Fund-Raising Frenzy Buys Park in Santa Barbara

For years, a grassy coastal bluff overlooking Arroyo Burro Beach in Santa Barbara--known simply as the Wilcox property--has served as an informal community common, drawing evening strollers, hang gliders, couples exchanging wedding vows and even the bereaved to scatter the ashes of loved ones on the sea.

Development threatened from time to time, but somehow the 69 acres remained as the last wild piece of coast in Santa Barbara. And when the property was offered for sale in January, the people of Santa Barbara put their money where their hearts were.

In a frenetic six weeks of potlucks, benefits and sidewalk drink stands, the community of 90,000 raised a staggering $2.5 million to help buy the Wilcox property and keep it as an open preserve.

“What’s unprecedented is the amount of money the community raised in such a short period of time,” said Margaret Eadington, an official of the Trust for Public Land, which buys and preserves open land across the country.

To save the coastal bluff, residents fund-raised with a vengeance. Actors gave poetry readings, musicians held concerts, people cooked up dinners and charged their guests to come--all in the name of buying the Wilcox property. Yes, they even held bake sales.

“Every business, every 7-Eleven had some kind of jar out for money,” said Kathy Stotter, executive director of Small Wilderness Area Preserves.

The deal itself is hideously complicated--involving a three-way transaction among the lender who holds a first trust deed on the property, the development partnership that owns the property, and the San Francisco-based Trust for Public Land, which technically will buy the land then transfer it to a local agency in Santa Barbara.

What isn’t so complicated is the outpouring of support.

To be sure, there were some muscular donors. One contributor--who asked the organizers to keep him anonymous--called on Feb. 29, the day the sellers gave as their deadline for making the deal work, and asked how much more money the organizers needed. He offered $600,000 to fill the gap.

But most of the money came from neighborhood benefits, citizens writing small checks and schoolchildren sending in jars of coins and the like.

“Eighty percent of our donations were under $100 or less,” Stotter said.

The nucleus of Stotter’s organization is little more than a dozen Santa Barbara residents who live near the Wilcox property in the modest, pretty neighborhoods of the area locals call the Mesa. The group tried unsuccessfully for two decades to buy the Wilcox property from its private owners.

“We couldn’t get any money if the owners weren’t willing to talk to us, and the owners wouldn’t talk to us until we had the money,” said Stotter, who came to the cause three years ago.

Still, the owners allowed people to treat the property--years ago it was a nursery--as if it were a public park. Even dogs are allowed to run free.

“But we also take really good care of the land,” Stotter said. “People who live in the neighborhood clean up the trash and clean up the poop.”

When the group finally secured, more than a year ago, a $1-million county grant toward the purchase of the property, the Trust for Public Land got involved in negotiating a deal. In January, the owners offered to sell at about $3.5 million, but the offer would stand only until Feb. 29.

Residents scrambled to meet the deadline. The Santa Barbara News-Press ran stories on the progress of the fund-raising, including a daily status box on the campaign.

“The community just erupted into a fury of activity,” Stotter said.

One group of children approached the local Lazy Acres Market and persuaded the store to donate apple juice to the cause. The children set up stands near a busy intersection and hawked $10 glasses of juice to passing cars. “They made about $500 a day; I’m not kidding,” marveled Stotter.

Her group set up tables around town to get donations. Lazy Acres offered to match donations at the table outside the store. Restaurants donated proceeds. The Museum of Natural History hosted a poetry reading, accompanied by the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, refreshments and the sound of people writing checks.

In one fund-raising gambit, runners ran marathon sessions around the Wilcox property and got sponsors to pledge money for every mile they ran. (A grandmother ran 23 miles at $100 a mile in pledges.)

“I was getting 40 to 50 phone calls a day,” Stotter said. “The phone would ring from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.”

Chrissanna Waldrop, an aide to state Assemblyman Brooks Firestone (R-Los Olivos)--one of a host of local politicians who threw their support behind the fund-raising efforts--was getting lunch at her usual sandwich shop haunt in Santa Barbara one day when the woman behind the counter told Waldrop she had sent in a check for $50--even though she had never been to the site. Waldrop took off her “Preserve Wilcox Now and Forever” button and pinned it on the woman.

The day before Valentine’s Day, Stotter got a half-million dollar pledge from a Santa Barbara resident who said he had never seen the property. “I gave him a tour,” she said.

By the time the money and pledges were counted--and the $1-million county grant was added in--the preservationists had the approximately $3.5 million the sellers wanted. (And they say they know where to get more if they need it.)

Today, officials for the Trust for Public Land are expected to announce that the deal has been consummated. They’ll hold a news conference.

Overlooking the Pacific, on the Wilcox property, of course.