Goleta Council Agrees to Begin Potential Habitat Changes at Sandpiper Golf

Before approving the start to a General Plan Amendment for the Sandpiper Golf Club renovation project, the Goleta City Council wanted some assurance that Devereux Creek did indeed lack habitat where it passed through an underground pipe.

Removing the environmentally sensitive habitat area (ESHA) designation for the piped sections of Devereux was among Sandpiper’s asks for a change to the city’s foundational planning document called the General Plan; the others were to de-designate the manmade pond as red-legged frog habitat and ESHA. Though the council voted to begin the amendment process on Tuesday, it is by no means a done deal. The amendment will come back to city decision-makers after environmental review is completed.

Devereux Creek runs above and below the fairways near the border of Ellwood Mesa, not far from Goleta’s famed monarch butterfly grove and a gated community called The Bluffs. To the other side of Sandpiper is the Ellwood oil facility and the Bacara resort, as well as Bell Canyon, where much of Devereux’s water has flowed ever since the culvert under the railroad tracks clogged some time ago. The biologists who’ve already looked the course over found good habitat for red-legged frogs, a threatened species, at Bell Canyon, as well as raptor nests near Devereux, which they recommended adding as ESHA.

What’s creating a buzz around the project, however, is the potential restoration of the Barnsdall-Rio Grande gas station, part of the Sandpiper property that Ty Warner bought in 2003. The blue and white tiled walls and round cupola atop the Barnsdall structure make it a unique and striking building among service stations. It dates to 1929, the middle of coastal California’s oil boom period, and was landmarked in 1990.

At Tuesday’s council meeting, attorney Chip Wullbrandt spoke for Sandpiper, indicating that they were deliberately not saying a lot about their plans. That was to come as the renovation went through environmental review, the city processes, and the Coastal Commission, with opportunities for public comment all along the way. What is known so far about the plans is a course redesign by golf course architect Tom Doak, the more than doubling in size of the clubhouse, a bathroom and snack shop added to distant Hole 6, less cart-path hardscape, and a path through the trees to the Rio Grande Café at the Barnsdall-Rio Grande gas station site.

To Councilmember James Kyriaco’s question whether old photographs showed the pond, Wullbrandt said the entire area had been oil fields since the 1920s, a brown field site. As well, the pond, or water hazard, was drained on a regular basis, he said.

Changing an ESHA designation on the General Plan map was not anything this council would do lightly, Councilmember Kyle Richards noted. “I’m looking forward to what positive things may come from what I understand is a theoretical project at this point.”