West Wind Drive-In Owners Ask for Development Extension

From the air, the West Wind Drive-In has visible issues with flooding, bordered as it is by the Goleta Slough and the occasionally rambunctious San Jose Creek as it drops its last half-mile to the Pacific Ocean. Any new building there — owner SyWest Development is considering storage units at the site — has to keep the elevation of the building pad in mind and also bumps up against Goleta’s new height limit of 35 feet. In what SyWest hopes is a winning compromise, it has offered the city a sliver of land to add a needed width of access road down to San Jose Creek in exchange for rolling back for two extra years the zoning to the earlier height limit of 45 feet. Goleta’s Planning Commission was unconvinced, however.

SyWest has the right to be considered under the former zoning regulations; it completed its project application before a cut-off date of September 1, 2019, which was a rule settled during the years-long new-zoning-ordinance process completed a year ago. That option ends on December 31, 2021, however, and SyWest’s swap asks for an extension to December 31, 2023. In exchange, it would grant the city an easement for 2,082 square feet of land that would add 10 feet of width to the current road to an access ramp down into San Jose Creek. It’d be wide enough for two dump trucks to safely pass, which would speed up clearing the creek in flood and also during the work on the Hollister Avenue bridge, which is currently out at bid.

San Jose Creek, once a flood-prone waterway, has been channeled into a concrete canal alongside State Route 217, the broad, sweeping road out to UC Santa Barbara. Maintained by County Flood Control, the canal was widened in 2015 to keep the creeks within its walls and stop it from flooding Goleta’s Old Town. The widening ate up the broad median along the 217, formerly used for access. Goleta’s responsibility is to keep a fish channel open one the east-side of the canal, which has turned out to be a constant effort.