Number of Affordable Units Required in Dispute for La Cumbre Housing Proposal

Planning Commission Iced from Oversight: Not Happy

Credit: Courtesy City of Santa Barbara

R U READY, BOOTS? At first, I figured I must have missed the memo. I would later find out that there had been no memo. For those of us who binge-watch local government porn, last Thursday’s Planning Commission meeting was easily the hottest show in town. A wake-up reminder would have been appreciated.

On the menu was four hours of nonstop, high-octane yammering about the biggest, most game-changiest development to hit Santa Barbara since white men bearing crucifixes crashed Chief Yanonali’s birthday party 300 years ago.

The father-son development tag team of Jim and Matthew Taylor, local boys who, until now, flew under the radar, are proposing to build 642 units of desperately needed rental housing on an eight-acre slab of land that includes where Macy’s now stands out at La Cumbre Mall.

Okay, fine. If ever there were a place to shoehorn as much housing as possible, it’s La Cumbre Plaza. But initially, the Taylors told us they would be providing 54 units of deed-restricted, below-market rental units for “very-low-income” tenants.

Here’s why hearings like the Planning Commission’s matter. Only under the relentless questioning of longtime Planning Commissioner Lesley Wiscomb — unfailingly polite but always with a hint of edge — did city planning staff cough up an exceptionally key detail. Under their own analysis, city planners and attorneys concluded that the Taylors were legally obligated to build no fewer than 81 units of affordable housing. Now, 81 is hardly great, but 11 percent affordable beats the hell out of just barely 7 percent.

I can’t remember if Planning Commissioner Sheila Lodge called this 7 percent “pitiful,” “paltry,” “pusillanimous,” or just “pathetic,” but she wouldn’t have been gilding the lily had she used all four. All seven commissioners clearly concurred.

How was it the contract planner City Hall hired to handle this unprecedentedly massive development project overlooked the number of affordable units required when laying out the bill of particulars at the start of what was otherwise an impeccably thorough presentation?

Here are two things I learned by watching. One: The Planning Commission is important, and the commissioners know what they are talking about. Two: The Taylors want to go whole hog. Among other things, they’re proposing to blow up the city’s pseudo-sacrosanct height limit of 60 feet.

I say “pseudo” because new state laws passed in response to the state’s housing crisis have superseded the charter amendment passed by a vote of the people back in the early ’70s. That’s when they — we — drew a big, fat line in the sky at 60 feet. Local control, we have since learned, is an impediment to affordable housing.

I can easily understand how the flotilla of architects hired by the Taylors forgot to mention the affordable housing requirement. They were otherwise distracted figuring out how they could hypnotize the rest of us with words such as “walkability” and “meandering.” We would be able to walk and meander through intimate, customized, personalized shops and around a 10,000-square-foot town center where we could all enjoy farmers’ markets and Friday-night movies. Somewhere, there will be a dog park, lots of bicycle parking, and more than a few fitness centers. When they were done, I would have tested positive for DUI, intoxicated by an over-indulgence of idyllic whimsy.

But the commissioners were exceptionally pissed at this hearing, which is still only a highly conceptual review of what will be the largest signature development project in decades. No formal application has even been submitted. Yet, this hearing could very well be the City of Santa Barbara Planning Commission’s first and last bite at the project.

Instead, all the really key decisions for this project — will be there be an EIR or not, what will the real traffic impacts be, and what mitigations are required—will be decided by “the Staff Hearing Officer,” one of the most obscure government positions in existence.

I have to give the developers credit. When confronted with what could have been a very uncomfortable difference of opinion when it comes to their affordable housing math, they kept their cool. They didn’t blink or stammer or get red in the face. Instead, they smiled a lot — the smile of someone who has more than a few aces up his sleeve.

To their great credit, however, the Planning Commissioners weren’t having any of it. And they said so. Loudly and clearly. But nicely.

“Walkability” and “meandering,” for example, happen to be words Planning Commission Chair John Baucke knows a lot about. For the past 30 years, Baucke worked as a planning consultant specializing in making neighborhoods more walkable. On Thursday, he delivered what seemed to be a devastatingly even-toned critique on how the leg bone did not connect to the hip bone in the proposed project’s traffic circulation plan. Lots of synapses that could and should be connected, Baucke said, aren’t.

I don’t know; I’m not an expert. But I suspect the Staff Hearing Officer might not be either.

As for the Planning Commissioners, they all expressed confidence the Taylors would and could do a whole lot better.

And as for the memo I didn’t get, it was never sent. City Hall said they thought the developers were sending it. The developers said they only sent it to people who already supported the project. There will be other hearings. Next time, I better get the memo. Fix it.

Correction: This story was corrected on April 30, 2024, as the citywide height limit adopted by Santa Barbara voters in the early 1970s was for 60 feet not the 45 feet originally reported here. There is, however, a 45-foot height limit right over La Cumbre Plaza. That part was correct. It just wasn’t as a result of the height limit city voters adopted at the ballot box. Either way, what the developers is proposing — 76.5 feet at its tallest point — would exceed both the 45- and 60-foot limit. And in either case, the new state rules and regulations designed to promote the development of new housing trump anything imposed by local governments — whether by ballot or by legislative action.