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Activists protest San Marcos Preserve development
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Developer seeks to continue luxury neighborhood
RAFAEL MALDONADO/NEWS-PRESS PHOTOS
At left, protesters gathered at the San Marcos Foothill Preserve Thursday, a portion of which will become the site of multi-million-dollar homes. At right, a sign with “Save San Marcos” sits on the ground while approximately 100 protesters chant Thursday afternoon.
to Raquel Zick, sheriff’s spokeswoman. A group known as Save San Marcos Foothills, which is raising money to purchase the affected land, would like to pause construction in time for it to buy the land. When the landowner’s development plan was approved in 2005, the owner donated 200 acres to the Trust for Public Land (who, in turn, donated the land to Santa Barbara County). The owner also set 16 acres aside for a county park. The Chadmar Group, developer
By ANNELISE HANSHAW NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
Protesters arrived at the San Marcos Foothill Preserve just before 5 a.m. Thursday as bulldozers approached to begin carving a road for a development called The Terrace at San Marcos Preserve. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office had been monitoring the development site since 9 p.m. Wednesday and arrested eight protestors and issued one citation, according
Breaking ground at The Granada
of The Terrace, plans to build eight victory,” John Davies, homes on 25 acres. spokesperson for the It has already To see streaming video Chadmar Group, told established The the News-Press. “89% GO TO Meadow at San the land is donated.” newspress.com of Argued Marcos Preserve, Dani Lynch, which encompasses a Save San Marcos 11 acres. Foothills board member, “Even The Meadow has seven multithough it’s eight homes that contain million-dollar homes and five 27 acres, it has a much larger condos meant for low-income footprint.” residents. She predicted many animals will The Chadmar Group owns an move out of the preserve as a result additional 98 acres of open space of the construction. surrounding the two developments. Save San Marcos Foothills has “Part of this is an environmental raised $1,062,523 and an additional
newspress.com
By GRAYCE MCCORMICK NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
Please see granada on A5
RAFAEL MALDONADO/NEWS-PRESS
Leading architects and Santa Barbara officials broke ground on the Plaza Granada project Thursday morning. From left are Jason Harris, the city’s economic development director; Paul Casey, the city administrator; Palmer Jackson Jr., The Granada’s executive chairman; Caren Rager, president and Chrisham executive director of The Granada; Santa Barbara Mayor Cathy Murillo; Brian Cearnal, Cearnal Collective founder; and Rogelio Solis, Cearnal Collective architect.
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By GRAYCE MCCORMICK NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
In a virtual panel and Q&A session, five UCSB professors tried to tackle some of the most frequently asked questions regarding the COVID-19 vaccines, explaining the efficacy, timelines and overall safety of the Pfizer, Moderna and soon-to-come Johnson & Johnson vaccines. The bottom line the panel reached was that the general public should trust the vaccine, and get whichever one is first available to them immediately when they become eligible. Dr. Scott Grafton, UCSB’s COVID-19 coordinator and professor of psychological and brain sciences, brought his medical expertise to the discussion. “We’re all trying to keep abreast of how good these vaccines really are,” he said. “The news, overall, is very, very good.” Dr. Grafton pointed out that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sets a “pretty low bar” for vaccines’ efficacy at 50%,
and all three vaccines exceed that low bar, Pfizer and Moderna exceeding it with flying colors. “To have a vaccine be 90% effective or better is absolutely phenomenal,” he said. He also pointed out another portion of Israel’s Pfizer study that he thinks is crucial, saying, “If you look at people who got the vaccine and you measure whether or not they’re carrying the virus a week after their second dose versus people who didn’t get the vaccine, there’s about a 90% reduction in them being infected and that includes asymptomatic infections. “That’s always been a big worry, right? This is a virus that transmits in a lot of people asymptomatically, but if you can show 90% protection even in asymptomatic cases, that’s a huge win for all of us.” The professor said that there’s also been a recent “precipitous” decline in the number of COVID19 cases in nursing homes, which indicates that things are starting to kick in with the vaccines in the human population. Carolina Arias, an assistant
professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at UCSB, spoke to the safety of the vaccines. “One thing I can tell you is that the safety of these vaccines is under tight scrutiny by different entities,” she said. “So far, it is pretty encouraging that we are not seeing any of these delayed adverse effects when the first dose of these vaccines were used in clinical trials. It’s not that we have just a couple of weeks or months to evaluate these adverse effects — we have several months so we can follow them.” Participants of each vaccine’s clinical trials also represented different races and ethnicities, she said, including 10% to 17% black representation, 20% to 45% Latino representation and 3.5% to 4.7% Asian representation. However, she said information about efficacy and safety among children under the age of 18 is still missing, but will likely come around the summertime. The assistant professor also spoke to COVID-19 variants. “These vaccines are going Please see vaccines on A3
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“(The protest) is not something we wanted to do. We’ve been trying to negotiate peacefully for a while,” she said. “We’re willing to do what we can to purchase the land.” The land holds sentiment to descendants of the Chumash tribe who once resided in the area. “It means a lot, and I know it’s hard for people to understand. But that’s exactly what this land is: It’s history. It’s ancient history,” said Marianne Parra, a Chumash descendant who protested
UCSB professors discuss COVID-19 vaccines
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City leaders and architects officially begin Plaza Granada project Santa Barbara’s mayor, leading city officials, Granada administrators and architects from Cearnal Collective gathered behind The Granada Thursday morning and officially broke ground on construction of Plaza Granada — a new pathway from the Granada garage to State Street. Plaza Granada will feature a new performing arts-themed mural, safer pedestrian walkways, better parking, improved lighting, trash facilities, parking and better water drainage. The $2 million project should begin in the next few weeks and be completed by June. “Say people are running to get their early morning McDonald’s. They’ll park here and just run through this paseo,” Mayor Cathy Murillo told the NewsPress Thursday. “There’s a lot of business through here …
$321,580 pledged in an effort to purchase the property. “Many of those are microdonations just showing the amount of community support we have,” Ms. Lynch told the News-Press. Mr. Davies said the developer once put a price tag of $10 million on the land, market value at the time, but it is worth more now. Ms. Lynch wasn’t aware of the previous price. (The original group fighting the project 15 years ago has split into other advocacy projects.) She would like an offer today to guide fundraising efforts.
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