Santa Cruz Changes - 15: Coffee to Cannabis

 

2020 was the year of COVID virus changes everywhere, but 2019 was the year of legal cannabis changes in California. On Ocean Street, two retail spaces switched from coffee to cannabis.

Near the north end, Fins Coffee became Reefside.

Farther south, Mei Garden Chinese Restaurant and Coffeeville became KindPeoples. 

In 2020, both businesses added delivery service in response to COVID precautions. In 2021, both dispensaries seem to be doing good business, and still delivering.

Locations in the Santa Cruz Changes blog can be found on this Google Map.

Santa Cruz Changes - 14: 1300-1400 Ocean Street

 

The block of Ocean Street north of Glenwood Ave. has undergone a long, slow evolution to its current incarnation as home to Habit Burger and T-Mobile. I knew it best as home to The Starving Musician, a decent place to buy new and used musical instruments and gear.

To the right of TSM, on the corner of Glenwood, someone in the 1980s had the strange impulse to build a very nice single-family residence. After a few years, the house was sold and became a very nice restaurant. Another odd choice for Ocean Street, a block from McDonald's and Denny's. The restaurant lasted maybe ten years, then sat empty for at least ten more years, until a developer bought both it and the music store lot, combining them in 2016 for a new retail development. 

First tenants in 2017 were Habit Burger and Dunkin' Donuts, with Habit occupying the former music store lot. Then came 2020 and the pandemic restaurant closures. Habit has toughed it out so far, but Dunkin' closed for good. 

COVID also closed The Starving Musician, which had moved to the Union Grove Music shop on Pacific Ave. Still closed in May, 2021, it remains to be seen whether it will reopen. Stay tuned for news... 

Dunkin' Donuts may be gone, but longtime local donut shop Ferrell's remains across the street. Another victory for the locals over a big chain. Dunkin' never learned how to make apple fritters as good as the ones at Ferrell's.

Locations in the Santa Cruz Changes blog can be found on this Google Map.

Santa Cruz Changes - 13: 350 Ocean Street

Lower Ocean Street has several 1950s-style "motor court" apartment developments, an auto-centric update to the bungalow court of the 1920s that replaced the latter's landscaped central lawn area with a paved parking lot. The 2017 photo above shows several of those long one-story buildings, extending back from the street at 344-356 Ocean Street. Already empty and boarded up, they awaited the wrecking ball while street work progressed in front.

Land in Santa Cruz is too valuable now to have so few residential units on it, so those motor courts have been replaced with a huge single apartment building, expected to open later this year (2021). All of the new apartments are "affordable", with max. income limits. The photo below shows progress as of mid-May.

Locations in the Santa Cruz Changes blog can be found on this Google Map.

Santa Cruz Changes - 12: Capitola Library

A new branch public library will be ready to open its doors this year on Wharf Road in Capitola. The image at right is the designer's rendering of the front entrance.

For Capitola library users, it's been a long time coming - the "temporary" library building at the site had been in use for twenty years.

The new library was scheduled to open in 2020, but a costly design error caused an eight-month delay in the project.

Locations in the Santa Cruz Changes blog can be found on this Google Map.

Santa Cruz Changes - 11: Aldo's restaurant

Another Santa Cruz dining institution has been going through some changes for several years, and Aldo's has finally given up on returning to its old location on the Santa Cruz Harbor sea wall, next to the channel. 

The photo above is from 2014 when, as usual, all the tables were full and more customers waited in line. Aldo's caught the attention of Guy Fieri, who visited and reviewed the local favorite for his show: Guy Fieri's "Diners Drive-Ins and Dives".

The restaurant had to close in 2016 because the seawall it was sitting on was nearing collapse. The building was demolished and the seawall repaired, but the restaurant building has not yet been replaced. Then came 2020 and COVID-19, heaping more hardship on the restaurant business.

When the restaurant closed, the harbor found a space on the lawn not far away, where Aldo's was able to relocate to what was supposed to be a temporary location. 

