SANTA BARBARA — When a local dry-cleaner and his wife finally move into their new four-story home, they'll have a convenient downtown location, a drop-dead view, and plenty of room to breathe -- as long as they don't puff out their cheeks too much.
Their entire spread will be built on a lot of 20 feet by 20 feet -- an area about the size of a deluxe room at the Four Seasons Biltmore just down the highway.
Last week, the Santa Barbara City Council unanimously approved plans for the whimsical, Spanish-style tower. Neil Ablitt, owner of the pint-sized parcel, was jubilant about the council's action, particularly because the city's Planning Commission had turned him down by a 4-3 vote in February.
"This is a work of art, an asset to the community and a legacy to our grandchildren," he said. "We don't need big houses, we don't need big yards and we don't need to tear up farmland."
Down an alley behind a pizza place, a Mexican restaurant and a metal-plating company on State Street, Ablitt's patch of downtown real estate is about one-fifteenth the size of a typical new-home lot in Santa Barbara. Fifty-seven of Ablitt's lots could fit inside the main house of Oprah Winfrey's estate in Montecito.
With no room to stretch out, Ablitt and his wife, Suzanne, opted for stretching up. Their first floor will be a one-car garage. The second floor will be a bedroom, the third a kitchen, and the fourth a living room. On their rooftop patio, they'll take in a panoramic vista of mountains and sea as they gaze down upon the family dry-cleaning store half a block away.
"My biggest concern is noise," said Ablitt, 61, whose dream tower will sit nearly cheek-to-cheek with a dance club called Velvet Jones. "But since I'm building downtown, I don't have any right to complain."
Granting the Ablitts a number of exceptions to city building guidelines, council members pointed out that the city's 47-year-old zoning code didn't anticipate sky-high land prices or a need for downtown housing. Besides, some simply liked the idea of an eccentric home on an oddball chunk of land.
"We're renowned for our Spanish-Mediterranean architecture, but when you talk to natives, that's not the thing they love about the city," said Councilman Brian Barnwell, a real estate appraiser and general contractor. "What they love is the little, quirky, down-the-alleyway, around-the-corner, who-knew-it-was-there type of thing."
Not everyone was so taken with the idea.
