The Return of the Miramar Resort’s Swim Raft (2024)

••• The swim raft at the Rosewood Miramar Beach resort will be available—including to the public—from June 1 through Labor Day. Can you order a drink via sempahore?

••• The Knit Shop has opened in Domecíl’s old space inside Victoria Court.

••• Menswear shop Tendrel is moving to 223 Anacapa Street (near Mony’s); the new location opens May 30.

••• The Ballard Inn has been bought by the Kirkwood Collection for $6 million. (It had been listed for $7.65 million.) No word yet on what the company—which has 10 other properties in California, including the Blue Sands Inn and Hideaway Santa Barbara here—plans to do with it, if anything. The main challenge is that the guest rooms are configured with the sinks on one side of each door and the rest of the bathroom on the other.

••• I went to a recent open house at 2401 Medcliff Road in West Mesa, which caught a lot of people by surprise when it was listed for the absurd price of $8.4 million (since reduced twice to a still delusional $7.7 million). The house is worse than I expected, with a clunky floor plan and a total lack of interior charm; the listing agent said there’s an ocean and island view from the upstairs primary, which I did not see myself.

••• The city of Santa Barbara put out a release about the stone pine trees on E. Anapamu Street (this is a long excerpt but I found it interesting):

The City of Santa Barbara’s Urban Forestry staff will remove five Italian stone pines on E. Anapamu Street after a comprehensive assessment identified the aging trees as a threat to public safety. Many of the remaining trees will receive canopy pruning to reduce the risk of limb failure once neighboring trees are removed. Removals are expected to begin the week of June 3.

Between March 29 and March 30, two Italian stone pines on E. Anapamu Street failed, and three required emergency removal due to the risk of imminent failure. While the trees are regularly monitored due to their age and size, a comprehensive tree risk assessment evaluated the overall health and structural stability of each Italian stone pine and identified five trees with dead and decaying roots, requiring full removal. Seven trees are in an irreversible decline in health but were not identified as high-risk and are not currently scheduled for removal. Urban Forestry staff will continue to monitor these trees.

The mature trees were planted in 1908 and 1929 and have been weakened by a combination of factors, including drought, disease, and development over the past century. When the trees were planted, E. Anapamu Street was a wide, unpaved road. Today, the trees are in parkways ranging from 4-6 feet. The large lateral roots of the Italian stone pines cause damage to nearby asphalt and concrete, lifting sidewalks and damaging roads. As repairs are made to the surrounding hardscape, the roots of the trees are pruned, weakening the tree. Aggressive canopy pruning to accommodate overhead utility lines places additional stress on the mature trees.

Recent lab testing identified Phytophthora root rot in the soil of all tested trees. This fungal pathogen kills a tree’s roots, first infecting small fibrous feeder roots before moving into larger roots of the tree. Infected feeder roots impact the tree’s ability to uptake water and nutrients, leading to overall decline. Given the pathogen’s ability to easily spread from one location to another, it is presumed to be present in each of the parkways. Lab testing also identified Diplodia tip blight within the canopies of tested trees. This fungal pathogen causes the decline and death of portions of the tree canopy over time.

••• From the May 28 agenda of the city’s Architectural Board of Review: “Proposal to demolish the existing development including 28 rental housing units, 49 parking spaces, and a community center building, and construct a new 52-unit affordable housing development on the 2.08-acre site” at 305 Rancheria Street and 515-524 W. Montecito Street (at Cliff Drive).

••• Many of us admired SkyG’s astute comment about the state of State Street, in case you missed it.

My take is this…. Santa Barbara has created a downtown on State Street that has evolved primarily—not exclusively, but primarily—into “the place that tourists go.” Baja Sharkeez. The Salt Cave. Cali-Forno Pizza. I’m under 50 and a local. I can tell you that for folks like me and my friends, downtown State Street is basically the last place we think to go if we want to go out. There’s a certain stink of tourist trap to it currently. A sense of inauthenticity. This has nothing to do with the ability to drive or not drive on State Street. This has nothing to do with parking or the lack or cost thereof. State Street has evolved into a place that is simply not very desirable to a large portion of the local population. It’s hitched its wagon to tourism, and we know that from hotel tax income, tourism is down.

Other portions of town are recovering better—in my opinion—because they do a better job of catering to both locals and tourists. Take the Funk Zone as exhibit one. Sure, there’s a lot of tourists there, but it’s also the most common destination for everyone I know when they want to go out and eat or get a drink. And it feels cool and authentic, in a way that State Street does not right now. But also notice what’s happening on Upper State Street. The Brass Bear opened an outpost, and you can barely get in the parking lot it’s such a huge hit. It’s primarily locals. Lama Dog and Sama Sama are opening an outpost on Upper State this year—I expect it to do exceedingly well. If the La Cumbre mall gets redeveloped under the current plan, where there’s supposed to be a very fancy food hall, I expect that to do very well, in the same way that Public Market does good business, despite not being on State Street.

In the absence of meaningful population growth (see the lack of significant new housing for decades) all of this becomes a zero-sum game. Areas of town that were not retail/dining hubs 10-20 years ago have become those now. There are a finite amount of dining and shopping dollars out there—simply filling empty storefronts on State with whoever is willing to sign the lease does not change this fact. The success of the Funk Zone and Upper State currently comes at the expense of State Street proper. If we want to change that dynamic, then we need to put more people—not tourists but residents—back in the downtown core. If we do that, I fully expect that State Street will be reborn into something even better than it currently is, but that will take many years.

None of this, none of it at all, has anything to do with vehicle traffic on State Street, in my opinion. If you just want to drive down State Street, that’s fine, that’s honestly an understandable position. But it’s not going to change the dynamics of what’s happening. It’s just going to put cars on State Street.

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