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A conceptual plan from Santa Barbara developer and landlord Ed St. George shows a four-story Art Deco–style building at the site of the iconic Pea Soup Andersen’s restaurant. St. George purchased the property last year for $4.95 million, about five months after the restaurant closed.
The City of Buellton said that this conceptual review for the site is just that — a concept — and is not a formal application. The city has not set a date for conceptual review by the planning commission.
“There is a substantial process before anything will be built on the site,” the city said on its webpage for the project.
Pea Soup Andersen’s operated for nearly a century. Danish immigrant Anton Andersen and French immigrant Juliette Andersen started the restaurant that became Pea Soup in 1924, originally calling it Andersen’s Electric Café after their then-novel electric stove. Anton and Juliette’s son, Robert Andersen, took over the family business in the ’30s and created the landmark billboards that would advertise the restaurant across stretches of the Central Coast for decades. The restaurant’s name officially changed to Pea Soup Andersen’s in 1947. It changed hands a few times; from 1999 to its sale, Milt Guggia Enterprises owned it.
In its place, the conceptual plan shows 125 one-bedroom condominiums, some with dens, as well as space for the Pea Soup restaurant, office space, and a gym. The project’s development team says the restaurant’s architectural design would pay homage to Andersen’s Electric Café, and that the plan is for Guggia Enterprises to operate it.
The building’s style comes as part of Buellton’s plan for this portion of the city, its Avenue of the Flags Specific Plan, finalized by the city council in 2017. That plan outlines that construction on the avenue should be in the Art Deco style.
Art Deco originated in western Europe in the 1910s and ’20s before growing in popularity in the United States in the ’30s and ’40s. Art-deco buildings feature clean shapes and stylized ornaments that are often geometric. Sometimes, buildings can include varied materials both natural, like jade and silver, and manmade like plastics.
Multiple developments along the avenue are slated to be in the art deco style, including the mixed-use apartment buildings Creekside Village and The 518. An Art Deco–style Arco gas station has been approved by the planning commission.
