that the culprit in the affordable-housing debate isn’t building height but ceiling height. The ceilings in some of the new luxury condos reach heights of 13 feet, he said. If builders stuck to 8 feet, they could get more units inside smaller developments.

In addition to Mahan’s Save El Pueblo Viejo, four other groups — the League of Women Voters, the Citizens Planning Association, the Allied Neighborhoods Association and the Pearl Chase Society — are sponsoring the proposed ballot measure. During the course of the campaign, the group raised and spent about $35,000...

CVR Project

[ Excerpt from: "Council majority seeks middle ground on CVR project," by Eric Lindberg, DAILY SOUND, July 15, 2008 ]

With community members sharply divided on a proposal to replace an aging gas station on Coast Village Road with eight condos and commercial space, a majority of the Santa Barbara City Council sought a happy medium to divergent viewpoints.

On a 4-3 vote, leaders upheld earlier approvals of the project but sent it along to the city’s design board to work on reducing its bulky appearance...

Since initially presented in 2004, the proposal to destroy a gas station at the corner of Coast Village and Olive Mill roads in order to build a 17,270 square-foot, mixed-use building has provoked fervent criticism from some and unrestrained praise from others.

Its location is commonly heralded as the gateway to Montecito...

A portion of public speakers joined that chorus, citing concerns about its bulk and height, compatibility with neighboring residences, potential traffic impacts and strain on water resources...

Height remained a critical issue for some city leaders, including Councilmember Iya Falcone, who cast a dissenting vote along with Mayor Marty Blum and Councilmember Dale Francisco.

While split on the merits of a third story, the council appeared largely in consensus on another issue — a requested modification on the northern edge of the building to allow a two-story section to protrude into the required setback...

City planner Peter Lawson... said rezoning a 50-foot segment of land along the northern edge of the project site currently designated as residential would merely fit with the city’s General Plan and present commercial use of the property...

While unanimously approving the rezone, the council majority deferred a decision on how exactly to solve the issue of neighborhood compatibility, instead directing the ABR to place an emphasis on resolving the project’s impact on the Olive Mill Road neighborhood.

Falcone and Mayor Blum said the possibility that the building might remain at three stories prevented them from giving it a nod of approval.

“It is just a little bit too big for that corner,” the mayor said. “It’s bulky. I’m struggling with that third story.”

Francisco, however, took issue with another condition of approval backed strongly by Councilmembers Schneider, Das Williams and Grant House.

While the city has yet to finalize changes to its inclusionary housing ordinance — which in essence requires developers to provide affordable units or pay into a city housing fund — Williams asked that the project be held to those standards by paying $17,000 per unit toward the development of affordable housing stock.

Representatives of developer John Price quickly agreed to such a proposition, but Francisco met the concept with great hesitation...

Nonetheless, with a majority vote, the project is off to the city’s design board for more tinkering on its apparent bulkiness and neighborhood compatibility. If the ABR grants preliminary approval to the project, that decision can be appealed back to the council for further discussion.

Condos Summary by A.P.

[ Excerpt from The Angry Poodle column in the SANTA BARBARA INDEPENDENT, by Nick Welsh, 6/26/2008 ]

... [recently] the Santa Barbara City Council wrestled with some exceedingly modest measures designed to secure a toehold for the middle class — and the upper-middle class — in the South Coast’s ever forbidding housing market. It used to be that affordable housing programs were designed to help the poor and the very poor. In Santa Barbara, the focus has shifted to the middle and upper-middle class. Once upon a time, teachers, nurses, and cops could afford to buy a home here. Those days are gone. Now doctors and lawyers can barely make it. Just imagine when the lawyers we need to sue our doctors for malpractice can no longer afford to live here. Is that the kind of community we want to become?

On the table were changes to city rules requiring that developers include a token number of affordable units in whatever housing they build. Four years ago, the council imposed these requirements on developments of 10 units or more. Anything smaller was not affected. Nor were condo conversions. Guess what? In the intervening four years, we have discovered that the vast majority of new housing units going up — 95 percent of them in fact — are smaller than 10 units. And there’s been a whole lot of condo converting going on, too. In response, councilmembers Helene Schneider and Das Williams have led the charge to include condo conversions and projects with two or more units. Given the resistance they encountered, you’d have thought they were demanding rent control...

The new plan requires that 5 percent of all condo conversions and new units be affordable. And by “affordable,” we’re talking upper-middle-class income brackets. Developers can opt out by paying an in-lieu fee of $17,700 per affordable unit. Admittedly, that’s not much when you consider that the median price of a South Coast home is still just over $1 million. But if these rules had been in effect during the past two years, City Hall would have collected $3.5 million to underwrite housing subsidies for people who, until recently, would never have needed subsidizing.

