Santa Cruz Changes 82: a bridge to nowhere?

 

Those of you who travel on Highway 1 between Santa Cruz and Capitola have seen the new pedestrian bridge under construction at Chanticleer Avenue (shown above). 

The original intent seems to have been to provide a walk/bike connection between the health care hub north of the freeway (around Dominican and Sutter hospitals) and developing health care-related facilities on the south side. The bridge approach on the south side begins in front of the County Sheriff facility, which opened in 2014. 

That development was to have been led by health-care giant Kaiser Permanente, which showed plans for a large new facility on Soquel Avenue (Hwy. 1 frontage road) near the corner of Chanticleer. The County planned to chip in with pedestrian/bike safety improvements to the northern segment of Chanticleer Avenue, a chaotic stretch where there are now no sidewalks or bike lanes.

But Kaiser abruptly changed its plans in May 2023, deciding to abandon the development plan. And now it appears that the County has put northern Chanticleer Ave. improvements on indefinite hold. Without those improvements, how many people are going to be brave enough to walk/ride on the street (Google Street View below)? We'll keep an eye on this one.  

Santa Cruz Changes 81: Zoning changes things

In the news recently: state efforts to encourage (or force) more housing density in single-family neighborhoods. A big obstacle to increased density is local zoning that limits how many housing units can be built on a parcel of a given size. Asking a city/county for permission to exceed the zoned density will almost always be answered with a big NO. 

When those cities/counties themselves decide that more density is desirable for  a certain neighborhood/area, they do it in a more planned manner - by changing the zoning to a designation that allows greater density. 

A couple of recent multi-family projects on a short section of May Avenue were probably facilitated by such a zoning change - from R-1 (one unit) to R-L (multiple units). The project at 448 May (above), now completed, replaced one residence with four attached townhomes, which is about the maximum number that can be fit onto a ~5,000 sq. ft. lot like this one.

A similar project (below) nearby is now working its way through the planning process, for a double-wide lot of ~10,000 sq. ft.  The double width allows a project that basically doubles the one at 448 May. Because the two buildings share one driveway, however, there's more than twice the area available for building footprints. Also, the units are smaller than those at 448 May, giving a total unit count of 16.

Note: across May Avenue from these two small projects is the site of the largest Santa Cruz multi-family project proposal in recent memory. That 400+ unit development application is still on hold after a couple of rounds of planning review, and will be described here when its fate becomes clearer.