Edhat Staff
The Santa Barbara City Council voted 5-2 on Tuesday to deny final appeals to save the longtime English pub, The Press Room, from demolition.
The small building at 15 E. Ortega Street in downtown Santa Barbara has been serving pints and showing soccer matches since 1995. Now the property owners will tear it down to build an expansive four-story hotel.
The SIMA Corporation initially proposed a housing development but pulled the application in 2022 and resubmitted with a hotel project citing high construction costs and low density requirements that would make the project less appealing financially.
The project will construct a 32,799-square-foot, four-story, 66-room hotel including a restaurant/bar on six lots totaling 30,004 square feet. The project also includes 14 parking spaces on the ground floor. The ground floor would contain a 1,364-square-foot restaurant open to the public, a 1,900-square-foot lobby, and guest use conference rooms.
A Lot Merger was required for the properties at 710-720 State Street and 15 E. Ortega Street as part of the project. The 14,455-square-foot buildings at 710 State Street (including 19 E. Ortega) and the 1,000-square-foot building at 15 E. Ortega (the current home of The Press Room) are proposed to be demolished.
In August 2023, the city’s Planning Commission held a heated discussion on the topic but ultimately approved the project as it meets the zoning ordinance despite a large community opposition.
The majority of council members agreed the project could not be denied simply for being a hotel as it successfully went through the proper processes. Councilmember Kristen Sneddon opposed the project with concern over developers gobbling up properties just to merge them. She, along with Councilmember Oscar Gutierrez, voted no.
The Press Room owner and the SIMA Corporation have reportedly reached a private agreement for relocation expenses. Although, the bar’s ownership took to social media to share their feelings on Tuesday night’s decision.
Well, the powers that be decided that they would like Santa Barbara to be more like Santa Monica and less like Santa Barbara. Thank you all for your efforts to save the Press Room; fully expected, but still a massive kick in the bollocks,” the Press Room stated on Instagram. “I will never get my head around the fact that we were deemed to have no historical value. When we got the keys to the door over 29 years ago, we were told that under no circumstance could we carry out any physical changes to the building as it was deemed historic. Built in the 1890s, and now has stood in the last three centuries. A loss for the community. A win for the developers. Sad day.”
Why can’t they incorporate the building into their design?
And why are the historical aspects overlooked?
This is a huge loss to so many. Of course it’s much easier to get projects through the process when your architect is on the ABR…
You have it right! For the architect of this project to be on the ABR is much like an umpire owning a piece of one of the baseball teams in a game that he is overseeing. It would never be allowed!
Sad day, indeed.
Seems like this city council has no regard for historic Santa Barbara.
Onward and upward.
Yeah, tMo these Trump type developers dont care. They will move in to any town with a lot of cash to develop and will erase and rebuild. It is happening and no one will eventually be around to stop them as time holds no punches. It will happen. Developers are good at this. Big Money Dummies.
A proposed 66 room Hotel with 14 parking places. It’s very distressing that this type of poor planning keeps happening.
this is pathetic at best. another hotel? really???? how about some affordable housing. that is actually affordable. how about NOT further destroying our retail downtown? This is removing 5 businesses that already exist and have existed for a long time. The City Council is to blame. There will be nothing left downtown but hotels, touristy diners and a few bars. Huge loss for Santa Barbara. Another big slam dunk for the developers and hotel industry. How do they expect to fill ALL of these new and giant hotels that are being built meanwhile running other businesses out of town? There won’t be much of a draw to go downtown any longer either. Sb City Council has literally destroyed downtown and more. Something needs to be done.
Well, we are changing the Quality inn (34 hotel rooms) into permanent supportive housing. Still, a net gain in hotel rooms.
All SB will have to offer is massive hotels, no local “feel,” charm, or history, so it will become more unappealing to visitors and locals alike.
This is not a surprise when you consider that our mayor’s good friend, reported as very large $$ campaign contributor, is the head of SIMA, Jim Knell. You get what you vote for.
Yeah and you get what you pay for.
I was one of the 2 appellants. My concern was that the Council make use of “a significant amount of latitude” in making its decision. Use of such latitude only applies to bigger projects; denial of a large project does not constitute spot zoning. The “consistency with the principles of sound community planning” requirement is a sanity check on large projects. My assumption was that the housing crisis, the climate crisis, the City’s non-compliant Housing Element, and the fact that Beverly Hills is under court order to not issue any non-residential permits (due to inadequate planning for affordable housing) might have some weight in the decision. But rearranging deck chairs was the order of the day.
Thank you for your efforts!
Super sad day when buildings with historical significance get demolished for another hotel. What is happening to the idea of keeping something to reflect our history. We don’t need hotels on State Street and we don’t need more cruise ships. We need support for the qualities that make SB so interesting .. history and careful design principles certainly in downtown.
In the aerial photo, that unlabeled building behind the Press Room is 19 E. Ortega. It’s a two story building that for many years was office space leased by Mission Research along with the 5th & 6th floors and basement of the Balboa Building (735 State St above the Banana Republic).
I have so many good memories of working behind the Press Room. From our office windows, we had a birds-eye view of the parking lot. I could never figure out who that guy with the (brown?) Jaguar was that was at the Press Room all the time. Loyal patron or staff? Conveniently, we always knew it was time to call it a day when the bikers would show up at the Press Room. They’d set off all the car alarms in the parking lot! And being next to Restoration Hardware also had its perks. We could not believe all the cool unsold merchandise they’d throw away – best dumpster diving in town. During Fiesta, we would grab food from DLG Plaza or the Italian & Greek Deli and climb up to the roof and walk across Restoration Hardware’s roof to watch the parade on State St.
I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon, but It saddens me that SIMA and their investors are going to tear all that down and turn the “best use of their capital” into yet another hotel creating more low wage employment opportunities for people who struggle to make a living here. The character of the corner at State & Ortega began to slide when locally-owned stores like the Italian and Greek Deli and Velo Pro left. I will hate it when the scaffolding goes up. This hotel will just create fewer reasons for locals like me to head downtown.
But I do wonder if the construction workers will find any of the cascarones we left on Restoration Hardware’s roof.
Someone can apply to make it a landmark! Possibly even making it so it stays as is and they build around the facade. Or even, maybe, that it is moved and not destroyed. It is a landmark already to me even if they have not declared it officially. Mobilize people!