August 31, 2007
Santa Maria retail awaiting vital call from commission

by Barbara Pearson

On Sept. 6, the Local Agency Formation Commsion, or LAFCO, will consider the annexation of a 63-acre parcel of land to the city of Santa Maria.

The commission’s consent would pave the way for a large-scale shopping center to be built within the city’s curtain, a project that was introduced to Santa Barbara County nearly a decade ago.

About 22 acres of the total site, which lies east of Highway 101 near Santa Maria Way and College Drive, is zoned for commercial use. The Adam family, which has owned the property through multiple generations, initiated the project in 1999, but began informal discussions with the county several years prior to that.

A 225,000-square-foot shopping center proposal, which was called Orcutt Plaza, received county approval in 2003, but developers could not get water at the site without the participation of the city, said city planner Bill Shipsey. At that point, the process for annexation began.

Because there is an existing mobile home park and condominium development within the site, it is still subject to a protest hearing if it is approved for annexation by LAFCO on Sept. 6. Depending on the number of protests, the annexation could go to a vote or be killed altogether.

Santa Maria City Manager Tim Ness said he is confident the project will move forward.

“We expect there will not be the necessary protest votes to stop annexation or force a vote,” Ness said, adding that it wold take about another month to officially annex the property into the city so that it can continue through the specific site plan approval process.

But once the property owners have achieved annexation, an entirely new commercial project will be proposed for the site, said Dave Cross of Fletcher Cross and Associates, an agent for the Adam family enlisted to help with the annexation.

“Any retail shopping center project will come separately and go through on its own,” Cross said. Every step of that process would involve a public hearing. So if some people mitakenly believe that just because there is an annexation, it approves a shopping center project, that’s not true.”

Cross said original plans for the center are no longer valid as the original tenants intended for the center have gone elsewhere.

“They had to put this complete package together only to find out if it had fallen through, so they are very reluctant to assemble any speculative project for that [site] until the annexation goes through,” Cross said.

Ness said that over the years, there have been discussions for a Von’s, Kohl’s and Lowe’s in the center.

Cross said the Adam family wants to propose a commercial shopping center tha will have a supermarket and drugstore and that some components of the new project could be similar to the former.

Michael Martz of Leider Hayes Commercial, who specializes in retail leasing, said there have been several similar developments in recent years - such as the Orcutt Village Marketplace - that have faced delays for various reasons. The challenge for a proposed shopping center, he said, will be to convince prospective tenants the development will actually be completed. Regardless, he added, there is a need for retail space in Santa Maria.

“There is definitely demand in Santa Maria. There is a tons of housing growth so a lot of retailers are trying to follow,” Martz said.

Though an environmental impact report, or EIR, was approved for the orginal proposal, Cross said a new EIR - and particularly a new traffic study - will be conducted for the new shopping center proposal. A property tax exchange agreement for the site has also been approved by both the city of Santa Maria and the County of Santa Barbara.

“The other issue is some people think that if there’s not an annexation, then nothing will be built there. The truth is the property owner wants to put something there,” Cross said, adding that it could turn out to be affordable housing or another type of development that doesn’t necessarily fit into the site’s current commercial zoning.