••• There’s a new pop-up at The Post: Bucatini, an L.A.–based company selling Mediterranean housewares and, according to its Instagram post, food products, although I didn’t see any when I stopped by. Then again, I was mesmerized by a Bordallo Pinheiro ceramic banana bowl…. Bucatini is at the northern entrance to the complex, across from the Spilled Milk kids’ clothing shop.
••• Santa Barbara Rock Gym (State and Gutierrez) will close on November 15.
••• The redevelopment of the Sears lot at La Cumbre Plaza into a 443-unit apartment complex is on today’s Architectural Board of Review agenda, which means you have until this afternoon to look at the plans—which you absolutely should do. (State law prohibits me from running any of the renderings on pages 8-16 without the architect’s consent; I emailed the firm, AO, along with applicant Kennedy Wilson late Friday, and I hope to hear back.) The design is institutional, with chunky buildings done in a streamlined Spanish Colonial Revival style that I wish was more distinctive. To be fair, however, one could argue it’s contextual for upper State Street.
••• The University of California has added to its local real estate holdings by picking up 530 Chapala Street (at Cota) for $11.571 million. Any plans for it are unknown. Same goes for the former QAD campus between Montecito and Summerland. If anyone out there has intel, we’d love to know…. Anonymity guaranteed.
••• The Plaza del Mar park at Castillo Street and Shoreline Drive is fenced off for improvements.
••• An update about the Yellow Pages: the local publisher has told advertisers that the 2025 edition is the final one.
••• Jack Johnson plays the Santa Barbara Bowl on October 3 and 4. Tickets go on sale Friday.
••• Opening November 15 at Rubenstein Chan Contemporary Art in Carpinteria: Earth That Remembers, a show of work by Wrona Gall and Hung Viet Nguyen. (Below: Gall’s “Diozanine Sun.”) Also on the 15th, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., “five galleries and studios in the Carpinteria Palm Loft complex will be open to the public: Patricia Clarke Photography studio, Jan Harrington Studio, Laurel Mines painting studio, Palm Loft Gallery, and Rubenstein Chan Contemporary Art.”
················
Sign up for the Siteline email newsletter and you’ll never miss a post.
Didn’t Plaza Del Mar just get “improved” a year ago, or was that just the band shell?
Community: “If we are going to have more development, make it appropriate.”
Developers: “Take this slop.”
It’s really incredible The city has so much money to keep on doing so many projects like plaza del mar and nothing goes on there, and what are they doing across from the zoo? My god it massive and the park was fine. Are they just remodeling it so the homeless can take it over again? I just don’t understand the city. But if they can align everything up to get all the construction going at the same time for all the high-rises on Milpas, we will be golden.
The architecture in the drawings evoke boring, uninspiring, and low effort. Sadly, nothing to see here, move on….
I’ve already said something to the same effect elsewhere – but at the rate things are going, Santa Barbara will soon look like somewhere in Soviet era Eastern Europe, or Russia.? Joyless soul-sucking —
FYI – the plans you linked to related to the Sears lot at La Cumbre Plaza is now returning a Page Not Found error.
Yes, the city takes them down after the meeting.