Santa Barbara Opens the Tap to Builders

If you wanted to build something big and commercial in Santa Barbara, for years you could borrow from Hollywood producers to describe the experience:

Development hell.

Odd words for one of the most beautiful and pristine coastal counties in the state. But then, that’s how environmentalists, activists, “slow-growth” politicians, and voters passionate about Santa Barbara kept it that way.

They tortured developers with public hearings and court battles and even ballot referendums. They tediously and often combatively crafted general plans for land use for each area of the county and the city of Santa Barbara as well.

The result: a coastline virtually unsullied by tacky stores or apartment buildings.

But development soon may not be quite the trial by fire it has been in the past. Activists say they will still vigilantly guard Santa Barbara’s beauty. But politicians and district water boards may be allowing the pace of development to quicken.

A golf course and a housing development are slated for Goleta. A hotel-aquarium-market complex has been proposed for a slice of downtown Santa Barbara. And west of Goleta, the Hyatt hotel chain has approval to build a huge resort on a deserted bluff overlooking the ocean.

A huge infusion of state water this summer is one factor fueling the boom. Another is that three of the five Santa Barbara County supervisors are now favorably disposed toward commercial growth. (And, as opponents of development like to warn, it only takes three votes on a Tuesday to change a land-use plan.)

But most of all, there’s just more money to build.

“The main thing that’s changed is the economy is better,” said John Buttny, aide to County Supervisor Gail Marshall, a slow-growth proponent. “Housing is getting built now. And we’re probably going to see more building of research-and-development space.”

High-tech R & D firms appeal even to Santa Barbarans. “It brings in well-paid people who can afford housing. That kind of employment contributes to every end of the county,” Buttny said. “People love that.”

“Love” and “development” have rarely gone hand in hand here. And for years, residents had a ready excuse: the county relied on lakes for water and used the scarcity of the water supply as a roadblock to development.

The idea of hooking up to state-provided water had been vetoed in the late 1970s. But after a seven-year drought left people painting their lawns green and putting buckets in the shower to collect water, most water districts in the county voted last year to buy state-provided water.

Most people say county residents voted for state-provided water in a panic, not in any particular desire for more growth.

“It wasn’t that they wanted more houses--they wanted to shower,” said Stanley Hatch, the Santa Barbara lawyer who represented the water authorities. Soon after the vote, heavy rains eradicated the drought. Since then, most of the controversy has focused on whether the county really needed the water and how people will cope with the stunningly high cost.

“We buy water from Lake Cachuma for about $40 an acre foot,” said former supervisor Bill Wallace, a longtime opponent of state water. “State water costs $1,500 an acre-foot. So you can imagine what that’s doing for water rates around here.”

“Sticker shock,” said Lee Moldaver, of Citizens Planning Assn., an influential community organization that lobbies for slow growth.

But no matter why it was voted in, the new abundance of water eliminates one more obstacle to development.

One of the most hotly debated real estate projects in the county, an upscale development of 162 homes on Ellwood Shores, a breezy mesa, will get a helpful boost from the newly available water.

The issue for years has been how much of the environmentally sensitive land--about 10 miles from the city of Santa Barbara--the developer could actually build on. A spectacular range of open space with a view of the ocean as well as the mountains, the area has precious grasslands that attract wildlife. It also borders a eucalyptus grove that serves as a wintering ground for monarch butterflies. For the past few months, butterflies have flocked by the thousands to the dark, fragrant grove, fluttering from tree to tree, mating in midair and perching en masse on branches.

The project has been approved but a citizens group has challenged that approval in a lawsuit. Even if the citizens group were to lose, however, the project would go nowhere without state water.

“Ellwood Shores probably couldn’t be built without it,” sighed Chris Lange, the former president of the environmental group Save Ellwood Shores, which has argued that dust and noise from construction might disturb the butterfly habitat and protested that the development sits in native grasslands.

