Previous posts have called attention to a number of individual development projects now taking shape in downtown Santa Cruz. Several of them include one of my favorite wish-list features: wide pedestrian-only walkways between streets, and/or between Front Street and the Riverwalk. These "paseos" will make downtown much more pedestrian friendly and connected. Santa Barbara has a number of paseos providing pedestrian access from its main commercial street (State) to parallel streets. Carmel also has paseos.
A recent article by Lili Belli in Lookout Santa Cruz, titled "Paseos to the future?", describes how three Riverwalk-adjacent projects along Front Street will create up to ten new restaurant spaces facing the river, connected to Front Street via steps on three wide new paseos. Excerpted above from that article is an artist's rendering of the paseo that will align with the end of Cathcart Street.
None of those projects have yet broken ground, however, so the first paseo we'll see - maybe before the end of 2023 - will be the one connecting Center and Cedar Streets along the south side of the 530 Center Street project that is now under construction. That paseo will connect the other end of Cathcart Street to Center Street. The rendering below, included in post 50, looks at the project from Cathcart, across Cedar Street. The paseo can be seen to the left of the building with the "Retail" signage. Previously, that walk was possible - through a parking lot.
