Buellton Struggles to Balance Rapid Growth, Affordability

When Bill Traylor joined the campaign to turn Buellton into an incorporated city 12 years ago, he promised residents three things: a grocery store, a major drugstore and a medical clinic. What Traylor did not promise was that the 1.6-square-mile community would become a growth magnet.

Since 1996, two industrial parks have been expanded, several residential communities have been built, and an Albertsons, a Longs Drugs and an emergency health clinic have opened. The city has watched the value of homes more than double and corporate brands move in. But with change comes struggle.

Today, Buellton must find a way to maintain the development that turned it into the Santa Ynez Valley’s growth powerhouse while retaining citizens who no longer can afford to call the city home.

“We used to be a local town,” said Traylor, 74, the mayor. “Now we’re a regional town.... We’d like to [be] more affordable, but the land is so valuable and so scarce it drives everything up in price.”

Bordered by the Santa Ynez River, farms and ranches, Buellton sits within a six-mile radius of Solvang, California’s Danish city, and Santa Ynez, home to the new 94,000-square-foot Chumash Casino. Santa Barbara lies 40 miles to its southeast, and two highways -- U.S. 101 and California 246 -- cross Buellton’s center.

Not long ago, Buellton was known as the home of Andersen’s Pea Soup and as a place for tourists who could not find hotel rooms in Solvang. But no more, said City Manager Steve Thompson.

The city transformed farmland into the Buellton Town Center, home to Albertsons and Blockbuster. It created the city’s first park, Oak Park, and built an elementary school. Construction has begun on two housing developments and a 14-acre park that will run along the river.

Plans for two additional residential communities and a 96-room hotel have been approved. Buellton changes so quickly that Thompson stopped purchasing aerial maps of the city because by the time they arrived they were outdated.

“In the Santa Ynez Valley, Buellton is one of the key growth engines,” said Dan Hamilton, director of economics for the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project. “It is really the only town that regularly permits new housing, new commercial space to be built, and as a result, it’s growing more quickly than the other towns.”

In the last five years, the median home price in Buellton has more than doubled -- from $182,625 in 1998 to $445,945 in 2003. City Manager Thompson rents a home in Buellton because he can’t afford to buy. Yet, he said, Buellton’s homes are still cheaper than Santa Barbara’s, making the city of 4,200 ideal for commuters.

“We’re losing the middle class in the south coast” area of the county “partly because of the housing situation,” Hamilton said. “To some extent, they are going to Buellton. There is a middle working class there because housing stock exists.”

But many Buellton residents believe the middle class has pushed others away.

Six Latino families and four Latino Buellton residents filed a lawsuit against the city in June 2002. The families, whose rental homes were destroyed to make way for new development, accused Buellton of violating state law by refusing to plan for affordable housing for its residents.

Plaintiffs Maria Diaz and her husband, Salvador, had lived in Buellton for 15 years when they were evicted. Although the couple looked for housing in Buellton, they could not afford it. So they, along with their two daughters, moved to Lompoc -- the cheapest place they could find.

“We would leave my girls in school in Buellton, and starting at 8 a.m. we would look [for housing] until 2 p.m.,” Maria Diaz said. “There were some places that we didn’t like. We wanted a place like Buellton.”

The lawsuit was settled last month. The families received a total of $360,000, and the city is required to designate sites for affordable housing for lower-income households as well as make 15% of all new citywide housing available for low- and moderate-income families.

Maria Diaz is happy with the settlement, but misses the small duplexes where she threw backyard birthday parties for her daughters and “everyone helped each other.” If she could find a cheap house in Buellton, she said, she would move back.

Mayor Traylor, meanwhile, can’t believe that the slogan from his first City Council campaign 12 years ago remains true.

“I used to say, ‘If you lived in Buellton you couldn’t afford to work here,’ ” he said. “ ‘And if you worked in Buellton, you couldn’t afford to live here.’ ”

He said he worries about the city’s lack of affordable housing and quality jobs. But, he acknowledged, Buellton has profited from its service-driven businesses, which often offer minimum wage.

City officials say tourists enjoy the Danish-themed attractions of Solvang during the day. Then they take the two-mile trip to Buellton to fill up on fuel and fast food while increasing the city’s tax dollars.

Buellton generates more than $29,000 in retail sales per person, which is used for such city services as fire and police protection and road construction. According to UC Santa Barbara’s 2004 Economic Outlook, that amount is triple the average sales tax dollars per person in Santa Barbara County and double that of Solvang.

“We don’t mind being a service community for the valley,” Thompson said. “We’ll laugh all the way to the bank.”

But not everyone is laughing.

“You can’t afford to live here, and you can’t afford to have a business here,” said a Buellton small-business owner who did not want to be named for fear he would lose customers. “To me, if you didn’t own property before, you won’t own it now.”

Terry Smith, a 47-year-old Buellton resident who grew up in Solvang, appreciates the increase in property values, especially since she has seen her home’s worth double. But like many Buellton residents, Smith, a part-time librarian at the Buellton Library, doesn’t appreciate the city’s growth.

“It still feels small, but I don’t like to see them building,” she said. “Eventually, if I feel it’s too crowded, I’ll move to a small place again.”

In October, the Buellton City Council approved construction of a development with both residential and commercial uses. The 24-acre property will sit at the corner of California 246 and McMurray Road, one of the city’s largest remaining lots.

“If they continue growing as they have been, given the current city limits, they’ll hit the city limit boundary in the near future,” said Hamilton, who emphasized that the growth in Buellton was minimal compared to that in Santa Maria in northern Santa Barbara County.

But a November ballot measure, drafted by self-described libertarian Robert Bakhaus, could curtail Buellton’s tax profits. The measure asks voters whether they support local taxes. If passed, it would allow voters to decide whether to approve or repeal one existing Buellton tax every two years, Thompson said. City officials fear that the initiative has the potential to eventually deplete the city’s general fund.

Although he will retire in December, Traylor hopes he can stop the tax initiative and the city’s annexation of land.

“I’d like to see it improve internally rather than externally,” he said. “There’s so much we can do to improve this community by working on what we have.”

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Times staff writer Erin Ailworth contributed to this report.