That sign was a siren call for up-and-coming young architect Andy Neumann. In 1977, he formed a partnership with two others, Harwood (Bendy) White and Rosabel Cooper, to buy the neglected acreage. “It really was the wrong side of the tracks then,” Neumann says, “because when we purchased it, it was basically an oil junkyard.” The “junkyard” backed up
to a vista of sandy beach and sparkling blue water—attributes that won over Bendy White, now a Santa Barbara city planning commissioner. “I always wanted to live on the beach,” he says, recalling childhood days spent at Sandyland and his uncle Stewart Edward White’s beach shack. A moratorium on new water meters delayed the partners’ plans to develop the land, and Neumann’s fledgling business, Seaside Union Architects, set up shop
in the drafty warehouse, which was heated only by a wood-burning stove. Once lightning struck a nearby transformer, and the small architectural staff evacuated to the Nugget. When they returned, the phone was out, its cord singed and black. “We had fun there,” Neu- mann recalls today. The trio’s development plans
hit another rocky road when the California Division of Oil and Gas produced a 1901 map showing 29 oil wells on the property. A surveyor located the wells, and, according to Bendy White, “it was a gridlock of equipment for a month,” as construction vehicles and concrete trucks swarmed the area in a “drill, blow and fill”
operation. With the wells capped and the water moratorium finally lifted, Neumann designed the six homes that now line East Finney. He worked
not So lonG AGo thiS lAnD With the priceleSS VieWS of SeA AnD iSlAnDS WAS A WeeDy trAct occupieD by A couple of tin WArehouSeS.
springSUMMER2009 21
NEUMANN
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