Santa Barbara’s Art Essentials Moving to 1200 Block of State Street

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This article was underwritten in part by the Mickey Flacks Journalism Fund for Social Justice, a proud, innovative supporter of local news. To make a contribution go to sbcan.org/journalism_fund.

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Folk music floats through the speakers at Art Essentials in downtown Santa Barbara one late morning in October. Customers peruse the aisles filled with art supplies, from canvases and paints to colored pencils, sketchbooks, papers, and craft kits. 

The store has spent more than 20 years in its current location at 32 East Victoria Street, said Art Essential’s cofounder and owner Sam Winkelmeyer. Winkelmeyer runs the store with his wife, Gilda, who he said has been there from the start. 

He said he remembered they moved into their current space during Santa Barbara’s annual Fiesta — and contended with some interesting foot traffic. 

“When we were moving, there were like 25 horses tethered outside this place and all these drunk people, and we were going past them with displays and stuff,” he said.

Now, more than two decades on, the Santa Barbara art staple will move again, this time to a new spot: 1207 State Street, across from The Granada Theatre. 

“That block is the prettiest part of State Street in my opinion, with the big trees and the Granada,” he said. “It’s very picturesque, it’s still in the art district, and it’s catty-corner from the art museum, so it is kind of apropos.” 

The move is a couple of years in the making. Winkelmeyer said their landlord, Christ Presbyterian Church, told them about two years ago that the church was planning to expand. 

Winkelmeyer said it was a challenge to find the right-sized space for their next location.

“We’ve been looking really actively for about a year, but unfortunately the spaces you can find in Santa Barbara are like 2,000 to 3,000 square feet. Those are all over the place, and then like 15,000 to 20,000 square [foot places],” he said.

The new store space is about 6,000 square feet, slightly smaller than the current store, but Winkelmeyer said that he and Gilda had already been planning to pare down. 

“It’s like moving your house. You should move your house every couple of decades because you just accumulated a ton of excess baggage and stuff you really don’t need. So it’s a good thing to sort of shed all of that every so often and so it’ll make us a lot more organized.” 

He said the spot will also make the shop more visible. The rent, he said, is a slight increase from what they currently pay. 

Winkelmeyer said there are some cons to moving to State Street. He and Gilda aren’t sure how to get inventory into the store, for one — whether trucks should pull up on State Street (traffic is one-way on this block) or work through a loading zone on Figueroa. 

Then there’s the location itself. He said initially, he and Gilda started looking in Goleta to get out of the downtown area. He said he didn’t see any cohesive direction with a plan for State Street, and that while he thinks the pedestrian walkway looks good on paper, he didn’t think it works, in reality. 

“As a business owner, I also feel like the retail people in this area have been sort of ignored,” he said, adding that during the pandemic, restaurants got a lot of attention, but retail got little. 

State Street closed for car traffic in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Four years on, the city and the public alike have debated whether to reopen State Street to cars or to design it as a pedestrian zone, with the city spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on creating a plan. While most of the city’s council is on board with the current plan, which includes a plaza-like space with a curb-less street and two-way traffic allowed on the 400 and 1300 block, the mayor and Councilmember Alejandra Gutierrez have voiced opposition for it.

As for Art Essentials, Winkelmeyer hopes the move to State will take about a week, between Christmas and New Year’s. He said customers have offered to lend a helping hand. 

“We’ve had a bunch of customers who have volunteered to help us move, which is kind of fun,” he said. 

Art Essentials will remain open until the move. As for the existing occupants, Unity Shoppe plans to close 1207 State Street and expand its next-door space 1209, which they say they can do by reorganizing the space. Angela Miller-Bevan, Unity Shoppe’s CEO, says the organization is keeping all of its programs and is looking forward to partnering with Art Essentials.