148-Room Hotel Proposed for Calle Real and Fairview

“Struggle” was a word that came up often as Goleta’s Design Review Board came to terms with the second round of conceptual designs for a hotel hoping to occupy 5955 Calle Real, the space most recently vacated by Santa Barbara Motorsports and the Good Earth Restaurant before that.

Each boardmember noted that the 148-room, three-story structure would overtop the city’s 35-foot height limit by five feet and agreed with public commenter (and county planning commissioner) Cecilia Brown that story poles would be essential. “Oh, here we go again,” Brown said, arguing that the public will likely complain that the project could “destroy the character” of the admittedly architecturally eclectic area, just as they have for the hotel rising at Storke and Hollister.

Problematic for a majority at the November 29 meeting were the three-story portions of the hotel that face Zodo’s bowling alley and the 101 freeway. Project architect Michael Stanton of San Francisco explained he’d tried to place the taller elements away from Calle Real and toward highway traffic or the blank wall of a bowling alley and its parking lot. Several on the board suggested some of the 148 rooms might have to be eliminated to set back those tall areas further from the property line. Board alternate Dennis Whalen commented that the drawings should show the proximity of the adjacent bowling alley instead of a “lovely grove of trees [going] off into infinity.”