Dos Pueblos Ranch Up for Sale, Again
Ocean-View Santa Barbara Property Listed for $65M Roughly Three Years After Being Purchased for More than $33M
A whole lot of “I told you sos” are making the rounds after the news broke on Friday that Roger Himovitz has put Dos Pueblos Ranch (a k a Rancho Dos Pueblos) up for sale for $65 million. First reported by Bloomberg, the listing comes roughly three years after Himovitz purchased 219 acres on an ocean-view bluff top for more than $33 million. There he established the Dos Pueblos Institute to gain public-private partnerships to complete the coastal trail, give access to the Chumash for ceremonies, and create a retreat center.
The institute has accomplished some of its goals under the leadership of Geoff Alexander, previously a film commissioner with the County of Santa Barbara. Ceremonies take place in cooperation with Chumash tribes, and children’s programs are held on the land. But once Alexander read the Bloomberg article, he told the Independent he’d decided to submit his resignation.
“I offered to volunteer my time without compensation of any kind in order to deliver on those commitments to our partners and the children,” he said of the institute’s spring and summer programs. “I am hopeful that Roger will agree to allow me to fulfill this promise.”
Few of the people contacted for this story would speak on the record, saying in one way or another that they’d always been uncertain that Himovitz would ever get his ambitious project off the ground without some development income attached and also noting that he was known to be a progressive Democrat. Goleta historian Tom Modugno simply said that Gaviotans had always looked at him as a developer.
Doug Kern, executive director of the Gaviota Coast Conservancy, said he knew little about the listing but understood that Himovitz had instincts to be a conservationist and a developer, as well. Kern was involved in the 3,200-acre Rancho Tajiguas, which the conservancy purchased in September, and spoke with feeling about the necessity for repairs and maintenance to buildings, roads, and water systems, which Dos Pueblos Ranch had encountered as well, especially after the storms of recent years.
The ranch is incorporated as Humpty Dumpty Rancho Dos Pueblos, LLC, which reflects the pieces Dos Pueblos now comprises — the historic Rancho Dos Pueblos once was a holding of 15,000 acres stretching from Refugio to Fairview Avenue in Goleta — that Himovitz has put together as 219 acres of parcels. Six are on the main ranch with its Casa Grande, and to the east of Dos Pueblos Creek, there are 10 to 14 more parcels, depending on who you talk to.
Gaviota’s landscape is a pastoral California coastline with the ocean gleaming in the distance and ranchlands, fencing, and a building every now and then in the rolling hills. Development is anathema in Gaviota. Himovitz is known as a genial developer from San Luis Obispo who raised his family in Montecito. He’d added luxury yurts and glamping tent-cabins after buying El Capitan Ranch, before turning over its management to an RV company in 2020, a company that ran into permit issues over an expansion within eyeshot of the highway.
In a brief conversation on Tuesday, Roger Himovitz said that his preference would be for a conservation-minded individual to buy the ranch to ensure it would remain protected. He added that he was hopeful that the institute would continue and that its vision would be manifested.
As for his inability to see it through himself, “The reason I am selling is that I have serious health issues I need to deal with,” he said.
Himovitz, who is 79 years old, has been serious about conserving land, already putting 10,000 acres into conservation by the time he bought Dos Pueblos. His attorney, Rob Egenolf, explained that landowners put properties into conservation to reap federal and state tax breaks. Any such owner would have to have a large tax debt. For example, he said, the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, whose family foundation just bought the Tea House property. The starting point of Montecito’s Tea Fire in 2008, the property has 350 acres which the Schmidt foundation said they would protect as open space.
“You have to have a high income to utilize a tax deduction like that,” Egenolf said, which is why his client is in search of a billionaire to buy Rancho Dos Pueblos. Egenolf added that the property had to be priced at its “highest and best use,” which in the case of coastal land was full build out. The $65 million asking price reflected the costs to purchase and maintain the property — about $3 million a year, Egenolf said — and repair things like the pumps for the abalone farm onsite.
This is where trust would come in, as in the trust that the new owner would indeed conserve the land and not build on it.
“Roger had great dreams for the Dos Pueblos Institute,” Egenolf said. “And he hopes to find an owner to not only donate the property but to utilize it for the institute.”
