It’s Friday afternoon. You shower after work and walk the two blocks from your downtown loft to the farmers’ market. There you grab some produce and a bite to eat at the Asian fusion food truck and catch a few songs from your favorite local band. Along the way, you stop at that popular café for an espresso and to check in with friends.
Sound like Santa Maria? No? City planners hope to change your mind about that with the latest plans for the downtown area.
A revamped Downtown Specific Plan adopted last year plans to revitalize a 50-block radius around Broadway and Main streets. In addition, mixed-use buildings and a citywide increase in residential and commercial development is expected to bring in tax revenue as well as give the community a central place to gather.
Change is happening. And it all starts with a farmers’ market. It’s just going to take people to buy into the idea, city officials say.
The Downtown Fridays farmers’ market
When it was originally adopted in 2007 the Downtown Specific Plan, the governing strategy that applies to the city’s core, flopped. One of the big reasons for that, according to the city’s Director of Community Development Larry Appel, is that it relied on bringing businesses downtown in order to attract people. Then the recession hit and took a toll on businesses in a multitude of ways.
Ultimately, the plan was revisited as the economy picked up. This time, city officials shifted the focus to create activities to draw people downtown so that in turn, the businesses will come.
The plan is dependent on three main goals: creating activities to get foot traffic downtown; forming partnerships with businesses in order to make downtown an attractive place for businesses to locate; and increasing beautification efforts in terms of adding building awnings, improving facades, adding benches, and creating streetscapes.
One of the key components of the Downtown Specific Plan is the Downtown Fridays farmers’ market that starts April 8. The event is an attempt to provide a fun activity for the community but also to draw people downtown, according to Appel.
The farmers’ market will include live music, a beer and wine tent, a row of food trucks and food vendors, and a bounce house and other activities for kids. It’s a big difference compared to the current farmers’ market, which is held on Wednesday afternoons and hosts about 20 to 25 mostly produce vendors.
City Planner Neda Zayer, said that there will be about 60 vendors to start with on Fridays. and organizers hope it will grow from there. Zayer also emphasized that there will be a good range of food options like vegan foods and smoothies, burgers, sandwiches, chili, ice cream, and more.
Live music will rotate each week between Spanish entertainment one week and English the next.
Of course, with the atmosphere in the city consisting of residents on heightened alert after a series of high profile crimes, city officials said they’ve fielded some questions about the event’s safety.
“It’s understandable that that’s a concern the community has,” Zayer said. “The event itself will have security and there will also be six police officers on bikes, and walking around throughout the event.” She added that organizers have taken measures to ensure there is a steady stream of officers flowing through the event. She said the community in attendance—which they estimate will be about 1 percent of the city’s population—in itself would deter crime, as long as everyone has that mindset.
“Just the fact if the community rallies around it, if you have 1,000 to 2,000 people, that’s a lot of eyes and that kind of curbs things as well,” she said.
Appel called the talk about crime and other city problems unfortunate but said that the city is just trying to get beyond the divisiveness and do something that will bring in all elements of the community. Part of that means being inclusive and embracing every part of the city.
“You have to look at the reality. Our town is made up of 70 percent Hispanic. That’s our makeup. There’s nothing bad about it. So when you go try to put on an event if we didn’t have Spanish music we’d probably lose a large segment of the population coming to these events and we want everyone to feel comfortable coming to them. That’s why we’re rotating them back and forth so we have a mix, a blend.”
Zayer added that though there have been a few people who have expressed concern, many more have shared their excitement at the city’s efforts to bring a fun event downtown.
“We need the community to rally around it and to start seeing downtown in a different light,” she said.
Creating a downtown
Having the Edwards Santa Maria Stadium 14 RPX theater at the center of the city has helped drive people downtown, Appel said. Downtown Fridays should help even more. But another element of the downtown plan is to encourage mixed-use development to get people both living and playing downtown. The city is already making progress in that regard with downtown housing projects that Appel said will help further the Downtown Specific Plan’s vision.
Hancock Terrace Apartments, located next to the city transit center near Boone and Miller streets, is already under construction. When complete, it will offer more than 200 residential units. Originally the development was intended as mixed-use, but the developer, Towbes Group Inc., didn’t think it would draw commercial tenants because of its off-Broadway location. Instead the complex is targeted toward young professionals and Allan Hancock College students.
On March 15 the City Council approved a mixed-use project at 504 S. Broadway that will convert a former motel into a mix of office and upstairs residential units. While the Hancock Terrace Apartments is all residential and off of the city’s main street, the Broadway project is right in the middle of the city and located next to existing businesses.
The idea for the project is to have offices below and efficiency units upstairs, giving people a reason to shop, explore, and use downtown services. However, this brought up some concern during the approval process.
City Council members and business owners raised concern over potential complaints from residents of the project about noise or odors coming from the restaurant and event center next door. Parking was another concern.
During the March 15 City Council meeting, property owner Atul Malhotra told the council that he would add conditions to the project proposal that would address those issues. He assured the council that mixed-used development exists all over the country and that it works.
