Planning Issues In Depth

Goleta Old Town Revitalization Opinion

FROM EDHAT.  Link to Opinion Piece and Commentary Here:  http://www.edhat.com/site/tidbit.cfm?nid=36367

Old Town Opinion
updated: Jul 30, 2010, 9:01 AM

By Laura Funkhouser, past president of Goleta Valley Beautiful and 15 year Goleta resident

Here is my open letter to the Goleta City Manager (Dan Singer) in response to the Daily Sound article this morning, which is garnering negative comments about Old Town:

Dear Dan,

I have offered to give you and your staff architectural walking tours of Old Town on at least one occasion. Since the Old Town Culture Project was active within the past ten years ago, garnering a great deal of local awareness and media coverage, it is hard to believe that you and/or your staff do not know about this project, which is the first to document the heart and historic center of the city for which you work. I know or have sat on boards with at least six of the past and current city council members who are aware of my project and past work in Old Town.

The redevelopment trajectory of Old Town is characterized by a lack of transparency as to why the stakeholder and professional recommendations developed through numerous public processes begun fifteen years ago have not been followed, who, exactly, is behind the current plan being pushed forward that the vast majority do not want, as well as an overriding sense of entitlement on the part of the City to dictate what is “best” for Old Town against stakeholder’s needs and prevailing professional practices for redevelopment in an historic walkable urban center. Please note: This institutional behavior and philosophy toward Old Town Goleta were catalysts that drove community members to incorporate the City of Goleta in order to gain control over development and redevelopment.

This current situation was evidenced by the public comments given at the parking workshop on Wednesday, July 21, 2010. At least eight speakers called for traffic calming improvements, pedestrian amenities, and street trees. Lee Moldaver was the only speaker who endorsed the antiquated County plan that was thrown out twelve years ago by the Old Town Heritage District Design Guidelines Committee. This gives the appearance that the City staff and councilmembers are taking the lead on Old Town redevelopment from a gadfly who has never, to my knowledge, lived in Old Town, operated a business in Old Town, owned property in Old Town, or has any apparent vested interest in Old Town. Lee did however, acknowledge in the meeting that he had known the San Luis Obispo architectural and design firm’s representative, Jerry, for a very long time.

What is clear is that there are two competing visions for Old Town’s future: The stakeholders’ vision that wants pedestrian- and bicycle friendly improvements vs. one that wants Old Town to draw national retail chains by changing its architecture. It is not a matter of satisfying both visions. The first will enhance Old Town, the second will destroy the locally-owned businesses and multi-cultural fabric that the community values.

I would appreciate your thorough and thoughtful responses to my questions.

1) Why has the County’s antiquated plan (dating back more than twenty years, during which time everything in urban redevelopment has been rethought) re-emerged after years of public processes that replaced that plan with what the residents, business owners, landlords, opinion leaders, local architects and landscape designers, and public at-large want, which is a safe, pedestrian- and bicycle friendly village with public amenities?

2) Who, at the stakeholder, councilmember, and staff levels, promoted the SLO firm to redevelop Old Town? In other words, who is pushing the County’s old plan and who do they represent?

3) Why haven’t the Old Town Heritage District Design Guidelines produced by the nine months-long committee, which represents what the community does want for Old Town, been acted upon?

4) Since the Hampton Inn planted five new street trees, why won’t the City plant street trees now, to match the ones in front of the Hampton Inn utilizing existing (vacated) tree wells? Clearly, the planting of the street trees in front of the Hampton Inn shows that the trapezoidal San Jose Creek bridge replacement project for flood control improvement in no way impedes the City from utilizing the existing sidewalk wells or creating new ones for trees along Hollister Avenue.

5) Why did the newly-commissioned parking survey of Old Town Goleta not count the parking spaces at the Fairview Corporate Center? This is the largest parking lot in Old Town, serving Yardi, Santa Barbara Bank & Trust, and other tenants who use very few parking spaces on weekends, and those spaces were not counted.

I grew up in Santa Barbara and have lived in Santa Barbara and Old Town Goleta for more than thirty years. I have a B.A. in the History of Art and Architecture from UCSB, a Master’s degree in Organizational Management from Fielding Graduate University. I worked at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. before embarking on a career in nonprofit and corporate marketing, was the youngest Santa Barbara County Arts Commissioner in its history (for eight years), and was a board member of Goleta Valley Beautiful for four years. I most recently was marketing manager for the publisher of national trade magazines Stormwater, Erosion Control, Municipal Solid Waster Management, Distributed Energy, Water Efficiency, and Grading and Excavator Contractor. I have written semi-professionally on art and urban infrastructure.

This is to say that I am a credible witness to the ongoing mismanagement and duplicitous handling of the Old Town Goleta redevelopment effort. The City of Goleta needs to change tactics immediately to get on a course that will satisfy the real unmet needs and desires of the community that have already been succinctly documented through open public forums, workshops, and committees.

I originally thought Old Town architecture jarring. Once I found the historic architectural survey of Old Town Goleta and learned to approach Old Town on foot rather than car, its textbook examples of architecture spanning more than one hundred years taught me why the community wants the architecture left alone.

The homogenized strip mall architecture that one finds in Orange County is the opposite of what stakeholders want for Old Town. Strip mall architecture, embodied in cartoonish “Disneyland” themed facades and signage exists only to be seen by car and be acceptable to national retail chains. That style is usually found where there was no previous urban history or where the history was lost before preservation of existing valid architecture became a norm in Southern California redevelopment practice in the 1990s.

Old Town stakeholders are resolutely against homogenization by a single architectural theme or element imposed on the existing architecture along the corridor. Strip mall style is ubiquitous in Southern California and already exists in Goleta on Calle Real and Fairview Avenues. Old Town is something rare that needs stewardship and subtlety.

Old Town offers what few Southern California communities do: Authentic architecture in a walking-scaled village that has been successfully repurposed decade after decade to create a unique sense of place that is human-oriented, rather than car-oriented. Is it perfect? No. Neither is Santa Barbara’s downtown.

Old Town’s immediate need is for street trees and pedestrian and bicycle improvements. Is the City of Goleta listening to its stakeholders and following the plan laid out by stakeholders fifteen years ago or are you going to stay on the current path to destroy the local character and businesses and human scale so cherished by so many throughout the Goleta and Santa Barbara areas?

Sincerely,

Laura Funkhouser

P.S. If the City (via Steve Wagner) were listening to the residents’ concerns, it would have already repainted the red curb on Tecolote at Hollister Avenue.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 8:21 pm and is filed under: Urban Design.