The 18 murals that today define Ortega Park — a visual celebration of Chicano mythology and culture — won a very definite, if indefinite, reprieve this Wednesday afternoon as members of the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission (HLC) struggled to figure out how best to preserve the park’s signature artwork. What the commissioners most emphatically did agree upon, however, was that the murals were of great significance and that the city’s Parks and Recreation Department needed to do considerably more public outreach to the surrounding neighborhoods before any decision is rendered as to whether some, all, or none of the murals were deemed “structures of merit” and hence worthy of some form of preservation.
The big question mark looming over the murals’ future is a new and expansive master plan to renovate Ortega Park — now a sleepy park underutilized by the community at large and overutilized, some say, by a small but obstreperous group of noisy drinkers and lay-abouts. A new master plan for the park, adopted in 2019, calls for the creation of a much bigger and more aggressive facility, one that would include a new heated swimming pool, a new skateboard park, renovated basketball courts, new and improved picnic areas, and a vast swath of soccer fields on 5.5 acres of downtown real estate that was once home to a city dump.
The environmental impact report for this master plan gave short shrift to the historic significance of the park’s murals, which started going up in 1979 as a manifestation of Santa Barbara’s burgeoning Chicano pride movement. “The murals do not represent an intact, unique, or particular style that is important to the heritage of the City,” the environmental report concluded, “and does not qualify as a historical resource.” But at the insistence of community activists, planners with Parks and Recreation have been forced to retreat from this categorical dismissal. At issue now, is by how much it will all cost. It’s estimated that it will cost $300,000 to relocate one intact mural.