Santa Cruz Changes: 43 - 1500 Capitola Road

This site, near the 17th Avenue intersection, has not been one to catch the attention of passing drivers. The one residence was mostly hidden by trees. 

The view at right, from summer of 2017, is pleasing to the eye for all the greenery, but this sidewalk sees few of the pedestrians who would be able to appreciate it. 

Today, however, there's a busy construction site. A recent Sentinel article described what's happening:

"Dientes Community Dental Care’s new 11-chair clinic. . .at 1500 Capitola Road. The project at the site is a collaborative initiative which also includes a 20,000-square-foot, two-story Santa Cruz Community Health facility that will provide medical, behavioral health, and specialty care with a focus on pediatrics, and 57 affordable residential units by MidPen Housing."

The view at left shows the current state of affairs, from that same sidewalk. This project, and the proposed Kaiser Health project profiled in last week's Changes, show that the health care industry is experiencing a growth spurt in Santa Cruz County.

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

Santa Cruz Changes: 42 - Kaiser Medical Offices

Moving out of the City of Santa Cruz into the Live Oak area, Kaiser Permanente has applied to Santa Cruz County for permits to build a medical office building at 5940 Soquel Avenue. 

This stretch of Soquel Avenue, between 17th and 41st Avenues, is a frontage road on the south side of the Highway 1 freeway. Looking at the photo (above right) of the current uses there, it's hard to imagine a transformation to what's shown in the design rendering (below right).  

Looking at a somewhat similar existing development two parcels to the west (left) is the nearest comparable site. The Kaiser building, however, like most current development proposals, is twice as tall. 

The project is still in the planning approval process. Here's an excerpt from the planning staff description: "The proposed project would be comprised of a new four-story medical office building measuring approximately 60 feet in height to finished roof and approximately 74 feet to top of mechanical screens on the rooftop. The proposed building would provide approximately 160,000 gross square feet of medical office use for specialty outpatient services. The expected number of on-site staff, at peak, would be approximately 300 persons.

    The proposed project would also include the construction of a four-story parking garage across an internal roadway west of the proposed medical office building. It would accommodate five levels of parking, with 730 new vehicle parking spaces." 

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

Santa Cruz Changes: 41 - Calypso

Here's another big rental-housing project that's currently in the City of Santa Cruz planning pipeline, at 130 Center Street - across from the Washington Street corner of Depot Park. Odd naming aside (Calypso?), it's another Swenson project, similar (but much taller) to the Swenson rebuild of the St. George Hotel. Like the St. George, all of the apartments will be single room occupancy (SRO). Unlike the St. George, these 233 studios will come in three distinct sizes. The U-shaped building will surround a central courtyard, elevated one floor above street level. 

The elevation view above is from Center Street. The neo-Spanish styling is similar to the condos on Pacific Avenue, which can be seen in the background at right in the current view from the same direction (shown below).

The project will replace two auto-related businesses: Chris Bordner Auto Body, and the Hertz rental lot. Another business in this row, Scott's Body Shop (visible at far left above), is not included in this project, and will remain between the apartments and the Blackburn House apartments. 

2024 update: although only minor construction has begun, it appears that the Scott's Body Shop lot has been added to the project. That business is now closed. 

Santa Cruz Changes: 40 - The Cruz Hotel

Nearly the entire east (river) side of Front Street between Soquel Avenue and Laurel Street is involved in three big development proposals now under consideration by the City of Santa Cruz. 

The first (described in post #9) to receive all of the required planning approvals is in the middle of the block, opposite the Metro Center. 

Attention has now shifted to a hotel proposed for several contiguous parcels between the planned "Maple Alley" Riverwalk access and Laurel Street, across Front Street from the current construction zone of the project described in post #4. The 2017 view above-right shows the site from the Maple Alley end. The only existing building is Santa Cruz Credit Union, which reportedly has already agreed to sell to the hotel developers.

Beyond the credit union building is a city-owned parking lot, then Laurel Street. Another city-owned 100'-wide parking lot (at left in the view above) will be split evenly between the hotel and the Maple Alley extension to the levee and Riverwalk.

From approximately the same direction, the view at left is one of the renderings developers submitted to the city. The landscaped outdoor space is the hotel's half of the parking lot. The small structure shown at far left is not part of the proposal. 

The developers have submitted many more renderings, in addition to the standard plans and elevations. The plan set can be found on the city website. For more information on city actions regarding this proposal, see this page.

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

Santa Cruz Changes: 39 - More reading material

Last week's post showed some examples of the many and varied historical plaques that can be found in downtown Santa Cruz. I began to wonder where I'd find the oldest of these plaques. Arguably the oldest building is the one put up in 1866 by Alfred Baldwin. The two-story brick building, one of the few such to survive the 1989 earthquake, is now home to Lulu Carpenter's coffee cafe. The familiar blue "historic landmark" plaque, however, is definitely post-quake.

It turns out that attaching a plaque to an exterior wall is a relatively recent idea. At the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, a transition to such plaques can be seen from an older tradition - carving memorial information in a cornerstone. 

The City was not satisfied, however, with just the cornerstone. Under the Civic's entrance portico is what may be the oldest bronze historical plaque in town, giving Franklin D. Roosevelt (among others) a shoutout.

