City, schools ponder vacant land

BY COLBY FRAZIER
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

The controversial topic of what to do with the Santa Barbara School District’s two valuable, undeveloped parcels of land was the subject of a joint School District City Council Task Force meeting yesterday, where a possible land swap between the city and district was the main talking point.
Because the 12.43 acre Hidden Valley site on Palermo Road is the only site within Santa Barbara City limits, it was the one discussed.
Board member Kate Parker said any future plans with the 22.86 acre Tatum site located on San Marcos Road would have to be discussed with the county.

Several school board meetings over the years and voluminous and spirited public comment dealing with the vacant sites has been heard, but no decisions for or against development have ever been made.
The sites, which were purchased long ago to one day build schools on, sit vacant because due to declining enrollment, the school districts will be faced with closing schools before it ever builds any schools.
Couple this with the fact that declining enrollment has taken its toll on the district’s pocket book, and the cost of living in Santa Barbara has skyrocketed over the past decade, and one might see the vacant sites as small gold mines.
The district has toyed with the idea of developing the sites for workforce housing, simply selling the sites off or building a hybrid development that would include a certain number of units for district employees and the rest for market rate units.
Most of these proposals, after a significant amount of investment, would likely generate revenue at some point for the district, but the sites would be covered with structures -- a vision that doesn’t sit well with many locals.
Though the discussion is in its infancy, City Councilman Das Williams, who sits on the task force with Mayor Marty Blum, said the two parities managed to agree on two main priorities: the first being that the school districts must remain financially viable to serve students, and the second is to provide teacher housing without developing the Hidden Valley site. The catch is somehow achieving both simultaneously.
In order to meet both needs, Williams said the basic sketch of the plan would be to contribute a piece of the city’s land, where the district could relocate its maintenance and operations facility, which is currently located off Santa Barbara Street near the district administration center.
In place of the downtown maintenance and operations center, Williams said the city would assist the district with density issues and encourage building any housing on that site. The tradeoff, Williams said, would be to leave the Hidden Valley site as permanent open space.
Williams said up to 50 units could be constructed where the maintenance and operations facilities are currently located. Prior proposals for the Hidden Valley site estimated a maximum of 98 units could fit there.
“The goal is [for the] city to offer enough value for the district to part with development rights of Hidden Valley,” Williams said. “Today we finally got some considerable interest from the school district.”
Some of the advantages for building downtown instead of at Hidden Valley that Williams noted, are that environmental concerns won’t be as substantial downtown as they are at the Hidden Valley site, and capital costs wouldn't be as expensive.
He also said moving the maintenance and operations portion of the district to a more suitable site in an industrious area would be a plus.
Board of Education member Kate Parker said the amount of land currently used by maintenance and operations is one to two acres.
As to whether or not building workforce housing on this site could still generate income, Parker said it could through leases and rentals, but until further review, there’s no sure way to tell.
“That’s one of the things we need to look at,” Parker said. “How much less income [than developing Hidden Valley] is it.”
Parker said joint staff reports from the city and the school district will be presented to the board of education sometime in September.
Laura Wilson, president of Citizens for Neighborhood Schools, said the prospect of building housing downtown could threaten the currently vacant Santa Barbara Community Academy, which was relocated to La Cumbre Junior High.
Wilson said declining enrollment is not as bad as it seems and that the number of potential Santa Barbara School District students that will arrive with Cottage Health System’s housing project at the former St. Francis hospital site will have nowhere to go.
“[Yesterday] was the city’s case, they laid it out, they’re pushing for housing, but I would hope that the school board doesn’t become so focused on that that they forget their mandate is not for housing, their mandate is for classrooms,” Wilson said. “You can’t just have lots of housing and assume that they’re all gong to send their kids to private schools. You can’t plan for that, you’ve got to plan to provide classrooms for kids.”
The one thing that Parker, WIlliams and Wilson acknowledged is that any sure plan is a long way off.
“This is a very incremental process,” Parker said. “We’re still at a very, very preliminary point in the discussion.”