Council deliberations can be windy affairs where councilmembers deploy such phrases as “folks,” “thinking outside the box,” and “providing another tool in the toolbox” with criminal abandon. This Tuesday’s phrase du jour was “silver bullet,” as in, the new rules would definitely not be “a silver bullet” for dealing with the high cost of housing, but they would provide “another tool in the toolbox.”

...Councilmember Iya Falcone agonized at such length over the pros, the cons, and the “unintended consequences” of the measure that she seemed to be waging a one-woman filibuster with herself. Council conservative Dale Francisco... objected that the proposed ordinance language constituted “extortion.”

... Schneider responded that people who converted rentals into condos  —  a ministerial transaction effectuated by City Hall  —  reaped such a huge financial windfall that taxing them a little bit was more than fair. This being City Hall, no action is ever truly final. Still, the council voted 6-1 to approve the changes in concept and send them back to committee for further refinement...

Condo Conversions

[ Excerpt from: "Are Condo Conversions Putting the Squeeze on Renters?" By Rob Kuznia, Noozhawk, 6/24/2008 ]

... Santa Barbara has long been a nearly impossible place for middle-class families to enter the housing market, but some evidence suggests it’s becoming increasingly difficult for renters as well.

For one thing, the median rate for a two-bedroom rental unit rose disproportionately last year: an 8 percent increase, to $1,950 — the highest jump since at least 2002, according to a city study.

Also, some Santa Barbara City Council members are sounding the alarm on the number of landlords who are converting their rental units into condominiums. In two years, the city has approved roughly 100 conversions. There are 71 more conversions pending.

“This is an alarming number,” said Councilman Das Williams. “One of the most important things we need to do as a city is protect our rental housing and middle-class housing. To do that we need to have less condo conversions.”

Meanwhile, the vacancy rate in Santa Barbara has long been low — just below 3 percent — and few, if any, market-rate rental units are being built, because there is no financial incentive for property owners to do so...

Council members like Williams, Helene Schneider and Mayor Marty Blum have expressed interest in tightening existing restrictions on condo conversions... [including] a disincentive to condo-ize rental units [by] extending the so-called inclusionary housing ordinance to developments under 10 units in size.

... other council members don’t think the answer is to impose more restrictions on property owners. Councilwoman Iya Falcone prefers the idea of providing incentives for landowners to keep rental housing. Councilman Dale Francisco outright opposes any measures that would try to limit condo conversions...

... Williams said he would like to lower the cap on the allowable number of condo conversions every year.

As it is, the city allows no more than 50 units of condo conversions that require no construction. (Conversions that do involve construction for some reason are not subject to any cap.)

Blum, meanwhile, said she’d consider revisiting a modified version of an ordinance that once existed in Santa Barbara until it was overturned about 15 years ago: Putting a moratorium on conversions when the vacancy rate dips to a certain level...

“Less than 5 percent of the people who live in Santa Barbara can afford to buy here,” she said. “That’s a very, very low number. I know that I probably couldn’t afford to buy here if I were starting over.”

...

Inclusionary Housing Ordinance

[ Excerpt from: "City Council Buys Into Plan to Make Condo Developers Pay Up," By Rob Kuznia, Noozhawk, 6/25/2008 ]

... Closing a potential loophole for small-time condominium developers, the Santa Barbara City Council on Tuesday gave the nod to a draft ordinance that would require them to set aside money for building housing for the middle class.

Tuesday’s 6-1 decision was in favor of an amendment to the four-year-old “inclusionary housing” ordinance, which aims to help retain middle-class workers in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets.

The ordinance requires developers of condo complexes of at least 10 units to set aside 15 percent of them for people with middle-class incomes. Tuesday’s amendment would extend the ordinance to include projects with as few as two units.

Under the new rules, the developers of such projects would not be required to build extra affordable units, but instead must contribute a fee of $17,700 per unit to the city’s affordable housing fund. It turn, the city could use the money for a variety of purposes, such as subsidizing developments for workforce housing.

Voting against it was Councilor Dale Francisco, who... [said of the ordinance] “It is extortion.”

... Council members Das Williams and Helene Schneider said the amendment would close a loophole, noting that the vast majority of condo developers have skirted the requirement of the original ordinance by building fewer than 10 units. Staff members said that 95 percent of the nearly 200 condos added to the market since the original ordinance was passed have been a part of such smaller developments.

“That’s about $3.5 million of inclusionary fees that we just didn’t capture,” Williams said...

