••• “The Santa Barbara Harbor Commission has voted to continue exploring a proposal to convert 127 waterfront parking spaces at Chase Palm Park into an overnight RV camping area. This is a pilot project expected to generate up to $348,000 in annual revenue.” Ugh, no. “The pilot project could provide between 16 and 26 RV spaces, depending on the final layout. It is designed as ‘dry camping,’ meaning no utilities such as water, electricity, or sewer connections will be supplied. […] Officials have set an annual revenue goal of over $348,000, roughly matching the income currently generated by standard parking in that section of the lot, as the benchmark for success.” If the goal is to earn the same amount generated now, then why bother? —Edhat
••• The spring “Home & Garden” issue of Santa Barbara Magazine includes a bunch of interesting residences, including the charming Ojai house of Dudley DeZonia and Anne Crawford (with whom I think I worked at short-lived Egg magazine 35 years ago); interior designer Jeffrey Alan Marks’s place on E. Mountain Drive; the recently renovated—and pretty fabulous—1929 Mary Craig at 680 Buena Vista Drive (recently listed for $34.95 million, and more on that tomorrow); and the house that’s on literally on Summerland Beach, renovated to stunning effect by J.P. Knapp. I’ve been fortunate enough to visit the last two, among the most memorable homes I’ve ever seen.
••• “The Santa Barbara Airport Commission has approved an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement with Costco Wholesale Corporation to explore the possibility of a gas station at the airport-owned business park north of Hollister Avenue. The agreement gives Costco 12 months of exclusive rights to study the site and assess whether a gas station could be viable.” —Edhat
••• Nikki Grosso, owner of the “Pig House” on Butterfly Lane in Montecito, gave SFGate an extensive tour of the property, inside and out. “Sometime in the next year and a half, Grosso plans to sell the home when she retires [….] The pigs will sell separately from the house, likely online.”
••• “Can Isla Vista Be a City? [….] The IVCSD Board of Directors has approved funding a fiscal analysis to see if the student-filled community can financially support itself.” —Noozhawk
••• The building at 101 W. Canon Perdido Street will the home of Canon Vaults, which “will offer conditioned self-storage containers, safety deposit boxes, wine storage, art storage, and a social lounge for select customers to enjoy curated art, music, drinks and conversation.” —Noozhawk
••• The tree of the month: “The amazingly sweet perfume that drifts from the flowers of the Sweetshade Tree gives this lovely tree its name—a divine combination of the fragrances of Plumeria blossoms and orange blossoms. […] It is a member of the family Pittosporaceae, which includes the much more commonly available tree species in the genus Pittosporum that also bear fragrant flowers.” —Edhat (photo by David Gress courtesy Santa Barbara Beautiful)
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If an old dilapidated rolling box of sewage can drive in and out of a parking lot every night, it can drive to a place that is more appropriate for the owners finances. Gifting the most desirable and expensive real estate in the world to a few, while charging the highest taxes and fees in the country for everyone else, is insane and wrong. There are 1000’s of places a person can live for cheap, and even for free in this country. Santa Barbara CA is not and will never be one of those places.
Precisely!
The users of this lot would be RV tourists with expendable income in nice rigs.
There is no “gift’ proposed as those spaces would be $100 plus per night.
$100/night until the class action lawsuit on behalf of those who cannot afford the fee
I love the sweetshade tree in Alice Keck!
As opposed to the garden street RV / car parking lot? And why would nice rigs pay to park by the skatepark?
What’s wrong with the skate park? That lot is next to the wharf, State street and the funk zone. This is a good thing because these rv travelers are going all over CA why not create a place downtown that generates revenue for the city directly and also sales tax and revenue for SB merchants.
Build it and they will come.
Erik, your viewers here should check out some videos on YT of full time RV’rs. There are many that would pay $100 a night to park by the beach. And these are people that have spent at least $200k on their rigs. Just last night I watched a family of four visiting Key West, FL, they paid $330 to park their trailer for one night.