“While this may seem new for this part of town, perhaps for the city of Santa Maria, I’m really not trying to do anything new here. Secondly it falls right in line with the whole vision of the adoption of the Downtown Specific Plan, where the city wants to encourage living downtown and wants businesses as well as residential communities to sort of co-exist,” he said during the meeting.
Another concern was whether the housing would end up being another project to house farmworkers.
Malhotra told the council he included a condition that stated that the project wouldn’t be used for H2A farmworker housing (a government program for certified farmworkers) and that the residential leases will be for one year if possible to encourage long-term renters. However, during public comment one speaker, Martin Mariscal, questioned the reasoning behind prohibiting H2A program renters when there are so many agricultural workers in the city, many of whom are undocumented, who wouldn’t be prohibited from renting.
“If there is no restriction on that, then really this project can rent every single unit to an agricultural worker, who except for not having that permit, meets all the requirements of an H2A worker.”
Appel also addressed the issue with the Sun, saying that the potential for the project to become farmworker housing is an assumption based on other approved H2A worker projects.
“Because if you drive up and down Broadway a lot of the old motels have been converted into, let’s say, farmworker housing or something to that effect. And what we’re seeing here instead is that there is a niche in society of people who really like downtown, if you go to San Luis Obispo you’ll see it,” he said.
Growth outside the downtown area
Having a strong downtown element is important because it will provide a strong community-focused center while the city continues to grow outward. Appel said overall the city is expanding. One of the reasons is because of a general state of economic recovery. He said that as the economy began to recover from its recent recession, developers began to feel ready to move forward, but the banks were not, so the financing wasn’t there. Now both developers and banks are feeling confident.
“We’re building out the projects that we already approved, and plus now we’re getting some of the newer ones like Enos Ranchos,” he said.
On March 30 the Planning Commission approved proposed development of the Enos Ranchos project at the corner of Betteravia Road and College Drive. It will include a new Costco store with an attached gas station. A Buffalo Wild Wings will be included in the project offering seated dining, and a Chik-fil-A will open there as well. Big-box home improvement store Lowe’s will also move in to the development.
Residential construction has also picked up, Appel said. In 2009 the city only had two new homes built. In 2010 there were six. Currently there are hundreds of houses under construction, about 1,340 to be exact. Some, like La Vigne apartments, are complete while others are in various stages of the process.
That’s just the residential projects. The city also has several commercial projects in the works.
Titan Foods, a strawberry freezer and packaging business, opened a 2,016-square-foot facility on La Brea about a year ago. Windset Farms, a facility that grows hydroponic tomatoes and cucumbers, recently increased its facility to 1.3 million square feet.
“So that’s the largest greenhouse in the world now. And we got it right here so it’s kinda cool,” Appel said.
There are new industrial projects going in across from the former Sunset Ridge Golf Course on Fairway Drive, and the former golf course will become a new FedEx building.
The city is also expecting major development for Betteravia Plaza, which was approved for development just a few months ago on land right next to the Santa Maria Police Department on Betteravia Road. The project has the potential for 285,000 square feet of retail, 75,000 square feet of office space, and 272 multi-family homes.
The North Broadway/Preisker Lane area will get a 108-room Hampton Inn and a Wendy’s, and a Splash N Dash is set for Broadway and Donovan.
“There’s a lot of stuff happening and so things have definitely turned around,” Appel said.
The future
With all the talk of development, the question of infrastructure arises. The city is getting close to what’s called “buildout” or the maximum capacity to which a city can grow and still adequately meet the infrastructure needs of its citizens. Though Santa Maria is close to that number, it still has some growing room, Appel said.
Farther out from the downtown area, city officials anticipate the development of the airport business park, a plan that has long been proposed but was halted because of issues related to the endangered tiger salamander.
He said the area near West Betteravia and Black Road, where the current Windset Farms is located, has room for expansion as well.
“If we were to build on all the vacant land right now, our city would probably be around 126,000 [population]. We’re actually 102,000 right now. So we got some ways to go, but our water service, our sewer service, all of those are already set to get us up into the 130s. So we’re covered for infrastructure,” he said.
Because most of the city is built along the west side of Highway 101, the next move would be to grow across the freeway. There’s already been discussion of that happening, Appel said.
“We’re seeing in the next 10, 20 years finishing up what we have in the city and then considering expanding over into the east of the freeway.
He said that discussion has included the possibility of a four-year school locating there, and maybe an extension of Marian Medical Center with the potential inclusion of a teaching hospital.
“So there’s a chance we may look at developing to the east side of the freeway, and I think that’s the next big expansion for the city. Otherwise it’s just infilling some of the smaller lots, tearing down some of the older buildings, and building something new within the city itself,” he said.
That brings things back to revitalizing downtown. The planning department’s Zayer said in order for the city’s plan for downtown to succeed, residents need to support it too. She said the community can’t lose faith in recreating another downtown. “Our downtowns are the heart and soul of a city. Let’s not give up on ours,” Zayer said.
Editor Shelly Cone can be reached at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 7-14, 2016.