Ryan Fish/KEYT
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - The State Street promenade opened on the Friday before Memorial Day last year as a way to reinvigorate the downtown corridor during the pandemic's economic crisis.
Now a year later, discussions are about to ramp up regarding its future. The promenade's current layout is officially set to remain in place until at least March 2022.
Local leaders are forming a 15-person committee--along with two "alternates"--to hear public input, discuss what changes need to be made before hiring a master planner to prepare the promenade for a post-pandemic world.
"Now we need to start planning for the future," city council member Kristen Sneddon said Friday. "We need to have a long-range view of not just in catastrophe how do we manage, but how do we envision it for the really long-term. And we want it to be successful and be a place that locals come, and a place that people from out of town want to come, and it's exciting, but it also has to work for the long-term for all of us who live here."