Nowhere is development slated to increase as dramatically as in Goleta. With a population of roughly 75,000 people, it is the largest unincorporated area in the state, known for its rolling open land. After 25 years of just saying no to developers because water was so scarce, Goleta’s Water Board has been approving water hookups. A shopping center has been approved by the county for an area that is near existing development.

The 5,000-square-foot shopping center “will really change West Goleta and give it a center,” said Buttny, who points out that the area’s residents need a nearby retail center and that the county looks forward to the sales tax it will generate.

More controversial is a golf course that Arco wants to build in Goleta. Not only was the project approved, but the Goleta Water Board gave the oil company a break on its water rates--a move that caused a minor uproar in some quarters.

The city of Santa Barbara has little remaining open land on which to build anything.

But that hasn’t stopped a couple of developers who have informally been talking with the city about plans to redesign parts of the quaint commercial strip on State Street, the city’s main drag.

The final frontiers in new development here inevitably point to Fess Parker, the onetime “Davy Crockett” TV star who first glimpsed Santa Barbara in 1958 and bought his first piece of property two weeks later.

“Would you recognize heaven if you saw it?” he said in explaining his immediate infatuation with the place.

Parker, who lives on the grounds of his Fess Parker Winery and Vineyard in Los Olivos, bought 32 acres of land close to the ocean. The actual waterfront is lined with a park of palm trees that is government-protected and off-limits to development. Parker’s property begins on the north side of Cabrillo Boulevard, which borders the park.

The city is famous for its battles with Parker, a 50% owner of Fess Parker’s Red Lion Resort (which is about to change its name to reflect Parker’s new partner, the Doubletree hotel chain). It took him years to get approval for the low-slung hotel complex that sits across the street from the ocean.

Parker has yet to find development easier. For the last seven years, he has been in and out of committees, hearings, and City Council meetings to win approval for a luxury hotel west of the Red Lion. Along the way, he donated land for a city park and the money to maintain it.

But changes in his plans--such as moving the front of the hotel closer to the street, increasing its height, and adding a multilevel, above-ground parking structure instead of a subterranean lot--have sent him back to one panel after another for approval. Finally Parker pulled his request late last month, saying he was tired of the red tape.

“I just decided the time had come, I was not willing to go any further,” said Parker, who notes that he’s made numerous concessions to the city.

His critics say he pulled the project because he simply didn’t have the financing.

“I did not have the financing yet,” Parker said, “but I was holding back until I had the right to go ahead.”

But the Citizens Planning Assn.’s Moldaver--who sometimes refers to Parker’s project as “Fess 2”--said Parker has inflated the degree of trauma inflicted upon him by activists.

“There was no one in our group who said he did not have a legal right to build a hotel at that site,” Moldaver said. “It was never about that. We just felt there were so many changes between the hotel approved 3 1/2 years ago and the hotel now.”

Even though compromise and conferring have replaced yelling and screaming, environmentalists and slow-growth proponents in Santa Barbara remain wary of substantial development.

“I think the whole coast is in jeopardy because of state water,” said Keith Zandona, a second-generation Santa Barbaran who lives in a rugged swatch of the Santa Ynez Mountains that run through the county.

As Josie Anderson, a 75-year-old mobile-home owner and member of the Save Ellwood Shores group, said: “I don’t believe anyone on this Earth should own property. I believe we are just stewards of the property.”

Buttny, however, says there’s a noticeable difference in the way business and environmental interests deal with each other now: hostility has been replaced with a guarded sense of cooperation.

“I think the edges have been blunted,” Buttny said. “Now you can go to a meeting--like I did two weeks ago--that is a coalition of every sector of the community talking about how the economy was growing and how to keep things moving in a positive direction. . . . All most of us have been after is rational planning.”

And even if they get put through the wringer, companies still seek the idyllic Santa Barbara quality of life. “And the reason the quality of life is so good is because of all the regulations,” Buttny said. “The companies, however, think the county regulation is the biggest pain. . . . But they still come here.”