Before we even stepped onto the Sanctuary Centers construction site in downtown Santa Barbara, Barry Schoer sat me down in a small conference room in the adjacent building and queued up a video on a wide monitor.
The footage — architectural renderings enhanced by artificial intelligence — moved through bright corridors not yet finished, past gardens and sunlit rooms, up toward the fifth floor, where the view of Santa Barbara spread like a watercolor: the courthouse dome, the red-tiled roofs, the gleam of the Pacific beyond the palms.
“It’s going to look like this,” Schoer said, leaning forward with that unmistakable mix of pride and fatigue. “Pretty amazing, huh?”…