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‘A new vision for Santa Barbara’
NEWS-PRESS FILE PHOTO
The Federal Correctional Complex in Lompoc was hit particularly hard with an outbreak of COVID-19, which the prison found difficult to manage due to staffing shortages and a myriad of other reasons, according to an Office of the Inspector General report.
Inside Lompoc prison outbreak Staff shortages, screening flaws among issues that led to massive COVID outbreak By JOSH GREGA NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
RAFAEL MALDONADO / NEWS-PRESS FILE PHOTO
The vacant space once occupied by Macy’s is one of the empty storefronts AIA architects and planners are currently brainstorming uses for. There is not yet any concrete plan for how exactly this space will be utilized.
Architects seeking public input for downtown ravamp
Alco Harvesting continues fight versus coronavirus
By JOSH GREGA NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
A team of local architects from the Santa Barbara chapter of the American Institute of Architects is getting to work on conceptual sketches for what a revamped Downtown Santa Barbara could look like in the not too distant future. To envision these concepts the architects, landscape architects, planners, and engineers involved in the project are seeking the input of Santa Barbara residents with a survey for AIA’s 2020 Design Charette. The survey can be conducted online at aiasb.com. Those who wish to have their answers counted should fill out the survey by Aug. 2. According to a press release, the architects and planners will divide into teams each focused on different aspects of the downtown area. These include how to create new housing by reusing existing vacant buildings, building new structures on “opportunity sites,” and developing public open spaces. In an interview with the NewsPress, Dennis Thompson of Thompson Naylor Architects said that this year’s charette is
By GRAYCE MCCORMICK NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
KENNETH SONG / NEWS-PRESS FILE PHOTO
Most respondents to AIA’s survey have voiced support for keeping State Street’s current promenade setup. AIA renderings from the charrette will depict a potential future version of State Street according to public opinion.
something of a “Charette 2.0.” A charette AIA conducted in 2017 produced renderings submitted to the Santa Barbara City Council that were ultimately “buried” when the city had to address new priorities in the wake of the Thomas Fire and subsequent debris flow. Mr. Thompson remarked
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An already short amount of staff was one of the biggest challenges the federal prison in Lompoc faced in the face of COVID-19 and one of the chief reasons the facility was hit hard by an outbreak, according to a report the Office of the Inspector General published on Thursday. The report is one of two the OIG released examining whether federal prisons complied with Department of Justice policies and Bureau of Prisons directives to prevent and manage the spread of COVID-19 through their facilities. The other report details the response of the Federal Correctional Complex in Tucson, Arizona, which Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz described as a “very different” situation compared to the Lompoc prison in a video the OIG posted to Twitter. “At FCC Tucson, no inmates and one staff member tested positive for COVID-19 during the period of our inspection in early June.
By mid July, 11 staff members had tested positive,” Mr. Horowitz said. By contrast, the inspector general said 32 staff members of the Lompoc prison tested positive for COVID-19 as of early May and that by mid-July, 1,000 inmates had tested positive and four had died from the virus. While the Tucson prison took early precautionary measures such as limiting staff movement and implementing a 14-day quarantine for incoming inmates before the BOP made it a requirement, FCC Lompoc delayed implementing restrictions on staff movement for 15 days due to staff shortages, Mr. Horowitz said. According to the report on the Lompoc prison, the BOP directed prison wardens “‘to immediately implement modified operations to maximize social distancing in [BOP] facilities’ to the extent practicable” on March 13 and supplemented this on March 31 with instructions to limit staff movement to assigned department Please see prison on A7
that the renderings produced from this charette will depict “a new vision for Santa Barbara that addresses the shortage of housing and the death of retail.” To address the former, the AIA will create concept drawings for apartments to be built on underutilized parking lots throughout the downtown
corridor. Though State Street was excluded from the city’s average unit density program that allows for higher density dwellings with less required parking, Mr. Thompson said apartment complex renderings produced from the charette will be drawn as if AUD applies because the Please see DOWNTOWN on A8
Alco Harvesting, a full service harvest management company in Santa Maria, employs around 1,000 local and H2A employees. Fifty of them have tested positive for COVID-19, and one employee lost his life to the virus. Leodegario Chavez, 51, lived in congregate H2A housing, and died on July 7. Santa Maria still surpasses every city in Santa Barbara County, with 77 new cases as of Friday, bringing the total number to 2,496. There are 183 active cases in the city, and 2,296 individuals have recovered. The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department reported 133 new positive cases in the county on Friday, bringing the total to 5,576 where 5,175 have recovered and 369 are still active. Amid this outbreak in the hotspot of the county, Alco Harvesting has dramatically ramped up its spread-prevention tactics. According to Jeremy MacKenzie, the general manager, the company and county public health officers have developed
an “aggressive serial testing and retesting program” for all employees residing in corporate housing. “To date, all workers in guest housing have been tested at least twice,” Mr. MacKenzie said. “Retesting will continue into the foreseeable future until the doctor recommends otherwise.” Once test results are received, healthcare officials talk with the employees to determine if they must quarantine, a decision the general manager says Alco Harvesting is not involved in. Privacy laws protect the discussions between employees and doctors. If an employee tests positive, they gather their belongings and gets transported in a dedicated company vehicle that is cleaned and sanitized daily, according to Mr. MacKenzie. The vehicle has a plastic partition between the driver and the passenger. “At the quarantine location, employees must still wear company-provided masks and gloves when they are not in their rooms, for example, in common Please see alco on A8
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