Ground breaks in Goleta on Sumida Gardens project

BY COLBY FRAZIER
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

With shiny shovels in hand, Goleta city officials helped break ground yesterday on the long-awaited Sumida Gardens project.
Since the project took its first conceptual breath in 1994, it has been approved in one form or another twice by the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission and again by the city of Goleta last November.

Goleta Mayor Michael Bennett said the project is an example of “innovation and perseverance.”
“This is a great project,” Bennett said. “This project provides and ideal live-work opportunity.”
Once completed, Sumida Gardens will consist of 200 residential units in nine different buildings on a 10.2-acre site. But of much interest to city officials and a key component of the project’s November approval are 34 units that have been classified affordable.
The 34 units will be scattered through the very low, low and moderate categories of affordability – all of which are below market rate.
According to a city report on the project last November, the costs of a one-bedroom unit in each of the categories are: $613 per month for a very low unit, $747 for a low unit and $1,282 for a moderate unit. A one-bedroom unit at market rate is projected to cost $1,550.
Michael Towbes, whose company The Towbes Group, Inc., owns the project, said the affordable units will be a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments.
Towbes said the project, through its various rebirths, has improved and noted that there will be no differences between the market-rate rentals and affordable rentals.
“We’ve upgraded the project,” Towbes said. “This is a really great day for the Goleta Community.”
But the affordable units come at a cost to the city.
In order to ensure the affordable units would be built and rent restricted for 55 years into the future, the city awarded The Towbes Group a $6.8 million subsidy. About $3.5 million of this will be provided up front and the remainder over the next several years.
Towbes, who took over the project eight years ago from another developer, admitted coming to an agreement with the city was difficult.
“Trying to make the numbers work has been a challenge for us,” he said.
Bennett noted the project’s close proximity to Old Town Goleta, the revitalization of which, he has said, will be one of his priorities as mayor.
“Not only will this project provide much needed rental housing in our community, it is also located in the city’s redevelopment area which will bring an added boost to Old Town,” Bennett said.
While many officials who attended the groundbreaking lauded the 34 affordable units, that number is a fragment of what was once proposed and approved.
In its initial form, the project was first approved by the County Planning Commission on Nov. 2, 1994 and called for 176 affordable units in 12 buildings.
The project received its second approval by the planning commission on Oct. 24, 2001, and if built would have included 200 total units, 100 of which would have been classified affordable.
It was the current project’s diminished number of affordable units that councilwoman Jonny Wallis cited as her reason to vote no on the project last November.
Towbes said he expects the project will be completed in 12 to 15 months. It will be located at 5505 and 5585 Overpass Rd. behind La Sumida Nursery.
Along with the construction of the project, The Towbes Group will also make a variety of public infrastructure improvements that include extending Overpass Road, making a new signalized intersection, bus stops, sidewalks and improved bike paths.
Jim Knight, incoming chair of the Goleta Valley Chamber of Commerce, said he hopes the building of Sumida Gardens is a preview of the future of Goleta.
Knight said two Goleta businesses, ATK Space Systems and FLIR Systems, both of whom he spoke with before yesterday’s groundbreaking, told him they’re growing quickly and welcome the additional housing units.
Knight said ATK told him they expect to continue growing at a rate of 15 percent each year, while FLIR hired 80 new employees in 2007.
“It’s the biggest breath of fresh air in the past eight years,” Knight said of the Sumida project.