Recent Comments

This message is for Anthony Studebaker. What in the heck are you talking about..?? Please stop posting such negative comments about restaurants that are trying to make it here in Santa Barbara. I think it would be better if you mover to Lompoc or Oxnard. I think you’re much better off there with all their cheap food options. R.

If you voted for newsom - this is EXACTLY what you voted for. The proposed structures near the mission are architecturally inconsistent with the area's character, yet the city will likely approve them. This follows the same pattern we've seen with the oversized developments on the east side. The Milpas corridor is already experiencing significant density increases, and once all these approved projects are completed, the impact will be substantial. If the city intends to approve high-density development throughout Santa Barbara, this should be applied equitably across all neighborhoods. Affluent areas shouldn't receive preferential treatment while working-class communities bear the brunt of intensive development. Though these buildings may be aesthetically problematic, the real crisis is the displacement of residents from the senior housing complex behind the Milpas Starbucks. The human cost of people losing their homes far outweighs concerns about architectural design. The core issue remains: Santa Barbara needs consistent, equitable development policies that balance growth with community character and, most importantly, protect existing residents from displacement.

You are not alone! The weird San Ysidro Rd offramp sign is beyond jarring. Like fingernails on the blackboard for anybody who cares about typography.

Santa Barbara is a vacation and tourist hot spot, with cruise ships and people from all over the world visiting, dining, and shopping, and tourism is a significant part of the local economy. Whereas, Mountain View, not so much. Santa Barbara gets far more visitors from LA than Mountain View does from San Jose, and San Jose has similar and much better pedestrian street malls, like San Pedro Square, Post Street, and Santana Row. If Mountain View can make a pedestrian street mall work on a smaller main street, using only 3 blocks, then certainly 10 blocks would be easier and with more options.

WHOOPDEDO 32 new restaurants, but how come there is no Burger King/ Arbys/ El Pollow Loco/ Waffel House/ Home Town Buffet>>>>>and a host of popular fast food joinst that are not in SB, this is what the people want= not all these HIGH PRICED eateries. Message to all the new restaraunt enterprneurs start ups, when you see your going broke, open up a Waffel House=be advised to hre securty gauds to mannge the big lines trying to get in

The metal structures (designed to catch woody debris) could be improved. I have no idea if there are existing standards but back of the napkin/top of the keyboard "improvement" could be something on the side that, to face the upstream could look like an array of |\ but angled at about 45 degrees, constructed in the center half of the presumed "river", to elevate tree/brush elements upward and block them there, partly out of the water and allowing passage of water under and around. I could even be a bit of an arc instead of a linear block, looking from top down looking like (_ with (- and (top line). Just sayin.

Thanks for the great newsletter. When will Randall Road debris basin be open for hiking?

I used to live in downtown Mountain View, in the middle of Silicon Valley. They recently completed a project to transform their main street, Castro, into a pedestrian mall. They essentially did what Any suggested in these comments. It's been highly successful. I have a friend who also lived there when I did, and she recently visited Mountain View. She has exceptionally good taste and was delighted with what they did with Castro Street, saying it was wonderful. Mountain View and Santa Barbara have nearly identical population sizes. The biggest problem with Santa Barbara is that they can't agree on a design plan and then proceed, instead appearing more interested in conducting endless studies, leaving State Street to languish in the form of arrested decay.

Your sarcasm fell flat with me as I drove through the Home Depot parking lot full of cars to Costco, where I turned around since the parking lot was full. . .

If it was the shift way from retail, than upper state, the mesa, Milpas, and other areas would also be feeling the impact. In those areas sales tax revenue ha increased significantly over the past five years while downtown has been slightly negative. Pedestrian counts are also down significantly on State from prior to the closure. Please do tell us the populations of all those pedestrian-only successful downtowns - they certainly exist but are in cities with millions of people and the street is lined with 6+ story buildings built property line to property line (something that will never be allowed in Santa Barbara). Of course, no one ever brings up the enormous cost realizing the promenade dream would entail - not only do we not have the money to fund it, if we did it would be much better spent on the creation of additional affordable housing units.

I am on the fence on this issue, but don't agree with your argument as to why State St. is struggling. You are assuming that the decline is related to the pedestrian section and not something else. I would argue otherwise. There are problems that will plague the street even if it's opened up to cars. If you think opening it to cars is the solution without solving these other problems, we're just going to end up with a shabby, vacant street with people parading their cars bumping loud music and revving their engines. First, the most basic things are not being done to make the street attractive to people. Picking up trash, cleaning and rejuvenating the sidewalks, landscaping, policing kids racing on e-bikes, and moving homeless people to other places. It's pretty obvious that if you let a place look like garbage, people will not choose to spend their time there. Second, as some have pointed out, there is a shift away from retail, and in particular some kinds of retail. Starbucks is struggling nationwide. At the same time, you have some local boutique coffee shops like Mosaic that have opened. And third, if you really want to do this right, the State St. corridor is one of the places in town we _should_ be adding housing. You make it attractive again with maintenance and add housing, and you'll get plenty of tourists, locals, and residents to support the stores. Fourth, if you actually want know if this will work, you close State St. to vehicles including bikes. Especially e-bikes. Right now it's in a weird no-man's land where you can't walk _or_ drive on the street. It's functionally a teenager e-bike drag strip. And then you would extend the restaurant seating areas properly into the street -- and build them so they look like they belong there, not a makeshift camp. There is no need for bikes or cars on State St. from a conveyance perspective. Anacapa and Chapala have plenty of capacity for both. And people are not jumping out of a car to shop. They are going to park off Anacapa/Chapala/an adjacent lot and walk back to State St. The humans on foot are swiping the credit cards. The only minor benefit to having cars is the few people who will serendipitously see a new store. But you can more than replace this marketing effect by making it attractive to walk. Look, successful downtowns all over the world are pedestrian-only, so it's been proven out. There are many places you can see it working. On the other hand, it's not right for everywhere. I'm not sure it's right for Santa Barbara. State St. is frankly, pretty narrow and shaded. Maybe it just wasn't built right to be a grand downtown. The Cabrillo intersection is thriving -- it's got a lot of light, it's got the ocean. And the City has to have major vision to get a pedestrian downtown to work. We have a mayor who wants to open the street to cars, so I have a hunch that he's intentionally half-assing the whole project so that it will fail. Obviously, pretty conspiratorial, and hopefully not true. But it doesn't really matter what the intent is. It is being majorly half-assed.