The folks who think that what the city is proposing is some sort of homeless RV encampment by the beach are frankly utterly and completely detached from reality. That’s not what this is. Let’s break this down:
1. The city already a runs a program for homeless people who are living in vehicles, to help them find safe parking spaces to stay at overnight. You are free to have whatever opinion you want of that program, but this proposal and that program are not in any way the same. The amount a homeless person is looking to spend per night to park is in the neighborhood of $0. You can read more about that here:
https://santabarbaraca.gov/government/priorities-policies/homelessness-initiatives/new-beginnings-safe-parking-program
2. As someone who used to own an RV – which was anything but an “old dilapidated rolling box of sewage” – and whose first experiences of Santa Barbara were visiting in that RV, I can tell you that there are very few places near Santa Barbara to stay legally with an RV. Between El Cap and Carp, there is only one private campground that is on the East Side right next to the freeway. I expect demand for this to be VERY high, and they will likely need to implement a reservation system. I’d expect this lot to overperform financial expectations.
3. At $100/night, the type of person willing to pay that rate for dry camping is someone on the higher end. Think your fancy Airstream crowd or your Prevost motorcoach owner. This is honestly a price point that is higher than most RV folks are willing to spend, unless it’s a “splurge” part of a trip.
4. Campgrounds like this can and do have maximum stay provisions, to discourage long term stays. I’d expect this lot to have similar policies, and likely more stringent than the state parks. For reference, in the state of California, you can only camp in a State Park for 30 nights TOTAL over the course of a year, and most parks have a 7 consecutive night stay limit during high season. If state parks can keep from looking like trailer parks full of long term residents, so can we. The idea that people will be “living for cheap” in this lot on any kind of long term basis is absurd.
5. This is a way to bring in tourist dollars that does not require more hotels to be built, or take away from housing stock with things like AirBnB etc. It puts them smack dab in the middle of the most tourist-ey part of town. Personally I think that’s a plus.
6. If you’re paying attention, these people are already camping in their RV’s here in town. They’re the rigs that are clean, new and modern and high end. No one looks at them and calls the cops because one glance tells you there’s not a homeless person in them. A professionally converted sprinter van STARTS well over $200k, and I’ve seen some that are $350k plus. These rigs are all over town already if you know what to look for. May as well take their money.
7. I do see one downside, which relates to generators. By not offering electrical hookups, unless the city enacts a no generator policy for the lot, expect folks to be running them, which I’m against in this location. I think the city would be wise to run shore power hookups to each site, raise the price and make paying for shore power mandatory instead of optional. If you make it optional, some folks will not pay and just run their generator. Tack on another $25/night and make it mandatory to run shore power, or have a no generator policy.
Looks like you found your calling SkyG! Many of us will be excited to read about your purchase of a waterfront lot and the opening of just such a business. Good luck with the financing, permits, construction, complience and most importantly, profits.
Where did you get from SkyG that they want to open a private RV park?
Go check out the Sunrise RV park on Salinas and you will see it is tourists who enjoy this type of travel.
I took a trip a few years back in a 25 foot class A motor home and it was a fantastic holiday. No packing and unpacking, sleep in the same bed every night. We met the nicest people mostly retired and most travel a few months out of the year. Lots of snowbirds.
Look into the Good Sam Club. This is a high integrity community of over 2 million people. The people using this proposed park are the tourists we want.
Thank you for your logic SkyG.
You make very good points here and I appreciate you insight.
Regarding the “dry” rv camping that is now under review, the elephant in the (bath)room has to do with any generated waste from RVs during/after overnight stays. The only location to legally dump in southern Santa Barbara County is at Marborg. They are closed weekends and have very restricted hours M-F.. The dump site is also frequently closed, even with these limited, weekday hours.
If you go to Google maps and search for dump stations, you’ll see there’s far more more than one along the coast here.
Have you ever had to manage your gas tank on a road trip? It’s that, in reverse. If you’re showing up at a dry campsite, you make sure you dump your tanks first. If your tanks fill up, you drive and dump them. It’s really not hard.