Drive South Hope Avenue this month and you will hit orange cones before you hit an open house. A crew broke ground there in April on a 45-unit affordable housing project, a $44.8 million undertaking that is the first thing to physically move at La Cumbre Plaza in years. If you are shopping Samarkand right now, this is the construction you will actually see and hear. The bigger story, the one that explains why Samarkand homes tend to sell for less than the rest of the South Coast, is still on paper. But it is closer to breaking ground than most buyers assume.
Samarkand has always had a quieter reputation than the Riviera or Montecito, an enclave across State Street from San Roque that residents describe as walkable and under the radar. That reputation shows up in the price data too. Local market reporting through the middle of 2026 consistently places Samarkand's typical single-family sales below the South Coast's overall median. The easy explanation is that Samarkand simply lacks the ocean frontage and celebrity cachet of its pricier neighbors. The more useful explanation, the one that actually helps a buyer underwrite a purchase here in 2026, is that Samarkand's walkable identity depends on a commercial corridor that is in the middle of being rezoned, parcel by parcel, and the discount reflects that uncertainty as much as anything else.
The Corridor Doing the Pricing
The South Coast ended 2025 with a median sale price of $2,333,237 for houses and planned unit developments, according to the Santa Barbara Association of Realtors' year-end review. County recorder data reported through mid-2026 shows the city of Santa Barbara's own median settling closer to $2,110,000 for the same property types as of June 2026, down slightly from a year earlier. Samarkand's numbers run under both figures.
What sits at the edge of Samarkand isn't a view or a beach. It's upper State Street, and specifically the 31-acre La Cumbre Plaza site, which the City of Santa Barbara's planning department has named alongside downtown and parts of Milpas Street as one of the locations where the city's land use plan calls for its highest allowable residential densities. Two of the plaza's largest parcels are already deep into the entitlement process:
| Site | Project name | Proposed units | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Macy's site, 3805 State Street (8.7 acres) | The Neighborhood at State & Hope | 680 rental units | Formal application submitted June 6, 2024; environmental review underway |
| Former Sears site, 3845 State Street (9.5 acres) | La Cumbre South Homes | 443 rental units | Formal application submitted May 14, 2025 |
| South Hope Avenue | Housing Authority affordable project | 45 units | Groundbreaking April 22, 2026; 18-month build |
Two four-story buildings are planned for the former Sears parcel, one with roughly 400 units and a smaller companion structure with about 43, according to plans submitted by developer Kennedy Wilson. Around 10 percent of those units would be reserved for moderate-income households. At the Macy's site, the department store's lease runs through 2028, and the redevelopment application is written around demolishing the building once that lease expires.
None of this is secret. What tends to get missed is how much of Samarkand's walkable appeal, the coffee run, the pharmacy, the grocery trip, runs through a corridor that city planners themselves have flagged for the biggest transformation in the neighborhood's history.
The First Domino
City Councilmember Eric Friedman, whose district includes Samarkand and upper State Street, has been blunt about what this means for the plaza as a whole. Describing the shopping center's condition during a 2024 community walking tour, he told the crowd that La Cumbre Plaza "has seen better days." Discussing the Macy's redevelopment specifically, he called it the project that would set the tone for everything else on the site.
"This is the first domino in the whole redevelopment of the plaza."
That framing matters for a Samarkand buyer because it means the Macy's project isn't an isolated event. It's the template the Sears site and eventually the rest of the plaza's eight parcels are likely to follow, in scale if not in exact design.
A push to fund a single, coordinated specific plan for the whole 31-acre site did not secure the money it needed, according to reporting in Noozhawk. That means the Macy's and Sears redevelopments are proceeding as separate applications rather than one master-planned project, each with its own environmental review, its own hearing schedule, and its own construction timeline once approved.
Why the Old Assumption No Longer Holds
Buyers who have watched California infill projects crawl through entitlement for a decade have good reason to assume La Cumbre Plaza is a someday problem, not a this-decade problem. That assumption is getting harder to defend. Assembly Bill 130, signed by Governor Newsom in the summer of 2025, created a statutory exemption from full California Environmental Quality Act review for qualifying infill housing built on land that has already been developed. City staff are currently evaluating whether the La Cumbre Plaza applications meet that bar. If they do, a review process that has historically added years to projects of this size gets pulled out of the critical path entirely.
Combine that with the State Density Bonus Law, which the Sears site application already leans on to justify its unit count and building height, and the practical effect is a shorter runway between formal application and actual construction than the plaza's last thirty years of retail stagnation would suggest.
What to Actually Check Before Writing an Offer
The standard disclosure package on a Samarkand listing will not mention any of this. Here is what a buyer or their agent should be looking at directly:
- Which streets carry construction traffic. La Cumbre Road and Hope Avenue are the most likely haul routes for both the Sears and Macy's sites once either breaks ground. A home on or near either street will feel that traffic years before a home a few blocks over does.
- Orientation of the home relative to State Street. North-facing rooms closest to the commercial corridor are the ones where window and wall assemblies become a genuine inspection consideration once construction noise becomes a daily reality rather than a hypothetical.
- Current phase of each project, not just its existence. The Section 8 project on South Hope Avenue is already under construction. The Sears site is in environmental review. The Macy's site cannot legally break ground before the store's 2028 lease expiration. These are three very different timelines bundled into one narrative about "the mall redeveloping," and treating them as identical leads to bad assumptions about when the noise actually starts.
- How the comp set is weighted. A recent sale two blocks from La Cumbre Road may be pricing in construction risk that a sale on the opposite side of Samarkand is not. Pulling comps without accounting for proximity to the corridor can distort a pricing conversation in either direction.
The Trade a Samarkand Buyer Is Actually Making
None of this means Samarkand is a risk to avoid. It means the below-median price is not free money. A 2026 purchase here is, in effect, a bet on what upper State Street looks like once these projects deliver, whether that is a genuinely more walkable corridor with new residents supporting local retail, or a longer stretch of construction disruption than the applications currently suggest. Kaduko Kerby, a longtime resident quoted by KSBY after the Sears site plans were announced, put the sentiment plainly when she said the empty buildings had sat there long enough that she was simply glad to see the space used at all. That is the mood most Samarkand neighbors seem to share: not opposition, but a wait to see how it actually unfolds.
For a buyer weighing Samarkand against the Riviera or Mesa on price alone, the honest comparison isn't just square footage or lot size. It's whether you are comfortable owning through a construction cycle in exchange for a purchase price that reflects that discomfort today.
A Few Direct Questions
Will Macy's actually close? The store's lease at 3805 State Street runs through 2028, and the property owner's redevelopment application is built around demolishing the building once that lease ends. The closure date is tied to the lease, not to a construction schedule that has yet to be finalized.
Does the city still have design control once state density bonus law applies? The Architectural Board of Review retains authority over articulation, materials, and public access features, the kind of review that shaped the pedestrian paseo requested for the Sears site. It does not have authority to reduce unit count or the base height and density permitted once affordable units qualify a project for state bonuses.
Where can I track these projects myself before making an offer? The city posts application status, hearing dates, and staff reports directly on its La Cumbre Plaza redevelopment page. That is the primary record, and it updates faster than most secondhand summaries.
If you are comparing Samarkand to other South Coast neighborhoods and want a clear read on how a specific block sits relative to these projects, Hall Team can walk through the comps, the construction timelines, and what they mean for your particular offer. Contact us for a local market consultation.
