BLTs, kale salad and a coffee bar were on the menu, as über-developer Rick Caruso wooed SB County's planning commissioners this week, while Film Festival impresario Roger Durling launched a bold new plan to revitalize State Street via the movies.
On this week's edition of Newsmakers TV, Josh Molina reprises his reporting on the charismatic Caruso's nosh-up effort to win approval for his controversial bid add 17,000 square of retail space for luxury goods at his Rosewood Miramar resort, over the objections of many Montecito neighbors.
Nick Welsh discusses his cover story in this week's just-out Indy about the 11th hour rescue of the Fiesta 5 theatre by Roger Durling, the genius entrepreneur who invented the modern Santa Barbara International Film Festival by sheer smarts and will, and now proposes to raise $15 million to transform the rundown movie house into a multi-screen shrine to celluloid and, along the way, transmogrify one of the more depressing blocks of State Street.
Margaux Lovely, recently-arrived and decidedly-talented general assignment reporter for the Indy, checks in to break down the latest uproar surrounding efforts to revamp and restart the oil pipeline that ruptured in the 2015 Refugio spill, as the Coastal Commission slapped the oil company which was reconstituted as Sable Offshore with a stop-work order. The first recipient of the newspaper's Mickey Flacks Fellowship for local journalism, she also goes behind the scenes about her own cover story, last week's feature on some of the folks most deeply involved in attempting to reinvent State Street, co-authored with fellow staffer Ryan P. Cruz.
And the indefatigable Callie Fausey recaps her coverage of SB Unified School District Superintendent Hilda Maldonado's big, annual "State of Our Schools" event, which included efforts to put the best face on slightly improved, but still extremely dismal, state test scores by local students, data that one school board member characterized as "squishy."
Plus: Supes struggle with SCOTUS homeless ruling, Western Burrowing Owl shocker and Margaux meets the Secret Service.
All this and more, right here, right now on Newsmakers TV.
JR
Check out our latest episode via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. The podcast is here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 8 p.m. and on weekends at 9 a.m. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.
Image: Rick Caruso (rear) walks on the beach near the Miramar in 2021 (Montecito Journal).
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