In Play?

The Parcel Nobody's Talking About

Somewhere along Las Positas Road, wedged between the hum of Highway 101 and the manicured fairways of Santa Barbara's Municipal Golf Course, sits a sprawling patch of state-owned land that most locals drive past without a second thought. That, at least, is the argument a Santa Barbara resident is now putting to the community — and it's resonating.

In a letter published July 10 by the Santa Barbara Independent, John Ummel of Santa Barbara took pointed aim at a recent column by the Independent's executive editor Nick Welsh, whose long-running "Angry Poodle" column had floated the idea of converting the city-owned 108-acre Municipal Golf Course — affectionately called "Muni" — into housing. Welsh wrote that he had his revelation while riding a bike along Las Positas Road, noting that there isn't a single other 108-acre parcel of land owned outright by City Hall, and that with state pressure mounting on the city to produce more housing, Muni deserved a serious second look.

Ummel's retort was neighborly but pointed. He was amused, he wrote, by Welsh's "light bulb moment" — but suggested the columnist had missed something obvious: right next door to the golf course sits the Earl Warren Showgrounds, a roughly 38-acre parcel the Independent's letter identifies as underutilized and, critically, owned not by the city but by the State of California. As the state leans on municipalities to meet aggressive housing targets, Ummel asked, shouldn't the state's own land be "in play"?

It's the kind of question that sounds simple at first — and turns out to be anything but.

A Venue With Deep Roots, and Long Financial Headwinds

Earl Warren Showgrounds is one of those places that Santa Barbarans carry a quiet affection for, even if they only visit once or twice a year for the rodeo, a gun show, or a gem faire. Located at 3400 Calle Real at the corner of Las Positas Road and Calle Real, the facility sits bordered to the west and north by the very golf course Welsh was biking past — and by Adams Elementary School, which was itself carved from the same original land parcel.

The history is intertwined in ways most people have forgotten. In 1950, the State of California — using funds provided by the horse show association — purchased 136.5 acres at the corner of Las Positas and Calle Real. To secure the support of the City of Santa Barbara, the district gave 82 acres to the city to add to the community golf course and ten acres for the construction of Adams Elementary School. In other words, Muni Golf Course and the Showgrounds began life as a single property, parceled out in a mid-century civic bargain.

The Showgrounds was originally developed as the permanent home of the Santa Barbara National Horse and Flower Show, and it grew into a multi-use community hub. Today it hosts the Santa Barbara Fair & Expo, the Fiesta Stock Horse Show & Rodeo, orchid and cat shows, monster truck rallies, pickleball and roller hockey tournaments, and an RV park that draws visitors year-round. It also serves as a staging ground for emergency personnel — as it did during the 2017 Thomas Fire and in the aftermath of the 2018 Montecito debris flows.

But for all its community value, the Showgrounds has not been flush. Facing financial headwinds as far back as 2019, the facility had to take out a line of credit to cover payroll and operating costs. When the state removed satellite horse betting from the showgrounds in 2009, the organization lost a large source of its revenue — a hole it has struggled to fill ever since. The facility is managed by the 19th District Agricultural Association, a statutorily created agency of the State of California, Department of Food and Agriculture, Division of Fairs and Expositions, which means it answers to Sacramento, not City Hall.

That governance quirk is precisely the crux of Ummel's argument.

Sacramento's Housing Hammer Meets Sacramento's Own Land

California has been pushing its housing mandate with increasing force. Since 1969, the state has required that all local governments adequately plan to meet the housing needs of everyone in the community. The mechanism is the Regional Housing Needs Allocation, or RHNA — a state-assigned quota that cities and counties must plan to accommodate, and which carries real consequences for jurisdictions that fall short, from lost funding to the so-called "Builder's Remedy," which allows developers to bypass local zoning entirely.

The current RHNA cycle for the Santa Barbara region was significantly larger than in past years, a result of the state accounting for both projected growth and the existing affordability crisis. City Hall, for its part, has been inventorying its own parcels for development potential — but the 108-acre Muni parcel has conspicuously not been on that list, according to Welsh's reporting, partly because a city sea-level-rise plan adopted earlier this year designated it as a possible future receptor site for a relocated wastewater treatment plant.

Ummel's letter cuts through all of that with a kind of judo logic: if the state is demanding Santa Barbara find land for housing, why isn't the state looking at its own land? The Showgrounds is state property, managed by a state agency — and, by Ummel's description, underutilized. Converting even a portion of it for housing would require state action, not just a city council vote. But it would also sidestep the knotty politics of privatizing a beloved city asset like Muni.

It's worth noting that the golf-course-to-housing idea has circulated in Santa Barbara before. Housing advocates with the Santa Barbara Tenants' Union have previously called for converting the Santa Barbara Golf Club on Las Positas into public housing, arguing that its location near La Cumbre Plaza and commercial corridors makes it ideal for density. Meanwhile, nearby in Goleta, plans to build 800 to 1,000 units on Glen Annie Golf Course have already moved through county rezoning processes, with Goleta recently taking steps to bring those future neighborhoods into its sphere of influence.

The regional conversation about golf courses and housing is well underway. Ummel is simply asking why — in this particular stretch of Las Positas Road — only the city-owned half of the land gets scrutinized.

What's Actually at Stake

Any serious proposal to develop Earl Warren Showgrounds for housing would face a steep climb. The facility provides one of the only large-scale, indoor public-event spaces on the South Coast, with abundant parking, easy freeway access, and a track record as an emergency staging ground that proved its worth during some of the region's worst recent disasters. Eliminating or dramatically shrinking that capacity would leave a gap no other local venue could fill.

There's also the question of how state agricultural district land can be repurposed. The Showgrounds sits within the 19th Agricultural District — a state entity with its own statutory purpose. Redirecting that land to housing would require legislative action in Sacramento, and there would be no shortage of stakeholders fighting to preserve the rodeo grounds, the fair, and the RV park.

But Ummel's provocation doesn't necessarily require full conversion to land a point. His letter is really asking a more pointed question about fairness and accountability: at a moment when state pressure on local governments to find housing land is at a historic high, should the state be exempt from scrutiny of its own holdings?

It's a question worth putting to Sacramento — and worth having loudly in Santa Barbara.

The View From Las Positas Road

Nick Welsh rode his bike down Las Positas and had a revelation about green space and housing. John Ummel read the column and had a different kind of revelation — about blind spots and whose land counts in the housing conversation.

Both men are pointing at the same corridor, a stretch of road bookended by a city golf course on one side, a state fairground on the other, and thousands of Santa Barbarans who can no longer afford to live anywhere near either. The debate Welsh sparked — and that Ummel sharpened — may not produce a plan next week, or next year. But it has done something useful: it has widened the frame. When we talk about where Santa Barbara can build housing, the answer might be: look out the window of the car you're commuting out of town in, and look harder.