UC Santa Barbara recently bought several downtown Santa Barbara units and approved exploring a financing method for Ocean Road, a nearly 20-year-old housing project. Ocean Road, which was initially slated to add 540 units for faculty and staff, has been delayed repeatedly amid controversy, but was the largest promised housing project for the workforce.
UC Regents recently approved a financing method for Ocean Road, a nearly 20 year-old housing project which would add 540 units for faculty and staff. Courtesy of University of California Regents
At a March University of California (UC) Regents meeting, the Regents approved a financing method in which a “reimagined” Ocean Road will be the pilot. UCSB media spokesperson Kiki Reyes told the Daily Nexus that the campus is working on a Request for Qualifications – which allows agencies to put their bid in to develop the project — before the end of the calendar year to resume the Ocean Road project.
In this new plan, the pilot project site would be on Lot 23. The last time the Regents addressed Ocean Road in May 2022, they said the plan would involve demolishing the building for UCSB Student Health, which received community backlash at the time for not being immediately clear about relocation plans.
The plan’s financing method involves a “fee development contracting mode,” where a fee developer assumes “substantial financial risk” per Regents policy to develop projects based upon below market rent levels, and that they must lead from project conceptualization, financial feasibility and marketing assessment “through the execution of the full suite of design and construction services to deliver the project.”
“The selected fee developer assumes significant risk for being able to both scope and deliver a financially feasible project. The fee developer will not earn the developer fee (profit) unless the project achieves the University’s goals as evidenced by the project advancing to the construction phase,” a Regents document said.
UCOP Real Estate Associate Director Jake Lavin said “they want to take another crack at a reimagining of the project to add more density, reduce parking, reduce the scope of infrastructural alignment… and create more rental housing” at the March Regents meeting.
The Regents will review Ocean Road again to address funding and project scope, and in another meeting to address design, budget and external financing.
Meanwhile, a 2022 lawsuit filed by community coalition Sustainable University Now (S.U.N.) regarding documents detailing the progress of student and staff housing which the university agreed to in its 2010 Long Range Development Plan (LRDP), failed to reach a settlement on April 25. It will have a trial confirmation conference on May 16, according to S.U.N.’s attorney, Marc Chytilo.
The LRDP is an agreement between UCSB, Santa Barbara County (SBC) and the City of Goleta that addresses land use, traffic, recreational facilities, parking structures and most importantly, student enrollment, faculty housing and student housing.
Among agreements to cap student enrollment and build more dormitories, the LRDP outlined a goal for the university to build nearly 1,800 more units for faculty and staff. SBC and the City of Goleta previously sued the university for not building enough housing in line with the LRDP, which the university settled in March 2024, but this latest lawsuit concerns Public Records Act requests that the plaintiffs claim the university hasn’t complied with.
“The mystery really, of these years is why none of that really has been done, or very little of it. We’ve asked over and over again under the Public Records Act for the background of documents and planning material to help understand where that went and what the future of it might be, and they’ve just basically refused to provide any significant information under our request,” sociology professor emeritus and S.U.N. organizer Richard Flacks said to the Nexus.
While the now nixed Munger Hall project — which promised 4,500 student beds — is being supplemented with the San Benito and East Campus housing projects, the current faculty housing plans are not clear if they meet the number of units outlined in the LRDP.
Reyes told the Nexus that the LRDP does not promise or require the university to build 1,800 units of additional housing for faculty and staff. She said the LRDP is “aspirational in nature.”
“At that time, the campus made it clear that our goal was to use that capacity to build housing commensurate with the growth in faculty and staff. The campus staff and faculty growth has not come close to projections,” Reyes said in an email statement. “It is also relevant that new remote work options have reduced the number of staff coming to campus since the pandemic. Our progress, although not as fast as we envisioned, is in line with our slower growth.”
UCSB made an agreement with S.U.N. in 2011 that stipulates that the units should not be based on faculty staff numbers, but faculty staff interest in the housing, Flacks said. The agreement says UCSB shall provide units at the locations identified by the LRDP and “shall be phased to meet anticipated demand.” He also cited concerns about whether the number of faculty who retired was taken into account.
“It’s written down in the agreement that the university would contribute to resolving the housing problems of the region, but these housing problems are problems of university faculty and staff,” Flacks said.
He said there should be a broader assessment on whether there’s still a value and need for additional housing to be built.
UCSB announced in January it would buy an 80-unit apartment building on State Street and an 18,000 square foot commercial building where Staples once resided on State Street. It also included Reid’s Appliances — which will stay for the remainder of its five-year lease — on Anacapa Street and East Gutierrez Street. Reyes told the Nexus these projects would make up 159 total units.
Additionally, the university announced in April that it received a $7 million gift that would fund 45 housing units for researchers at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. The 1.2-acre vacant property sits across from the Munger Physics Residence on El Colegio Road and Camino Pescadero.
The Ocean Road faculty and staff housing project was originally proposed in 2005 and planned to create affordable housing units — 180 for sale townhouse units and 360 rental units. The project encompassed 16.7 acres of university-owned land at the western boundary of UCSB’s main campus and the community of Isla Vista.
It was slated for construction in 2007 but halted in 2009 due to public outcry, including waiting for the drafting of the 2010 LRDP to assess the current needs of the campus.
Ocean Road garnered controversy then for its potential environmental impact, as it would demolish the border between UCSB and Isla Vista and tear down a row of endangered eucalyptus trees on that street. Its compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act was also called into question, which requires state and local agencies to identify and disclose the project’s potential environmental impacts.
The project was reintroduced in 2019 at a November Regents meeting, with promises to meet at a future meeting in 2020 with the business terms for the project, but such meetings never took place. May 2022 was the next time the Regents revisited Ocean Road.
UCSB partnered with Greystar Real Estate Partners in March 2020 for the Ocean Road project, a private real-estate company involved with “mixed-use housing” at the University of Texas at Austin. At the time, Flacks said, faculty held concerns over Greystar heading the project and if they would price the units at a below-market rate. Greystar later withdrew from the project without public reasoning.
“When UCSB administration presented to the Regents the plan for partnership with Greystar, the question of affordability was raised by Regents,” Flacks said, citing someone who was at the meeting.
S.U.N. previously reached an agreement with the university in 2011 to mitigate the environmental impact of the project in regards to the 2010 LRDP.
Part of the agreement was to provide documents related to housing projects, a letter addressed to the university by S.U.N. said. The university denied it had violated any aspects of the agreement with S.U.N. at the time.
In the past year, UCSB workers have cited the lack of affordable local housing as an ongoing issue during several strikes. A 2022 report by the Santa Barbara Foundation found that an hourly wage of $47.06 is necessary to afford average monthly rent in Santa Barbara County, however, the average hourly wage for local workers is $29.82 and $16.50 for minimum wage UCSB student workers.
A.S. Senator and third-year global studies and history double major Enri Lala authored a resolution in January — before the Regents announced its financing plan — for the university to publicize its progress on the Ocean Road project and give quarterly updates on the project’s implementation.
“There has not been a direct response to the resolutions once they were sent to the administration level,” Lala told the Nexus.
Flacks emphasized the need for the administration to be forthcoming with updates to the Ocean Road project.
“This is really important for the community, because we have a real shortage of affordable housing throughout the region,” Flacks said to the Nexus.
A version of this article appeared on p. 1 of the May 15, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus
