Santa Barbara Supervisors Give Miramar Green Light on Affordable Housing and Retail Project

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The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors unanimously denied all appeals against the current iteration of the Rosewood Miramar expansion project on Tuesday, clearing the path for the housing and retail project to finally proceed.

The current project, led by billionaire and resort owner Rick Caruso and his development team, proposes 26 affordable housing units for the resort’s workforce. It will also include eight market-rate apartments and 17,500 square feet of commercial space to hold up to 12 boutique shops and one café. The project is split over two sites — both currently parking lots — with the affordable housing located on the eastern lot, behind the hotel and the market-rate apartments and shops located on the western lot, near All Saints-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church. 

Supervisor Das Williams, who represents District 1 (which includes Montecito), said the scale of affordable housing the project provides will help the community. And thanks to a recent change to the project, the affordable housing will be permanent rather than for the 55 years required by the state. 

“This is the highest percentage [of] affordable housing [in a] private project that I’ve seen in 20 years in this community,” he said. “Most of the time when people are against local housing, it’s because they are not sure that it’s actually going to go to local people or local workers. Well — 76 percent of it has to go to local people or local workers.” 

He added that the worker housing would help the area’s transportation issues by cutting down on the number of commuters heading to the resort. 

Because of its affordable housing component, the project falls under the Housing Accountability Act; the act prevents Santa Barbara from denying or reducing the project unless the project has a significant adverse impact on public health or safety.

On Tuesday, the Board heard five appeal cases over the period of about four hours. The appeals were filed by neighbors, as well as UNITE HERE Local 11 — a union that represents hotel workers in Los Angeles, Orange County, and Phoenix — and Heal the Ocean, a local nonprofit organization focusing on wastewater infrastructure and ocean pollution. 

County Planner Willow Brown outlined each issue in a presentation to the board and provided the county’s assessment of each, finding that none had merit. 

Issues raised included the impacts of construction to the area, traffic congestion and parking problems, evacuation feasibility concerns, a lack of fair and impartial hearing (given the switch from the Montecito Planning Commission to the County Planning Commission), coastal access impacts, coastal zoning regulations, and inconsistencies with Montecito’s community plan. 

Appellants also raised concerns about flood dangers. The affordable housing is in a FEMA flood zone. Heal the Ocean’s founder and executive director Hillary Hauser said there were problems with Caruso’s report on flood risk, according to a separate report by Integral Inc., an environmental and engineering consulting firm. 

Integral’s findings state the Caruso team’s report had inadequate stormwater control calculations, given the likely increased precipitation in storms fueled by climate change.

“It is our request of this board that this project be put on hold until some of these issues are resolved, because the implications of what Integral has discovered are significant and have to do with human safety as climate change bears down on us,” Hauser said.

During the rebuttal period of the hearing, Chris Robertson, Caruso’s senior vice president of planning and development, said that Caruso team submitted a sea-level-rise report that determined the project would be safe from flooding and erosion, as well as a project hydrology report that was approved by the county. Further, she said that the proposed underground parking structure is on elevated ground and its floor will be 11 feet above groundwater. 

Some appellants also said that the project was divided into small segments to avoid a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review and the project site should consider the entire resort. The county says that the project site is limited to where development will occur, rather than the whole resort, citing CEQA guidelines.

The project has garnered significant attention, with both the county and Montecito Planning Commission listening to hours of public comment. In September, four members of the Montecito Planning Commission threatened to resign after County Planning Director Lisa Plowman made the decision to have the County Planning Commission evaluate the project. The county avoided these resignations by permitting the Montecito Planning Commission to hold a hearing on the project on October 18 and to make a recommendation to the county. Montecito’s commission lost its quorum abruptly during its hearing, and ultimately was unable to give its recommendation.

Representatives from All Saints-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church also factored into many of the hearings, with concern over the market-rate apartments and shopping center voiced repeatedly. On October 30, the Church and Caruso’s team announced they had come to an agreement: the second story of the building in question would be set back an additional 40 feet from the church. The county planning department approved the project November 1.

At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Laura Capps also highlighted the numerous changes the Caruso team had made to the plan, based on community feedback, including reducing building heights, reducing the number of market rate apartments from 15 to eight, increased the number of employee apartments from 14 to 26, reducing the retail space. 

The meeting adjourned with applause from supporters.