Building Heights Confusion

Reading the various reportings on the building heights issue, I asked my son to help with my confusion. He explained where we are on the building heights issue and later put it in an email:

"I do admit that the conclusion was not very clear. We cannot pass a draft interim ordinance as is in one hearing, and we are not likely to do so as is. To ensure that there is enough public input, we need to have some process. We [the City Council] instructed the Ordinance Committee to draft an interim ordinance on height limits, incorporating the issues of open space, setbacks and type and mix of units; to come back to Council after the GPU workshop, check-in with Council is complete, and to possibly include a sunset date which would coincide with the adoption and implementation of the ordinances."

----------------------------

The following are excerpts from "City Council Waits for More Data Before Capping Downtown Structures - No Building Height Ordinance — Yet," By Martha Sadler, SB INDEPENDENT, April 24, 2008:

"On Thursday, April 17, Councilmember Das Williams called a press conference to announce an historic compromise between smart-growth advocates and preservationists regarding the question of building heights and density... The spokesperson for the new coalition was architect Bill Mahan, a former city planning commissioner and one of the authors of the Save El Pueblo petition, which aims to place on the ballot an initiative that would impose a 45-foot building height maximum throughout the city... Former mayor Sheila Lodge, another leader in the signature drive, stood by his side on the steps... according to Lodge, they had crafted this compromise with those who favor tall buildings downtown to prevent horizontal sprawl  —  including Williams, housing advocate Mickey Flacks, and high-profile architects Detlev Peikert, Brian Cearnal, and Bruce Bartlett...

"... It turned out that the compromise came as a surprise to most of those who had gathered signatures for the ballot initiative, signed it, or contributed money to the effort...

"The council on Tuesday night concluded that there was no point in a temporary height-limiting ordinance if it wouldn’t stop the ballot initiative...

"In a gesture demonstrating their understanding of the public’s concern about building heights, a majority of council members directed planning staff to work on a height-limiting ordinance, but not to rush it. The consensus was that height limits and associated questions about open space and affordable housing were best addressed as part of the Plan Santa Barbara process, now underway, which is leading up to the update of the city’s General Plan..."

For full-text of the SB INDEPENDENT article of 4/24/2008, please go to:
SBI: Building Heights

Building Heights Ordinance (con't)

[ Excerpt from "City plans to create temporary building guidelines" BY ERIC LINDBERG
DAILY SOUND, April 22, 2008 ]


After a lengthy seesaw battle, Santa Barbara city leaders approved by a slim 4-3 margin a proposal to have the city’s Ordinance Committee draft temporary legislation to address concerns about the height, bulk and scale of recent building projects until the city’s General Plan update process is complete...

Councilmembers Das Williams, Helene Schneider and Iya Falcone, who brought the proposal to the council’s agenda, joined with Councilmember Grant House yesterday evening to vote in favor of drafting an interim ordinance.

“It’s moving in the right direction,” House said. “Is it all the way? No way.”

In contrast, Councilmember Dale Francisco called the proposal an “end-run” around the Plan Santa Barbara process and a failed attempt to head off the petition being circulated for signatures that would lower building height limits...

Schneider also called the proposed ballot initiative, organized by a group known as Save El Pueblo Viejo, an “end-run” around Plan Santa Barbara. She said while an interim ordinance is not an ideal situation, it is necessary given the context.

“Of course it’s not perfect,” she said, calling the ordinance language proposed yesterday evening a starting point...

Many in attendance, including several supporters of the Save El Pueblo Viejo initiative, also agreed that a citizen-led ballot initiative is too simplistic to address complex planning issues related to size, bulk and scale of buildings.

“The issues are so subtle that it’s somewhat ham-fisted to have a ballot initiative that just talks about height,” said Brian Barnwell, a former city councilmember and one of the organizers of the Save El Pueblo Viejo initiative.

Barnwell said the initiative has cachet because local residents lost faith in city leaders to take action on buildings they perceived to be inappropriately large and bulky. With a good interim ordinance, however, he said he would be willing to urge people to vote against the initiative, if it gathers the requisite number of signatures to appear on the ballot...

House, who appeared to waver back and forth on the merits of an interim ordinance, ultimately swung in favor of the proposal after Falcone and Williams agreed not to place a timeline on the process.

Williams said the intent is to use input from a current round of Plan Santa Barbara community workshops to build the temporary ordinance.

