Santa Cruz Changes 88 - Replacing the not-so-old

Shown above are two views of a multi-family housing project at 314 Jessie Street, now (2024) under construction. The upper image is an architectural rendering that replaces the previous buildings with a drawing of the proposed replacements. The lower image shows the same scene before demolition of the previous buildings. The recently-completed development at 350 Ocean Street (Changes 13) is visible at far left in both images.

There has been very little undeveloped land within the Santa Cruz city limits for quite some time, so most of today's development projects share a starting condition - existing structures that have to be removed to make way for the new construction. After a new building has been in place for a few years, it's easy to forget what was on that site previously, and one reason for this blog is to include images/descriptions of the "before" conditions. In most cases, the removed buildings were not loved and are not missed. The one recent exception is the La Bahia hotel project (Changes 35 and 51), where years of public opposition failed to prevent demolition of most of the historical apartment complex.

At the other end of the spectrum are projects like the 50-unit apartment complex shown above, which replaced existing 14-unit apartment buildings structures that were less than 50 years old. This proeject demonstrates an ending condition common to most recent residential development projects - increased density.