Experts at Santa Barbara symposium urge housing, faster permits and street-level fixes to revive State Street

Santa Barbara — At a special City Council symposium on Jan. 29, three retail experts told council members and staff that housing, streamlined permitting and targeted street-level investments are the most practical levers to revive downtown retail on State Street.

"Housing, when retailers look to come and invest… it really is housing," said Rachel Michelin, president and CEO of the California Retailers Association, during a morning panel that the city convened as part of its State Street master planning work. Michelin said regulatory complexity and compliance costs at the state and local level were deterring investment and urged local officials to press Sacramento for coordination.

The day’s presentations supplied local context and concrete proposals. Mark Ingalls, asset and general manager for Camino Real Marketplace, said State Street should be treated as a neighborhood and that adding housing above or behind street-level retail would create steady customer traffic. "State Street is a main street. It's not a shopping center," Ingalls said, urging small-scale, distributed housing rather than large towers.

Rick Lemo, senior vice president at Caruso Properties, prioritized customer experience: cleanliness, visible safety and faster timelines for approvals. Lemo proposed a concierge planning desk that routes applications through a dedicated team to shorten permit cycles, and suggested temporary tactics such as pop-up shops and police substations to change perceptions quickly. "How do we help you get to yes?" he asked, urging city staff to remove procedural barriers for new tenants.

Panelists offered numbers and examples to underscore the scale and stakes. Tess Harris, the city’s State Street master planner, said downtown draws a large regional customer base — citing more than 12,000 unique monthly visitors from the San Francisco area and over 37,000 from Los Angeles — and estimated about 2,000,000 visits downtown annually. She also noted resident cohorts (roughly 17% aged 20–29, about 14% aged 30–39 and about 12% aged 60–69) that shape demand for different retail types.

On policy tools, speakers recommended a mix of incentives rather than taxes. Michelin and Lemo both said they opposed a vacancy tax, arguing it signals a weak market. "Let me start with not a fan of vacancy tax," Michelin said, adding that pop-ups, short-term leases and marketing events often produce better results. Lemo described fee-waiver windows and concierge review teams as low-cost, high-impact measures that could be implemented locally to attract restaurants and other starters.

Panelists also recommended partnerships that reduce development timelines and costs: pilot programs to involve state funding, use of underutilized public land for workforce housing, converting upper-floor offices to housing, and targeted public-private pilot projects that demonstrate results quickly.

Council members asked detailed follow-ups about parcel sizes, design rules and the loss of Redevelopment Agency funding that formerly provided local housing dollars. Panelists encouraged creativity in using city-owned land, parking structures and staging pilot projects that lower developers’ land costs.

The symposium concluded with staff and council agreeing that the event was the first in a series of conversations to inform the State Street master plan; panelists offered to meet again with staff and community stakeholders as city officials refine options.

Next steps: staff will continue outreach as part of the State Street master plan process and return to council with options for implementing concierge processing, targeted incentives and pilot activations.