Permits Needed

Thursday, March 27, 1998
On a windswept incline high above Santa Barbara, Tom Truax and a group of volunteers have struggled to transform a littered hill into a tiny park used by paragliders, mountain bikers and sightseers looking for the ultimate sunset.

They christened the park "Rainbow Skyport" and added three benches and a picnic table. Volunteers haul out trash, and Truax mows the lawn.

People come to the Gibraltar Road spot to see the night sky, a choir has used the quiet wilderness above Rattlesnake Canyon to practice and one man proposed to his girlfriend there. Hawks and turkey vultures soar nearby and the smell of wild sage perfumes the air.

But those who labored to create the steep quarter-acre park with the panoramic views overlooked one thing - government approval. The property has been owned by the city for decades.

After a complaint from a nearby resident, the city told the volunteer caretakers last week to stop further improvements on the park and to return the site to its original condition.

At Tuesday's City Council meeting, supporters of the park used the public comment time to plead that the park be saved. The council did not comment, since the matter was not on the agenda.

"I have been to every park in the city," testified Casey Rogers, a mountain biker. "Skyport is a gem, the most beautiful park I've ever seen. Anybody who sees it is awed. Go up there and see it, feel the beauty, before you make the decision to destroy it."

David Connoly noticed the site while mountain biking, and was inspired to try paragliding by the pilots he met there.

"I was touched by the simple beauty of the place, the wonderful view." Connolly told the council. "It has been maintained by volunteers as a labor of love. It would be a shame to lose it."

Public Works Director David Johnson said on Wednesday he will delay the stop-work order, to allow the council to consider the matter. It is tentatively scheduled for the May 8 agenda.

If the construction is not approved by the city, "it'll have to be removed," Johnson explained. "The question is pretty basic. It's totally constructed without the knowledge of the city."

Because the property is outside city limits, improvements would need Santa Barbara county building permits as well. Without permits, the "underlying property owners bear liability," Johnson said.

Truax, who teaches paragliding and holds the national open distance record of 124 miles, contends the park has become a jewel for the city, and that to return it to its original condition would mean transforming a lush, green space back into a littered patch of hillside.

Not everyone feels that way, however.

Some Rainbow Skyport users - including a group of hang gliders - say Truax has gone too far. In particular, they criticize the construction of a 9-by-12 concrete storage shed Truax says will be used to hold gardening tools. The terra-cotta colored shed, located to the upper part of the property, is the largest "improvement" in the area and is partially visible from the roadside.

The hang glider pilots use a launching rock on Gibraltar Road, just above the park. They've done so for decades, and some members are nervous and disgruntled, fearing that the attention now being given by the city to the Rainbow Skyport will mean they'll be out of a launch area.

"I absolutely do not support it," said John Greynald, vice-president of the 300-member Santa Barbara Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association. "What this guy has done is create a situation that jeopardizes our ability to be here."

The issue, Greynald said, has polarized the two groups of pilots. "It's putting a wedge between us," he said. "All we wanted to do was keep it status quo."

Ken deRussy, a hang gliding instructor, says the pilots have always struggled to find legal places to fly, and take "tremendous care not to do anything inappropriate." So he's worried the park controversy will reflect poorly on the flyers, and mean they'll have one less place to fly from.

Truax said he realizes some park users don't like the storage shed, but added, "We always tried to keep it low-key and discreet," by planting trees and shrubs around it.

"I think some people are annoyed we didn't go through proper channels," said Truax, as he watched Hans Engriser take off for an afternoon flight. "It's not like we said, 'Let's go and build a park.' It evolved. We thought it would be nice to have a bench. So we got a bench. After a while, it was like, 'We've got a park now.'"