Travelers sit in the summer sun leisurely sipping wine and enjoying the view of rolling hills behind them. A scene straight out of Under the Tuscan Sun? Perhaps, but it will also soon be a reality for the people of Lompoc, who will be able to enjoy a Tuscan-style escape in their own backyard.
On July 7, the Lompoc City Council unanimously approved construction of the Santa Rita Hills Wine Center. Located on the northeast corner of North Twelfth Street and Highway 246, the center will boast a 55-room hotel and spa, an event center, a restaurant and bar, retail shops, and a wine processing and storage facility.
“It’s going to be a very nice facility and a nice entrance to the city,” Mayor Dick DeWees later told the Sun. “It’s going to help Lompoc capitalize on the growing wine industry.”
Though considerably smaller in size, the Santa Rita Hills project is reminiscent of the Hunter/La Purisima Resort project, which called for the construction of an 80-room resort, restaurant, spa facility, and 85 clustered residential units next to La Purisima Golf Course off Highway 246 in Lompoc. The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors voted down that project in March.
The La Purisima development caused quite a stir among county officials who were reluctant to alter the county’s general plan—a necessity if it were to be built. It also elicited complaints from local environmentalists who feared it would jeopardize the county’s ag land.
Those concerns seemed beside the point to DeWees, who said: “If La Purisima was in city limits, that development would be going through right now as far as I’m concerned. I think that decision was very short-sighted of the board of supervisors.”
DeWees said the new wine center will help buoy the local economy by increasing tourism and also remove an eyesore by refurbishing parts of the old Grefco industrial plant.
This article appears in Jul 16-23, 2009.