Business shuffling brings new hotels, creative housing and retail into Santa Barbara’s core area

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Once known for restaurants, shopping, unique boutiques and cultural stops, the core of downtown Santa Barbara is going through a shift to meet the changing times.

Several building owners are selling and leasing with a different look on the turnover than the previous occupants. No longer is retail going to retail. Tech going to tech. Restaurant going to restaurant.

Some commercial is going to housing. Some sites are becoming hotels. Others are being clustered together and from a small series of spaces comes a larger project.

In some cases, the layout is not always known until the pieces snap together and city approvals are obtained.

Some of the recent examples include the Frontier building on the corner of Canon Perdido Street and Chapala Street. It will be come a storage business and the parking lot will be housing.

Two Sonos properties in Santa Barbara, one on Chapala Street and one in the Funk Zone on Mason Street, are now available with Sonos going out to a consolidated site in Goleta.

The vacant former Verizon store at the corner of Ortega Street and State Street, (and before that Johnny's Italian-Greek Market), empty for years, will become a Vuori performance clothing store.

Across the street Augie's of Santa Barbara has made a comeback after it closed last year. The site at 701 State Street has a reinvented Mexican flair menu and is opening on Friday, Saturday and Sunday with a happy hour on Friday and Saturday. It is closed Monday through Thursday.

The former Brat Haus restaurant on 801 State Street at De La Guerra is going to have residential condos upstairs and "business" condos downstairs, according to a report at the Radius Commercial Real Estate breakfast this week.

In a fast turnaround in the Funk Zone, the just closed Metropulos building has been sold and it is expected to remain a food establishment.