••• “City of Santa Barbara won’t renew Santa Barbara Trapeze Co. lease for Vera Cruz Park [….] The Parks and Recreation Department will not extend the agreement because it plans to make Vera Cruz Park ‘free and open to the public.’ [….] The city has offered Santa Barbara Trapeze a few relocation options, [founder Randy] Kohn said, including a parking structure in downtown Santa Barbara and an area near the Santa Barbara Airport.” —Santa Barbara News-Press
••• “The Santa Barbara City Council reaffirmed its decision to keep State Street closed to cars, at least in the interim period while the city continues to work toward its permanent master plan. The decision, which came in a 5-2 vote on Tuesday, keeps the street pedestrian-focused as it is now, with plans to increase accessibility and address community concerns about e-bike safety in the near future.” What are they waiting for? The street can hardly be called “pedestrian-focused” when pedestrians are too scared to actually walk in the street. —Independent
••• “Gabe Escobedo, former president of the Santa Barbara Unified School District’s Board of Education and a longtime figure in local politics, officially launched his campaign for Santa Barbara City Council’s District 6 seat in the upcoming November election.” —Independent
••• The Apothecary at Heidi Merrick has opened at Merrick’s Summerland shop: “A stairwell leads to an apothecary shop, a treatment room, and a natural light-flooded ‘wellness atelier’ intended for gatherings, ceremonies, and special events.” —Santa Barbara Magazine
••• An update on the funding for the Santa Ynez Trail, which “is expected to run from River View Park in Buellton at its west end, through Solvang and past Santa Ynez and the Chumash Casino Resort to Highway 154 at the east.” —Santa Barbara News-Press
••• The Community Arts Music Association (CAMA) announced its upcoming season of classical music performances. —Independent
••• The tree of the month is the gold medallion tree, “one of the most spectacular of all flowering trees. In summer, eye-catching clusters of yellow blooms appear at the ends of its leafy branches—every cluster looks like an enormous bouquet of 30 to 50 individual flowers.” —Edhat (photo by David Gress, courtesy Santa Barbara Beautiful)
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Removal of the trapeze school is a foolish idea. I had friends that lived in the area. When it was an open park, they had constant issues with people doing drugs in the park and trashing it. One guy in particular would constantly defacate on their front porch when he determined they had called the police on him. It got very dicey.
They said the trapeze school was a godsend. It literally made their home liveable again.
I suppose the new police headquarters may mitigate this issue, but it’s not like the old station was that far away.
The decision to not renew the Trapeze school is exactly why the city’s vision of revitalizing downtown is misguided. This business brought community to downtown and a unique reason to enjoy our city. It stood out as a positive for tourism and supports our local economy. Without it in this location, what’s the motivation to go to and maintain this plot of grass?
Wherever the trapeze school ends up, I wish them well and hope they continue to thrive. But the decision is a stain on the city’s ability to understand the citizens they represent.
I would hope the city reconsiders the removing of the trapeze school. It’s provided revenue, tourism, and community for Santa Barbara.
Making it a ‘free and open’ to the public will only welcome back the drug users who occupied it before.
I thought the trapeze school had the perfect location but of they need to relocate it should be in another highly visible location, not a parking structure or by the airport. Those locations will destroy that business.
The city owns a stretch of land that local don’t even realize is city land. It’s highly underutilized. This would be a great addition to that area. I’m speaking of the grass area between the Hilton beachfront resort where Calle Caesar Chavez and Cabrillo meet.
City Council – I’ve said this many times before: hire Rick Caruso’s company to help design a user friendly but historically appropriate walkscape. It will make sense for our era and be beautiful for the long term. Pls DO NOT spend any more money on crappy designers who have no experience or design sense to make this project work. I implore the city council to hire Caruso and then the job will be done right and done, period!!