Funds for construction of the Civic Auditorium were provided by the "Federal Works Agency", part of what's usually referred to as the "WPA", the group of depression-era spending programs designed to put unemployed Americans back to work.

For more on how the Civic happened, check out Ross Gibson's Local History column that appeared in the Sentinel on Nov. 15. 

Another interesting wall plaque (shown at left) can be found over a side entrance - the official City of Santa Cruz seal in use when the building was constructed. 

Although its location high up on the wall makes it difficult to see details, the seal proudly depicts an old steam locomotive parked on a wharf, belching a column of smoke from its coal-fired boiler. To the left is a factory, also putting out a cloud of dense smoke. 

The things Santa Cruzans are proud of have changed quite a bit since 1939! 

Across Church Street, City Hall is a year or so older than the Civic, and a very simple dated cornerstone can be seen. At some more recent date, the City mounted a nice plaque just above the "1938" incised into plain gray concrete. 

Still searching for the oldest downtown historical markings, I went to another venerable brick building - the 1882 Hall of Records, usually referred to as "The Octagon". There can be found a type of memorialization even older than cornerstones. The Octagon displays its date of construction and other decoration in the triangular area (the "tympanum") enclosed by the classical pediment over the entrance (sorry about the lamp post).

Across Cooper Street, the Leonard Building applied its name and construction date to the curved walls of the corner turret.

Moving back across the street, one local group deserves a mention for contributing many, many bronze historical plaques all over the county. The "Clampers" added one in front of The Octagon in 2018 (below left) - probably as part of the Abbott Square remodel. 

Anyone curious about Santa Cruz history can learn a lot just by deferring that Pacific Cookie Company gratification long enough to stop and read the information provided on the many and varied historical markers.  

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

Santa Cruz Changes: 38 - Reading material

 

A fun way to learn about many of the changes that have happened in Santa Cruz is to stop and read the many commemorative plaques. Pacific Avenue is especially thick with them, and they come in three distinctive "flavors". One type is usually made of bronze with raised lettering and graphics, and have been placed by the city to commemorate city actions, such as the one installed on the Town Clock - shown at right. It is one of the oldest you'll find, having been installed in 1976 - just in time to celebrate the centennial of Santa Cruz cityhood.

Another plaque of this type commemorates the rebuilding of downtown Santa Cruz after the 1989 earthquake. Much of that rebuilding, unfortunately, followed the demolition of most of the buildings having historical value - the old brick structures fatally damaged by the quake. This city-installed plaque (left) can be found on a lamp post base in the little triangular plaza formed where Pacific Avenue and Front Street come together. 

A second type of plaque has been placed by developers, often when a restoration of a historical building has been attempted. For whatever reason, I've found that the historical information on this type of  plaque is less reliable. Most people have probably noticed the prominently-placed plaque at the corner of Pacific Ave. and Cooper Street, on the facade preserved from the County Bank building after the earthquake.

The plaque features a nicely-rendered image of the old bank, surrounded by angels supported on Greek columns in a style unknown to ancient Greece. Unfortunately, the building image mixes features from different iterations of the building. Still, it's an artistic attempt, and I like to stop and admire it from time to time.

The third type of plaque you'll see is the blue oval placed by the MAH Historical Landmark Committee. These include limited historical data, but the information has been thoroughly researched and verified. At left is the one on the McPherson building, at the corner of Pacific and Locust.

So, next time you're strolling downtown, take time to read a few of these informative plaques.  

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

Santa Cruz Changes: 37 - On Broadway

Our Broadway is not quite "where lights are bright", as in the old song, but it is a major four-lane thoroughfare in a city that has few of those, connecting to one of the five bridges that cross the San Lorenzo River in the City of Santa Cruz. 

Not a lot has happened on Broadway in the last couple of decades, but now there's a big new Hyatt Place hotel just west of Ocean Street. I couldn't find a photo of the church buildings that used to be on that site, but I remember attending services there in the late 1970s, so they were there for well over 40 years. As with many other sites of recent redevelopment, those structures will not be mourned as a loss of great architecture.

The nearby section of Ocean Street has also been mostly neglected for decades, apart from a couple of hotels. Back in post #13, we looked at the large new apartment complex under construction at 350 Ocean, replacing a motley collection of motor-court style apartments. Here's another 2017 photo (at left) from just before demolition.

The complex is now nearly complete, as can be seen in the recent photo on the right. The utility pole on the right, which the developers unfortunately chose to leave in place, can be used as a reference point between the 2017 and 2021 images. Also, the gray transformer box on the pole shows the large height difference between old and new. The "Moorish" trend in architecture was mentioned last week, and this building went full Moorish with its red and white striped entrance archway (cut off at left by my amateur photography).

By the way, if you're interested in the story of why Broadway stops abruptly at its eastern end, I recommend an article by Linda Wilshusen in Santa Cruz County History Journal 9. It's called "Between the Gulches: The Twin Fates of Live Oak Cityhood and the Broadway-Brommer Road". 

I'm not sad that the Broadway-Brommer hookup didn't happen, and I love that, since Arana Gulch Open Space Park was completed, I can ride my bike across the "gulch" on a nice bridge while cars have to take a long detour around (a scenic back way to get to Aldo's for lunch!) 

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

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.