It's still there, and is likely to remain for quite a while, as the owners have found that they can't afford to rebuild in the old spot. 

We'll miss slurping cioppino while sitting right on the main harbor channel, but Aldo's in a different spot is much better than no Aldo's at all. As changes go, this one's not so bad.

Locations in the Santa Cruz Changes blog can be found on this Google Map.

Santa Cruz Changes - 10: Saturn Cafe won't reopen

 

2020-21 has been a rough time for restaurants, and a downtown Santa Cruz institution has decided not to reopen - Saturn Cafe. The owners say they are looking to reopen in another location, so we'll watch for that. Here's the Good Times story:

Santa Cruz Changes - 9: 418-508 Front Street

Above: developer's rendering of the pedestrian plaza that will run through from Front Street to the levee.

This is the most-recently-approved major mixed-use development in downtown Santa Cruz. As of April, 2021, construction has not begun. Stretching along the river (east) side of Front Street opposite the end of Cathcart Street and the Metro Center, it will replace three older commercial buildings and three parking lots. Below is a 2017 view of the plaza area from Cathcart Street:

Below is the developer's plan view on the plaza level (shown w 4 parallel blue/magenta dotted lines). Above that level, the structure splits into 3 towers.

 

Santa Cruz Changes - 8: Seabreeze Tavern

The west end of the Rio del Mar Esplanade is about to change, as the old Sea Breeze Tavern building seems destined for demolition:

"The County Historic Resources Commission will meet Monday, April 5 at 9:30 am by remote teleconference. Click HERE for the agenda and instructions for public participation. Agenda items include:

• Status update on the Seabreeze Tavern, a designated historic resource located at 101 Esplanade in Aptos, including County determination that the building poses an immediate threat to public health and safety, and County action approving the demolition of the structure in order to protect the public from danger."

The building's fate was sealed when a fire gutted the upstairs apartment in 2020. While never contributing much to the street's appeal, the Sea Breeze is the only building on the Esplanade old enough to be historical.  See some history below, as collected by Bratton Online.

Locations in the Santa Cruz Changes blog can be found on this Google Map.

Santa Cruz Changes - 7: Delaware Addition

This is a multi-phase commercial-residential development on the far Westside, built on empty land between Delaware Avenue and the rail trail. It includes two new cross-connected dead-end streets, High Road and Panetta Lane. The first two commercial buildings opened in 2016. At right is 100 Panetta Lane.

The residential part of the development began construction in 2018. Devcon Construction is the general contractor.

August, 2024 update: What in 2021 looked like the beginning of construction on a larger residential development proposed for the west side of Panetta Lane was apparently just a staging area for the other buildings. That large, still-fenced lot now shows no activity, and city records show no active permit application.

Santa Cruz Changes - 6: 1547 Pacific Ave.

For almost thirty years after the 1989 earthquake, there was a giant hole in the ground near the north end of Pacific Avenue - the longest such emptiness ever. For those who were around before the earthquake, the diverse collection of buildings and open space occupying the site was a popular destination: home to Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Coffee Roasters, and the quirky United Cigar store - all facing Pacific, with a walkway to the open dining deck behind, and the original Kelly's French Bakery in one of two newer one-story octagon-shaped buildings behind that, flanking the rear entrance walkway from the Cedar Street parking lot. 

But downtown development doesn't work that way anymore. A five-story-above-parking mixed-use block now fills every square inch of the site. It's not offensive, but neither does it offer any reason for Pacific Avenue strollers to stop. The center of downtown social life has mostly moved south, except for the war vets' weekend sing-alongs across Pacific at the War Memorial plaza.

The one neighboring survivor from pre-earthquake days is Lulu Carpenter's coffee cafe, now the oldest building on Pacific Avenue. The view at right is from 2017 (sidewalk tables close together and no masks!), when construction next door was just getting started.

At left is a similar view in March 2021. The new apartment building is called Nanda on Pacific. No commercial tenants yet. For better or worse, the hole is gone - completely!

Locations in the Santa Cruz Changes blog can be found on this Google Map.