Battle over 250-Room Garden Street Hotel in Santa Barbara Continues

It was a three-versus-one showdown at City Hall as the developers behind a 250-room hotel in Santa Barbara — Dauntless Development — faced off against three separate appeals of the project. The three appellants, including the nonprofit Keep the Funk, made their cases for city councilmembers to overturn the city Planning Commission’s previous 4-2 approval of the project earlier this year. 

In a way, the project is more than 40 years in the making, dating back to a deal struck in 1983 between the city and real estate developer Bill Wright, who agreed to gift the city a portion of his land to allow for the construction of the roads that connect current-day Garden Street to Cabrillo, allowing for the development of what we now know as the Funk Zone. The “Specific Plan,” signed by former mayor Sheila Lodge — who was in attendance at Tuesday’s meeting — gave Wright the promise to realize his vision of a 250-room beachfront hotel on the rest of the property. 

Coincidentally, the October 1 meeting was also five years to the day since Wright died, and, while he never got to see his project come to fruition, a few of the people that worked with him during the early planning of his hotel were there to try to see it through.

“I’ve really been thinking a lot about Mr. Wright today,” said Trish Allen, a principal planner with Suzanne Elledge Planning & Permitting Services (SEPPS) who spoke on behalf of the Wright family. “This was absolutely envisioned by Mr. Wright. He was passionate; he had vision.”

Architect Brian Cearnal, who began working with Wright in 2016, said that the late developer was “extremely proud of this property,” which he believed could be a gateway to Santa Barbara featuring Monterey-style architecture.

The appellants compiled hundreds of pages of documents, with Keep the Funk chair Brittany Zajic and attorney Marc Chytilo making arguments over the environmental impacts and the need for housing over hotels, urging the council to not make too quick of a decision on what would be the second-largest hotel in the city. (The largest, the 360-room Hilton S.B. Beachfront Resort, is just down the street from the site of the proposed hotel.)

“The decision that you make is going to have consequences and ramifications decades into the future,” Chytilo said. “You are not bound to approve anything under the specific plan.”

Two other appeals, filed by residents Steve Johnson and Rich Untermann, opposed the plans for a 238-space underground parking lot in an area at serious risk for flooding.

Shaun Gilbert, who spoke for Dauntless Development, said that the project was already heavily vetted and analyzed, including multiple stops at the Historic Landmarks Commission and Planning Commission in 2019 and 2023 before earning approval on February 29 this year.

“You guys are here to handle the tough decisions,” Gilbert told the council. “There’s a lot of push and pull between the community and the development. However, this is the right project in the right location.”

The city received hundreds of letters of public comment prior to the meeting, along with in-depth reports from each of the appellants and several members of the development team, with competing arguments over soil contamination, the project’s six affordable housing units, and opposing interpretations of the language of the city’s 1983 Specific Plan. 

With the flood of new information in the week prior to the meeting and during the hearing itself, City Attorney Sarah Knecht made the recommendation that the council hear all presentations from the appellants and developers, listen to all public comment, and ask questions to staff before closing the session to continue the hearing on November 19. The council agreed, with the caveat that no more evidence or public comment will be taken into the record between now and November 19, when the item would return for council deliberation and a final decision.