I nearly drove off the road this past weekend on the 200 block of East Haley Street. I came across huge poles outlining the intended height of a new building to be constructed there.
Are they kidding me and the rest of Santa Barbara residents? Do they really intend to build something so tall and so outrageous here? It must be almost three times the height of the buildings already there. It will be a big, hulking building that totally blocks the view of the mountains beyond.
Now I suspect, like many other residents here, I don’t pay close attention to all the goings-on at City Hall. I assume they make their best judgments in the best interests of the city. But come on! This will totally change this neighborhood. And once this monstrosity goes up, others will surely follow on the basis that now there’s precedent.
Please don’t do this. It’s amazing to me that we all moved here because we fell in love with the city the way it was then. But then developers and city planners strive to make changes to crowd more and more people in, but in doing so destroy the nature and character of the city we fell in love with before.
Sure, some change is inevitable. But I suggest we want to be a small, charming community, not a dense collection of concrete buildings that smother us and confine us to the concrete canyons in between.
Let’s not build this building so tall. Let’s keep what we love about our city, and don’t let the various planning departments slip through changes that gradually destroy the place we call home.
