Santa Cruz Changes: 36 - Not quite beachfront

More big changes have happened and are happening a couple of blocks away from Beach Street. At the corner where Riverside Drive, 2nd Street, and Liebrandt Street all meet, a very large new hotel is nearing completion after many years of a big empty lot, followed by four-plus years (and counting) of construction. The photo above-right shows the excavation that began in 2017. 

This site used to be multiple small lots, each with its small building. Now the lots have all been combined to make room for what will probably be the largest hotel site in the Beach Hill area - rivalled perhaps by the La Bahia. In autumn of 2021, exterior construction is nearing completion, as shown at left. For reference, the same turquoise-painted wall-end seen in the 2017 photo is visible at far right. I have no idea what architectural style those red domes are meant to invoke - Moorish maybe? 

Or could it be that several of the MAH red balls rained down from above, embedding themselves in the roofs? We may never know. 

At the other end of this block, the far end of the new hotel sits across 2nd Street from a still-fairly-new condominium complex. Its Spanish Colonial revival narrow-end façade can be seen at left in this view from Riverside looking toward Liebrandt.

Moving now all the way to the other (west) end of 2nd Street, another big hotel is also nearing completion. Its scale seems modest only in comparison to the Riverside Avenue. This large hotel replaces another slightly-less large hotel called the Lanai Lodge - shown at left-above. Its loss will cause no sorrow in the architectural world, and I hope they don't keep that name.

The design of the new hotel (shown at right) again seems vaguely Moorish - a style which seems to be having a moment in coastal California. Even in Santa Barbara, almost one hundred years of strict design-review adherence to the Mission/Spanish style has now admitted Moorish as an acceptable alternative.

Santa Cruz Changes locations can be found on this Google Map.

Santa Cruz Changes: 35 - Beach Street

 

The Santa Cruz beachfront area is rapidly changing, also. Best known of the recent changes - one that is still underway -  is the absorption of the courtyard-style La Bahia apartments into a huge hotel that will fill the entire block. At right is an early postcard view, when La Bahia was known as Casa del Rey Apartments, built by the Seaside Company in 1926.

Only part of the front building and its tower will be preserved and integrated into the new hotel. None of the new construction has yet begun, although demolition of most of the old buildings was completed in 2019. 

Since then, the entire block has remained fenced off, and pedestrians see the view at left from the Beach Street sidewalk.

There are other changes to either side of the La Bahia block - one not so recent, and one still under construction. To the left, across Main Street, the Casablanca Inn added a new wing of rooms climbing the hill about six years ago. 

The view at right looks up Main Street, where the newer building can be seen to the right of the original 1916 residence built after a spectacular fire destroyed the Sea Beach Hotel in 1912. Some of the stone retaining walls may be remnants of the extensive terraced gardens that adjoined the hotel.

On the other side of La Bahia, across Westbrook Street, the non-descript Coastview Inn (left) was torn down and is being replaced by a larger version of itself (right, below). Still under construction, it's too early to know what the new hotel will look like, except that it will increase from two stories to three. 

Part of the new Coastview Inn construction can be seen in the left-background of the La Bahia photo above.

The increasingly-common trend among hotel and multi-family developments is to replace buildings and their adjacent open parking lots with lot-filling larger buildings and underground parking. The very first Santa Cruz Change noted in this blog, at 555 Pacific Avenue, is an exemplar of the changing development thinking. 

It's hard to feel bad about the loss of acres of open asphalt and/or littered vacant lots, but the new sky-blocking buildings are perhaps a Faustian sort of "improvement". In a more perfect world...

Santa Cruz Changes locations can be found on this Google Map.

Santa Cruz Changes: 34 - Cedar Street

After a week off, a look at the northern end of Cedar Street. Some of the changes there are older than others, but the general trend seems to be toward extending the Pacific Avenue food/drink/shop zone to include the parallel street a block to the west. 

In the past two years or so, we've lost a bookstore in this area, and gained another. Longtime bookseller The Literary Guillotine closed its doors on Locust Street. Just around the corner on Cedar is the new bookshop/cafe BAD ANIMAL, where the sandwich sign out front says "stop by, have a drink, eat some food, build your library".

If not eating/drinking while book shopping, there's eating/drinking while flower shopping. A block to the south and across Cedar from BAD ANIMAL, next door to  Gabriella's restaurant, flower bar will serve you rosé with your roses.

Across from flower bar, the Penny Ice Creamery is still creating those amazing flavors by hand, in small batches.

Jumping several blocks to the south, one more Cedar Street loss should be noted. Longtime Irish pub and open-mic venue The Poet and the Patriot closed its doors this year after decades next to the even-more-legendary Kuumbwa Jazz Center.

Santa Cruz Changes locations can be found on this Google Map.

Santa Cruz Changes: 33 - Riverwalk

 

One of my favorite places in Santa Cruz is Riverwalk Park. The levee-top walkways are elevated enough to give expansive views, both of the San Lorenzo River that flows toward Monterey Bay between the parallel levees, and of neighborhoods bordering the river. Toward the river there's great bird-watching. The San Lorenzo host is to many local species.

The last link in a continuous Riverwalk loop was the 2019 replacement of the narrow wood-plank footbridge built alongside the old iron railroad trestle that spans the river near its mouth. The 10' width of the new walkway (see at right) means that pedestrians/bicyclists going opposite directions can pass each other without one turning sideways.

The final obstacle to completing a continuous Riverwalk loop was removed in 2017, when an iron pedestrian bridge was installed over Branciforte Creek at the south end of San Lorenzo Park, along with a new trail section that drops under the Soquel Avenue vehicle bridge. Riverwalk-ers no longer have to detour out to Dakota/Riverside Street to cross the creek and street. 

Before the Branciforte Creek foot bridge, an even bigger obstacle to a Riverwalk loop was removed when a similar but longer iron footbridge (made by the same company, see at left) was installed in 2010, crossing the San Lorenzo just downstream from the Highway 1 bridge. At the same time a new walkway segment was completed,  passing under Highway 1 to connect the west-bank Riverwalk to the Tannery Arts Center.  

City of Santa Cruz planning  for the Riverwalk began way back in 1987. It took a long time, as public projects tend to do, but now it's complete.

Santa Cruz Changes locations can be found on this Google Map.