The ever-evolving face of State Street seems primed for even more changes as word has trickled out that the number of housing units proposed at downtown’s Paseo Nuevo shopping center has reportedly been cut in half.
Whether any housing gets built remains a matter of intense negotiations between City Hall and AllianceBernstein (AB), the finance company that found itself stuck with Santa Barbara’s downtown mall when its prior owners defaulted and were foreclosed upon. AB initially proposed building roughly 500 units — possibly seven stories high. But upon closer inspection, AB’s engineers determined that far more foundational work would need to be done to accommodate the stress loads associated with so many housing units, additional work that reportedly would make the proposed project cost prohibitive.
According to City Hall sources, AB is now discussing plans to build somewhere between 200 and 250 units of high-end market housing on the Paseo Nuevo site instead and devoting more of the mall’s square footage to retail than it did in its initial iteration. Frequently mentioned is the possibility of a high-end gourmet supermarket along the lines of Erewhon, famous the world over for selling $18 strawberries. In addition, AB is proposing to build as many as 80 units of below-market rental housing at a downtown location further up State Street from Paseo Nuevo.
The details of this latest proposal have been the subject of considerable buzz around City Hall, where it’s scheduled to be publicly discussed the first week of August. According to some sources, AB is now insisting that cars be allowed back on some blocks of State Street as part of the deal. According to others, that’s just political spin perpetuated by proponents of cars on State Street. Joining the chorus of pro-car advocates is the downtown’s newly created Business Improvement District, which represents Santa Barbara’s downtown property owners.
All this pro-car agitation is generating significant push-back by the pro-pedestrian and bicycle advocates who insist that the City Council first needs to come to terms with its long-term master plan — many years and more than a $1 million in the making. One key chapter of that master plan — the economics — was slated to go before the council on July 1. Supporters of that plan objected that was not enough and insisted the council needed to weigh in on the totality of plan they’d devised. That July 1 discussion has now been pushed back to early September.
