Angry Poodle
Thursday, June 4, 2009
WHAT, ME WORRY? It’s important to keep things in proper perspective. In North Korea, a certified nutball is experimenting with nuclear bombs. In Pakistan, civil authority continues to crumble, raising worries that the Taliban will soon get The Bomb. In the Unites States, Generous Motors officially crashed and burned, and we’re still waiting to see what phoenix can emerge from the ashes. In California, the Gubernator just declared the day of reckoning officially has arrived, giving the state Legislature only two weeks to cut no less than $24 billion from the state budget. In Santa Barbara County, that means 3,500 families relying on the CalWORKS welfare program are SOL. Likewise challenged are the 7,300 county families who could lose Medi-Cal coverage as the state deep-sixes the Healthy Families insurance program. The UC system, of which UCSB is a part, is looking at $800 million in cuts, while k-12 education — statewide — is bracing for $680 million worth of bad news. Little wonder that the Teacher of the Year award recipients for this year and last — in Santa Barbara County — have already received pink slips.
Angry Poodle
But in Montecito, I’m heartened to say, it’s business as usual. What elsewhere might be construed as a relatively minor, if strategically placed, development has precipitated a political food fight that brought no fewer than 110 combatants to the Santa Barbara City Council chambers on Tuesday night to hash things out. Of these, 81 signed up to speak, one even in iambic pentameter with rhyming couplets. I know it’s hard not to get annoyed at the self-enlightened grandiosity exhibited by many of this tribe. But we need to be patient. Without their property taxes, local governments — and the services they provide — would have gone out of business long ago.
At issue was a plan to raze the Union 76 gas station at the corner of Coast Village Road — famous for selling petroleum products at predatory prices well before it became fashionable — and replace it with a three-story mixed-use development; shops and restaurants would go on the ground floor with eight condos on top. This was City Council’s second bite at the apple, the matter having gone before it last summer. At that point, the council approved the project, sort of. Responding to critics upset that the project’s height, width, and girth were out of sync with the neighborhood, the council punted, sending the proposal back to the Architectural Board of Review (ABR) for liposuction treatments. The council’s instructions were to reduce “the apparent bulk” of the project. After four sessions meeting with project architect Jeff Gorell and developer John Price, the ABR unanimously declared the project slim ’n’ trim. But bulk, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. Certainly, John Wallace — who owns the property right behind the gas station and who spearheaded the first charge against Price — was not assuaged. Neither was the Montecito Association, Citizens Planning Association, and a host of others who subscribe to the notion that if small is beautiful, then nothing is even better. This time around, Wallace and his allies argued the ABR failed to heed the council’s instructions.
Joining the fray against Price, I am told, is a Texas gazillionaire developer named Randall Van Wolfswinkel, who also happens to own a cozy spread in M-town and does not want to see his burg change. As is the case with many endowed with stratospheric wealth, VW makes his presence more felt than seen. But according to the Montecito rumor mill, he’s the man bankrolling those full-page ads appearing in all South Coast newspapers last week exhorting the multitudes to pack the council meeting in protest against the Price project. As far as political cheese, these ads constituted an assault on the body politic’s mucoid system. Charging that the Price project would wreak traffic havoc, the ad featured photos of dueling traffic futures. The photo to the left showed seven lanes of freeway gridlock; presumably that’s what we can expect if the Price project is built. The photo on the right displayed the flower-festooned bike lane directly in front of the sprawling oceanfront estate owned by Beanie Baby billionaire Ty Warner. Is that what we’d get if Price were denied? The headline underneath read, “This? Or This?” As a general rule, if you’re going to be deceptive, don’t be dumb. I can understand how even the redesigned project might still strike some as too muscle-bound for that corner. But the fact is the Price project will generate way less traffic than the existing gas station. Almost anything would.
For the most part, Price’s critics tried to take the high road Tuesday night. But then Wallace, the immediate neighbor, went nasty. Before last summer’s council hearing, he charged, Price tried to buy him off. Not only did Price offer to lower the height of his development by Wallace’s property, but he offered Wallace two year’s worth of free housing and access to Price’s vacation properties, too. To the extent this charge had impact, I’d say it backfired. And Price — through his attorney Doug Fell — denied the charge, saying he only remembered offering to pay Wallace for lost rental income during construction. Before the night was over, Price would bury his critics in an awesome display of Dude Power. He packed the chambers with guys who supported him and his project, guys he knew from high school, guys who maybe bought his gas, but — with only one conspicuous exception — all guys. And guy-guys, too. Not the kind to recite poetry about Santa Barbara’s fragile beauty. Instead, they said things like, “I’m so tired of hearing about ‘size, bulk, and scale.’ I feel like I’m at a Jenny Craig convention.” Most of all, they were mercifully brief. They talked about how ugly the existing gas station was, how many eons their families had lived in Santa Barbara, and how “gorgeous and classy” the new project would be. That was it. And it worked. Giddy with relief they wouldn’t be deliberating past midnight, councilmembers voted 6-1 against Price’s critics and approved the project for the second time in 10 months.
Now that’s done with, maybe the council can convene a special ad hoc blue-ribbon task force on what to do about the Taliban, Pakistan, and North Korea. Or maybe even California’s Day of Reckoning. Failing that, though, we can always fight about how best to rearrange the furniture. Like they say, don’t sweat the small stuff. And it’s all small stuff.