While we're on Ocean Street and talking about coffee house closures, might as well mention the one Ocean Street survivor. With the closure of Fins and Coffeeville, the last coffee place on Ocean Street is Starbucks, which just opened in 2018. While not a landmark building, it's not ugly, and is certainly an improvement over the empty fenced-in lot that had been there for many years.
Before Starbucks, the prominent corner was home to a Shell gas station from 1960, one of the first projects completed in the San Lorenzo Park Project redevelopment that commenced after the big December 1955 flood. More about that HERE.
The old Shell station was demolished in the early 2000s, and the Chipotle's restaurant chain eyed the site in 2008, but backed out when it was discovered that the gasoline storage tanks had been leaking, requiring more soil removal than expected before new construction could begin. Meanwhile, Shell found a new site right across Water Street, and built a new station on that corner.
Locations in the Santa Cruz Changes blog can be found on this Google Map.
