The former home of Thrifty Ice Cream was briefly on a short list of spots Solvang officials are eyeing for potential City Hall expansion.
“What if we just retrofit the Rite Aid?” Solvang City Councilmember Elizabeth Orona said after City Manager Randy Murphy informed the council that some departments—including Public Works, Community Development, and Parks and Recreation—have outgrown their current office spaces in Solvang City Hall and a separate municipal building nearby.
“I actually thought about that one too, when the Rite Aid became vacant,” Murphy said, referring to the Solvang location’s closure in July.
However, the shuttered Rite Aid was among the empty spaces Murphy and staff ruled out, partly due to the costs, Community Development Director Rafael Castillo told the council during its Oct. 27 meeting.
“Conversions of space are much more difficult when you’re going from one occupancy to another,” Castillo said. “So in that instance, the Rite Aid is not set up to have multiple bathrooms or have multiple sewer lines to accommodate the water and sewer demands. So, that retrofit then causes a ripple effect in terms of cost.”
Castillo told the council that, generally speaking, new construction is less expensive than a retrofit when there’s a substantial occupancy shift, in response to a concern from Councilmember Orona.
“Let’s look at where we have space being unused today and see if there’s sublet capabilities or opportunities,” Orona suggested to staff.
“Part of the problem is that what we have are older buildings,” Murphy explained. “In order for them to be able to be leased in the current market, they have to be updated to ADA standards and fire safety standards and all those kinds of things.”
Murphy said that staff identified the need for constructing some kind of new municipal building—one that’s larger than 20,000 square feet—in the next 10 years to keep up with staff’s growth rate. Repurposing or retrofitting an existing city property may solve the problem temporarily, but not in the long term, he said.
“[It’s] not an immediate need, but over time, you’ll need more people,” Murphy said. “Our needs for staff increase because the workload increases, and the worst thing we could do is get into a new building for the existing needs and then in three to five years find out you need another space or two, and you’re just converting closets or something into office space.”
According to the staff report, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department—which uses a section of the Solvang City Hall building as its Solvang station—expressed interest in acquiring or leasing the entire building if Solvang decides to vacate.
The council ultimately directed staff to research the feasibility of constructing a new three-story building in the vacant parking lot across from the current City Hall. A recent staff evaluation estimated that the route would cost between $8.7 million and $10.3 million.
“Given a continual escalation of construction costs, it’ll likely increase 5 percent or more each year for the foreseeable future,” said Murphy, who told the council that staff will bring back an update in three to six months.
“We better be really diligent about the requirement and the assessment that this is a true need, because we’re assuming that staff’s growing,” Councilmember Orona said. “I really want to be careful that we’re walking into this with a real assessment and real diligence.”
This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 6, 2025.