I think it was Mao Zedong who never said, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking toes.” If so, prepare for some serious crunching.
I say this in light of the born-again fervor to save State Street from itself that’s now seized City Hall. It was wall-to-wall sardines at last week’s City Council meeting that turned out to be a genuinely constructive vent fest, punctuated, I must say, by some singularly odd and wonderful moments. There’s been considerable after-the-fact eyeball rolling that the council’s immediate reaction was to pass a resolution to hire a consultant. That the council also voted to create a special ad hoc subcommittee task force has induced even more. To be fair, this is what city councils do. To be fairer still, the proposal to hire a consultant was on the top of just about every list of nonnegotiable demands submitted.
For starters, there was Dick Berti’s Oscar-worthy soliloquy comparing downtown Santa Barbara to a beautiful woman who can’t get any dates because she’s too high-maintenance and costs too much. When that got laughs, Berti took it up a notch, comparing Santa Barbara to the psychotic, rabbit-killing, adultery-inducing femme fatale played by Glenn Close in the movie Fatal Attraction. Berti — known affectionately by friends as “The Bird” — has been syndicating downtown commercial real estate partnerships since before Methuselah and probably owns, manages, or controls in some fashion 59.62 percent of all leasable square footage. By any measure, he’s been screamingly successful. But among friends and investors, tenants and critics, Berti is famous for a gloomy, glowering pessimism that in even limited exposures can require quarantine. To see him go comedic was a revelation and refreshing. Sadly, it didn’t last. “I don’t want to live here anymore,” Berti then lamented. “If I could, I’d move,” adding, “I’m just going to die. It’s too hard.” I was confused. I didn’t know whether to give Berti a hug or clap. So I clapped. So too did everyone else. This response, I think, encouraged Dick to go back for an encore, this time accompanied by his buddy Jim Knell of SIMA Corporation, who probably owns, manages or otherwise controls the other 40.38 percent of all leasable space. When Knell smiles, his tenants reflexively call their lawyers. Knell was smiling as he told the council that City Hall needs to make downtown look nice and feel safe, but otherwise they should get the hell out of his way.