--------------------------

For full text of the article, please go to:
SBDS: Temporary Building Guidelines

Middle-Class Housing

[ Excerpt from: "Desperately Seeking Middle-Class Housing - Ordinance Committee Zeros In on Smaller Condo Developments," By Bianca Licata, SB INDEPENDENT, April 3, 2008 ]


Making advances in Santa Barbara’s affordable housing program, councilmembers Dale Francisco, Das Williams, and Grant House met on April 1 as the Ordinance Committee and recommended some basic changes to the city’s inclusionary housing law. Conceived in 2004, the ordinance demands that all ownership subdivisions of 10 units or more make 15 percent of those units affordable to “middle-income” families, which means two-bedroom condos priced at $249,000, and three-bedrooms at $283,000. This is supposed to allow employers to attract and keep a workforce without increasing commuter traffic...

However, many feel that because the ordinance does not affect housing projects of fewer than 10 units, it is practically useless in meeting the demand for affordable middle-income housing...

Developers of condo projects with two to nine units who do not want to include affordable units could pay an “in-lieu” fee of $17,700 for each unit they build, so a two-unit project would pay $35,400 and a nine-unit project would pay $153,000. This is a lighter burden than the $473,300 fee that currently applies to larger projects, for each affordable unit they are required to build but do not...

Williams defended inclusionary housing and in-lieu fees, supporting the changes staff had outlined. “This is a regional market. Charges recommended today will make it more functional,” said Williams. “Is it okay to allow smaller units [like condominium developers] to sail on through without an extraction?”

... For the recommended ordinance to become law, a supermajority of five councilmembers will have to agree.

Williams said the decisions would help propagate the development of affordable housing. “[These are the] first meaningful steps towards [making sure] that the city of Santa Barbara will build housing for the income levels Santa Barbara City needs,” said Williams...

-----------------------------

To read the full text article, please go to:

SBI: Desperately Seeking Middle-Class Housing

Energy Ordinance

[ Excerpt from the Truth & Progress Blog, post entitled "Energizing America ... Cities leading the way," by: a siegel, Oct 29, 2007 ]

... There are many rows to hoe to foster an Energy Smart culture, one that will enable us to create a Prosperous, Climate Friendly Society. Being Energy Smart begins at Home, but individuals will not, cannot create this path toward a sensible future alone, we work, live, and prosper in communities. And, well, isn't that what civilization is about?

Now, some communities in the nation are moving forward, are taking steps to create a sustainable energy future.

This diary will focus on recent announcements by three cities: Berkeley and Santa Barbara, California; and Richmond, Virginia...

Energizing America into an Energy Smart future will require engagement from us all, at all levels, individuals, businesses, communities, government (at all levels). One of EA2020's Core Principles is to Make the Right Choice, The Easy Choice (and the preferred choice)...






Committing to Better Buildings: Santa Barbara and Richmond


There are many organizations working hard to foster a better tomorrow, trying to figure out ways to navigate the combined threats of Peak Oil and Global Warming to create a sustainable energy future. So many that it is more than a full time job to keep track of all the activity out there. Amid all the plethora of organizations, Architecture 2030 is something that merits attention if you have any concerns about building infrastructure and its impacts related to energy/global warming. There are many challenges, targets, paths, but a core element is that all new buildings in the United States will be "Carbon-neutral in 2030 (using no fossil fuel GHG emitting energy to operate)".

The US Conference of Mayors and the National Association of County Officials have adopted resolutions supported Architecture 2030's objectives. There are a number of organizations and cities who have signed up with Architecture2030...

Santa Barbara is going a step farther. Last week, according to reporting in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound, the Santa Barbara's City Council unanimously adopted Architecture2030 Energy Ordinance, making it the first city-wide adoption in the United States. They did this a year after presentations by Ed Mazria, of Architecture 2030, who convinced the city to act, to act seriously.

The ordinance will enact building regulations exceeding state standards for energy use by 20 percent for low-rise residential buildings, 15 percent for high-rise residential buildings and 10 percent for nonresidential buildings, ...

The power of regulation, of building code. Building code is 'minimum', not optimal or recommended. This code will help drive buildings toward more reasonable (lower) energy use.

Calling it one of the most important acts the Council has taken in recent years, Councilmember Das Williams said it is about time "we grow up as a society" and stop being a "race of spoiled children, squandering away our natural resources."

...

"It's not every day contractors and architects come to us and say, can you make the rules a bit more stringent, please?" Councilmember HeleneSchneider said.

They know it is the right thing to do. Now they will have to spend less time convincing clients to take Energy Smart steps and can focus on ways to meet these targets.

Now, Santa Barbara's regulation needs state approval. And, when California's codes become tougher, these rules will be revisited -- hopefully to keep pushing the envelope toward greater energy efficiency...