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.

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

Restless Natives

[ Excerpt from Barney Brantingham's column, SB INDEPENDENT, November 21, 2007 ]


Then there’s [the]... Veronica Meadows 25-home project off Las Positas Road. Now a judge has found fault with the environmental report and is tossing the whole enchilada back to the council. Councilmembers Das Williams and Schneider oppose annexing the property to the city. “I can’t see any reason to approve building luxury housing on open space,” Williams said.

Is it a surprise that both Das and Helene kept their seats on November 6?

... The natives are restless...

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Full text available at:

Santa Barbara Independent: Big, Bad Building

MTD Transit Center

[ Excerpt from "Right Place, Wrong Size" By Nick Welsh, SANTA BARBARA INDEPENDENT, March 1, 2007 ]

... Several months ago, the councilmembers enthusiastically announced their plans to dramatically reinvent the Metropolitan Transit District’s (MTD) downtown bus depot, adding room for more buses, affordable housing, shops, offices, and maybe a new downtown park and day care center.

On February 27, the consultants hired by City Hall to conduct a feasibility study of this wish list unveiled six alternative development scenarios that left most councilmembers stunned and reaching for adjectives to hurl. The plans ranged from big to bigger to biggest...

All sketches showed most of the block bounded by Chapala, Carrillo, State, and Figueroa streets engulfed by a four-story mix of bus bays, a transit center, shops, and housing units. Four of the six alternatives also involved building two levels of underground parking. The smallest plan involved 124 housing units — a mix of affordable rentals and market-rate units for sale — and required a subsidy of $18 million. The most ambitious — which also incorporated the space now occupied by the adjoining Greyhound bus station — included 176 housing units and required a $29 million subsidy.

Of all the councilmembers, Das Williams was the most enthusiastic, urging his colleagues “to have some courage,” and arguing, “If we don’t build a significant degree of housing in downtown that’s affordable, it can’t happen anywhere.” But even Williams blanched at the sketches, warning that if they were shown outside council chambers, “We’ll get burned in effigy.” Councilmember Brian Barnwell stated bluntly, “It’s not only too dense; the building is too large for its mass, and it has too many units in it.” Roger Horton agreed, saying, “I’m particularly concerned the size, bulk, and scale are just terrible here.” And Councilmember Helene Schneider suggested that sexpot Mae West’s adage “Too much of a good thing is wonderful” definitely did not apply in this case. A strong proponent of affordable housing, Schneider admitted, “What I saw here today turned me off. If I saw this for the first time, I’d be very scared of it.” She also asked why the consultants did not include market-rate rental housing in their fiscal analysis.

Councilmember Iya Falcone and Mayor Marty Blum both expressed concern that the consultants suggested ways to physically segregate occupants of affordable housing from occupants of market units. Falcone, like several others, offered no enthusiasm for including market-rate units at all. But Councilmember Grant House said including such units would help underwrite the costs of the affordable units.

MTD boardmembers were glad that most of the plans included 16 new bus bays. (Currently, the depot has only four.) They were also happy — as were the councilmembers — that the consultants concluded the only feasible location for the transit center was where it already is and that the Amtrak depot was too small and inconvenient. But Tom Williams of the Downtown Parking Committee charged the consultants did not include nearly enough parking to accommodate the proposed housing and shop space. City guidelines, which formerly called for two parking spaces per unit, have recently been reduced to one per unit. In at least one alternative, the consultants suggested requiring 0.6 of a space per unit. “I’d like to see someone park 0.6 of a car,” Williams declared, adding, “My concern is real-world parking, not wished-for parking or mythical parking or any other kind of parking.”

MTD boardmember Brian Fahnestock shot back, “I hope we build this in the ‘real world’ of today, not the ‘real world’ of the 1950s. It needs to have solar panels and to accommodate alternate transit of the future.” He was echoed by MTD’s Logan Green, who recalled that the proposed new development had been dubbed “the anti-parking lot” by former city planning czar Dave Davis, now an MTD boardmember. Davis tried to soften his previous rhetoric, suggesting the tag “mobility center” instead.

Regardless of nomenclature, Davis cautioned the proposals tried to do too much at the expense of future transit functions. He objected that the consultants did not include space for a car-sharing operation, a bike station, or a new day care facility. City Hall hopes to circulate a request for another proposal sometime early this summer.





Right Place, Wrong Size