New Plans Afoot at Ty Warner’s Sandpiper Golf Club and Barnsdall-Rio Grande Gas Station in Goleta

Goleta’s historic Barnsdall-Rio Grande gas station at the edge of Sandpiper Golf Club may become a “quick stop” café as part of renovations proposed at the 194-acre course. Owner Ty Warner also intends to “naturalize” about 53 acres and alter some sensitive habitat designations, but the habitat modifications will move forward only if the Goleta City Council agrees to amend the city’s General Plan to allow the changes.

Biologists from Dudek environmental planners spent several days and nights in 2022 listening for croakers as they searched for red-legged frogs, a threatened species made famous in Mark Twain’s Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and last surveyed at Sandpiper in 2004. Though the course pond is deep enough for the species, it lacks vegetation for good breeding habitat, being surrounded by turf and exposed to lawn chemicals, states Dudek’s report. Positive habitat attributes are similarly lacking where Devereux Creek intermittently runs through a pipe under the surface of the golf course. Both are in the General Plan amendment request to have their ESHA (environmentally sensitive habitat area) designation removed; the third request is to remove the special-status designation for the red-legged frog at the manmade pond.

The flip side is that the biologists’ review located new and better areas of frog habitat in Bell Canyon nearby. Sandpiper asks to designate seven new ESHA locations on or near the course for rare plants (purple needle grass, Santa Barbara honeysuckle, sage scrub, woolly seablite, cliff malacothrix, black walnut), species (raptor nests), and wetlands (adjacent to the ocean in the middle of the site).

The General Plan amendment process is part of the renovation in process for the golf course itself. The plans are for a new layout by golf course architect Tom Doak and to replace the 9,305-square-foot clubhouse with a two-story club and restaurant of 24,000 square feet, which includes a basement. A “comfort station,” or bathroom and snack shop, would go near the current Hole Six at the far southeast corner of the course, and the cart-path hardscape is to be reduced by almost half.

Sandpiper was built in 1972 along the oceanfront in Western Goleta, but the much-photographed gas station dates to 1929 and gained landmark status in 1990. Its Spanish Colonial tile, stonework, and cupola are unique and were designed by Morgan, Walls & Clements of Los Angeles. Sandpiper itself was once Ellwood Terrace, an estate owned by Kate Den Bell, who was certain oil was underfoot, as it was in coastal areas up and down the state. Oil spurted forth in 1927, the year after Bell died. The station passed through several hands before it was sidelined when a new road — Highway 101 — replaced Hollister Avenue as the main thoroughfare.

The renovation plans go for an assessment to Goleta’s newly formed Historic Preservation Commission on Monday, said Steve Welton, who is the consultant at Suzanne Elledge Planners hired by Sandpiper to shepherd the project through the city’s process. Those meeting notes indicate the 347-square-foot historic structure would find itself between the 695-square-foot Rio Grande Café and a 727-square-foot trellis. Fourteen spots of parking would be added to the east.

The old gas station would become an indoor dining area: “Way back when, it was a restaurant,” Welton recalled, adding that the plans were formed in discussion with area historians. He explained the café would hold the kitchen, with the trellised area providing outdoor dining space. A golf cart path would come off the fairways around the current Hole Three to the new café.

“What’s cool is that the architects want to add antique gas pumps as charging stations for bicycles,” Welton said.

After Monday’s Historic Preservation session at 6 p.m., the Goleta City Council takes up the General Plan amendment at its meeting on Tuesday, April 16, at 5:30 p.m.