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The challenge with that is current building codes make it nearly impossible to build housing over retail, you'd need to tear down the building and start fresh. With the extremely onerous city requirements, insanely long approval timelines, and high construction and land costs, you'd need to create a very large complex to get the right economies of scale. With so many small parcels downtown, each with different owners and different mid to long-term leases in place, it will be extremely difficult to accomplish and take a very very long time. We're looking 10+ years out minimum. The Paseo Nuevo concept is great, but nothing is happening for a decade or more.

Well put.

I agree with this take. The heated and endless debate around opening up state street to cars is a frustrating false binary. The State Street storefronts face a multitude of headwinds that are not resolved by vehicle more traffic.

My take is this - SB has created a downtown on State Street that has evolved primarily - not exclusively, but primarily - into "the place that tourists go." Baja Sharkeez. The Salt Cave. Cali-Forno Pizza. I'm under 50 and a local. I can tell you that for that folks like me and my friends, downtown State Street is basically the last place we think to go if we want to go out. There's a certain stink of tourist trap to it currently. A sense of inauthenticity. This has nothing to do with the ability to drive or not drive on State Street. This has nothing to do with parking or the lack or cost thereof. State Street has evolved into a place that is simply not very desirable to a large portion of the local population. It's hitched its wagon to tourism, and we know that from hotel tax income, tourism is down. Other portions of town are recovering better - in my opinion - because they do a better job of catering to both locals and tourists. Take the Funk Zone as exhibit one for that. Sure, there's a lot of tourists there, but it's also the most common destination for everyone I know when they want to go out and eat or get a drink. And it feels cool and authentic, in a way that State Street does not right now. But also notice what's happening on Upper State Street. The Brass Bear opened an outpost, and you can barely get in the parking lot it's such a huge hit. It's primarily locals. Lama Dog and Sama Sama are opening an outpost on Upper State this year - I expect it to do exceedingly well. If the La Cumbre mall gets redeveloped under the current plan, where there's supposed to be a very fancy food hall, I expect that to do very well, in the same way that Public Market does good business, despite not being on State Street. In the absence of meaningful population growth (see - lack of significant new house for decades) all of this becomes a zero sum game. Areas of town that were not retail/dining hubs 10-20 years ago have become those now. There are a finite amount of dining and shopping dollars out there - simply filling empty storefronts on State with whoever is willing to sign the lease does not change this fact. The success of the Funk Zone and Upper State currently comes at the expense of State Street proper. If we want to change that dynamic, then we need to put more people - not tourists but residents - back in the downtown core. If we do that, I fully expect that State Street will be reborn into something even better than it currently is, but that will take many years. None of this, none of it at all, has anything to do with vehicle traffic on State Street, in my opinion. If you just want to drive down State Street, that's fine, that's honestly an understandable position. But it's not going to change the dynamics of what's happening. It's just going to put cars on State Street.

Super disappointing on the State Street news. It seems like the tactic is just to creep along, block by block, going back to what it was. Because they're all convinced that somehow this will stimulate retail businesses. To be clear - there is no data to back this up - and Randy Rouse admits as much in his March 29th op-ed: https://www.noozhawk.com/randy-rowse-santa-barbaras-downtown-cant-afford-to-languish-in-limbo/ "No data or studies are needed to confirm the obvious." What the data ACTULLY shows is that the vacancy rate downtown has remained the same since 2019, before the State Street closure. The fact that other portions of town are recovering better speaks to the shift away from State Street as the hub for night life, and towards other parts of town. Bringing back cars to State Street will not change this dynamic one iota.

I used to live in the house in the last pic, on Yanonali. West Beach was one of my favorite neighborhoods to live in.

VERY excited for Shoppe Amber Interiors to land in Montecito! And, as always, hoping there will be some creative vegan options at these new restaurants.

Perfect for the gateway of Montecito . Hopefully round about and landscaping around will make it look even nicer

Oh, my WORD!!! That buffalo milk soft serve at Rory's Other Place is NEXT LEVEL!!! I'm more of a cookie person, but recently had the vanilla bean and milk chocolate soft serve there and it was INSANE!!! My husband and I shared one serving with our dear friend and all spoons were clicking! LOL! That soft serve was gone in a HOT SECOND!!! It's honestly worth the hour drive to Ojai. With May Gray being what it is and June Gloom on the horizon a dash up to Ojai to enjoy the sunshine and some buffalo milk soft serve might be just the ticket! Hiking to search for Owl's Clover, Wild Peonies and Mariposa Lillies before or afterward would make the journey to Ojai even more of an adventure! Cheers!

And Montecito Village Grocery.

Welcome to the south coast.