••• “Santa Barbara City College approves plans for $100 million athletic complex [….] A four-story, 77,000-square-foot facility will replace the outdated 1963 complex.” The uncropped rendering is here. —KCLU
••• “The Santa Barbara Unified School District is looking to build homes for teachers and staff at two separates sites on the South Coast. The district plans to partner with developer Red Tail Acquisition to build 106 units at what is known as the Tatum property near San Marcos Growers. A separate project calls for building 30 units at the former Parma school site near Trader Joe’s on the Eastside.” A rendering of the latter is below. “The district is expected to close escrow on the Tatum property within the next two weeks. It sold the property to Red Tail for $17 million. […] Money from the sale of the property would help fund development for the Armory site that the school district also owns on E. Canon Perdido.” —Noozhawk
••• “Newswell, the journalism non-profit working to resurrect the Santa Barbara News-Press, has activated a new website [for the News-Press]—a soft launch offering a glimpse of the vision the organization’s leaders have for a rejuvenated local news operation. At this point, the new site’s content consists of a series of stories about the history of the paper [….] There are no actual news stories, because the organization’s leaders are still in the process of settling on a focus and strategy for the operation, including the hiring of a local editor.” A piece of advice: if you want to “transform local news,” don’t do it in the same way it has been done for decades. —Newsmakers
••• “Santa Barbara MedCenter Will Stay Open Under New Ownership.” —Noozhawk
••• The tree of the month is the Chinese fringe tree, “a small tree with a big floral display—in spring, it is quite covered with glorious clusters of flowers bearing delicate, fringe-like, petals.” —Edhat (photo by David Gress courtesy Santa Barbara Beautiful)
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Chionanthus- Chinese fringe tree is on a beauty, just keep in mind the berries/fruit falls and stains hardscapes. I have two beautiful ones over a barbecue area in the gardeners would have to hand picked before they fell and stained the Flagstone.
I truly hope our taxpayer dollars are not going to House the teachers, $17 million for the property across the street from Trader Joe’s and the other in goleta.
Hope the new owners fires the entire staff at the medcenter, they were some of the most rabidly rude and incompetent people I’ve ever dealt with, and there’s a lot but I have to deal with.
Everyone knows that students whose teachers struggle with secure housing achieve better test scores.
I am the only one who thinks SBCC spending $100M on an athletic complex is insane? I wonder if Measure P would have passed if they said half the funds raised would go to a single athletic complex, there was no mention of that on their website https://www.sbcc.edu/measure-p/
Hi Everyone,
The Physical Education Building Replacement project is much more than just a sports complex – its an opportunity to revitalize the campus. The project will tear down the existing building that includes classrooms, offices, meetings spaces, Life Fitness Center (campus gym) and an outdated gym/men’s locker room that does not abide by Title IX. The new building will have updated classrooms, meeting spaces, offices, equitable locker room space and more – here is the press release from the college with more info (https://t.e2ma.net/webview/do8tmi/48abc2e41d0cfe8f96aa4077009ba42e).
On SBCC’s Measure P Transparency page (https://www.sbcc.edu/measure-p/transparency/) there is a link to the priority projects that the SBCC Board approved in June 2024 (https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/sbcc/Board.nsf/files/D6JQR86A815C/$file/Bond%20Project%20List%20revised%206.24.24.pdf) – at the top is the Physical Education Building Replacement that is receiving $34 million in state matching dollars that would expire in June 2025. SBCC is moving forward with this project to leverage the state matching funds to enhance Measure P dollars.
Hope that provides more context.
“…outdated gym/men’s locker room that does not abide by Title IX.”
How does the existing facility not abide by Title IX? Is there just a men’s locker room and no women’s locker room?
Your DEI is supposed to be a cure for division, but it’s been a wrecking ball- pitting groups against each other while preaching unity. The irony? A system built to include everyone ends up belonging nowhere.
I surely hope that this new facility is open to city residents that do not attend SBCC, done we’re paying for it. Send that SBCC is more interested in recruiting or of state/ country students, rather that the actual purpose of a community college. Note to everyone screaming about the housing crisis, SBCC is not your friend.
The City College PE building project is ill conceived and poorly timed. I know it was on the list of priorities of Measure P, that’s why I voted no on it. $75 million could be spent on other capitol improvements that would benefit more students and resident. And I believe the entire mission of City College should be reimagined. More vocational classes and schools. That’s what we need, not a state of the art sports complex. And isn’t that what they said about the “sky boxes” on top of the stadium?
And poorly timed, I see the matching funds will disappear next month. Better to hold off on this since the economy could very well tank in the near future.
The economy could very well tank after 4 yrs of rubber stamping by “Biden”? We just had 2nd month in a row of BETTER THAN EXPECTED job numbers. Hate to point out Stock Market this fine Friday, as it percolates up up up
LOL, yeah, because so many students are invested in the stock market. Feel free to bring in national politics here, but I was speaking in general terms about the possible economic slow down in the next few years. That was one sentence, my dear.
Christine – the economy today is the legacy Biden’s policies. Further, the only reason the market is up is because Trump tanked it to make the wealthy richer, at the expense of the common American.. Are you really that blind?
Whatever you popped, refrain from ingesting it again. Hope you don’t give advice in the real world