Santa Cruz’s Struggle From the Rubble

The downtown business district area of this friendly, funky city of 45,000 is still a disaster area nearly six months after the region was jolted by the 7.1 Bay Area earthquake.

The once-busy, tree-lined Pacific Avenue mall is a maze of chain-link fences and is gap-toothed with open, rubble-filled basements of buildings that collapsed in the quake or were demolished later as unsafe.

Gone are the dozens of distinctive, turn-of-the-century buildings that had made the mall an architectural delight, including Cooper House, a brick-encrusted, turreted Romanesque Revival excess that had been converted into a warren of eateries and boutiques.

Gone also are many of the affordable apartments, shops and offices above and behind the mall, whose residents and employees, along with students and faculty from the nearby UC campus and tourists, had lent an engaging vibrancy to the downtown.

Some of that spirit perseveres in the nearby tents and temporary structures where a few of the shops have moved, but merchants say business is bad and getting worse.

Then there are the problems of bridges to be rebuilt, and street and sewer systems and private houses to be repaired. It has been estimated by the city that the quake did $113 million damage.

The struggle of Santa Cruz to emerge from the rubble, face up to some tough planning and design issues and to map and implement a redevelopment strategy deserves review, particularly in communities that seismologists say in all probability will someday face the same problems.

If it is a struggle for Santa Cruz, a relatively cohesive city of modest size with a rare sense of place and self, and a relatively logical government structure, imagine how it would be in, say, the politically fragmented Los Angeles region, with its 100 municipalities, 200 special districts and untold special interests?

That is one of the reasons that prompted the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a nonprofit, well-meaning association of developer types from both the public and private sectors, to send a panel of volunteer experts to study Santa Cruz for a week and suggest a rebuilding strategy.

“We think that the lessons learned may benefit all communities facing rebuilding after an earthquake,” said Jim Todd of the institute’s panel on advisory service programs.

The panel was the latest in a welcomed but uncoordinated parade of planning task forces, design and preservationists teams and assorted architects and urbanologists to descend on Santa Cruz to offer advice in the wake of the earthquake.

Down but not out, the city by the sea and blessed with near-perfect weather, does have its attractions.

There also have been open workshops, engaging lectures and seemingly endless discussions in the city’s surviving surfeit of coffee shops and in two ad hoc associations, Vision Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz Tomorrow.

In addition, the city recently retained an urban design and planning consultant firm, Lyndon/Buchanan Associates of Berkeley, and has hired a new redevelopment director, Ceil Cirillo of Los Angeles.

“It has been interesting and frustrating,” commented Santa Cruz Mayor Mardi Wormhoudt. “This seemingly endless stream of outside experts, academics and consultants have had wonderful ideas, but no accountability.

“At the same time, residents here have expressed a genuine love and nostalgia for the downtown. The challenge is to translate this feeling for Santa Cruz into a rebuilt downtown that makes social and economic sense while retaining the scale and character of the old downtown.”

Pointing to three shelves in her office jammed with planning reports replete with fanciful drawings of a revitalized downtown, and river and ocean fronts, Wormhoudt declared most have never been, nor ever will be, implemented.

“Planning doesn’t make projects,” she said.

Other residents voiced the same frustration. “It is time for some action,” said attorney Lisa Wochos, sitting in the makeshift patio of a bevy of temporarily relocated food stands. Other problems also were raised.

Less apparent than the devastation downtown, but made all the more acute because of it, is the need for affordable housing for seniors, students and those in the services and trades.

Then there is the obvious deterioration and decay of the harbor area, the suburban sprawl in the form of commercial strips, mini-malls and traffic, and the social problems evidenced by the homeless, aging hippies and transient workers now scattered about town.

Critical to begin to deal with these problems is the need for city funds, which in large part had depended on downtown businesses and the jobs they generated.

It was with this in mind that the city looked forward to the ULI study, given the institute’s hard-headed, bottom-line-oriented reputation. The panel did not disappoint.

After the usual platitudes praising the city’s setting and concerns, the panel declared that:

--Even before the quake, downtown was in serious economic and social trouble.

--A relatively high percentage of shops were failing each year.

--Business was being lost to the nearby strip centers.

--The T-shirt and tofu tourist trade was going to Capitola, while the mall was suffering from poor access and security, and a failing image.

“Your downtown was in decline,” declared San Francisco consultant Susan Giles to about 200 residents, city officials and reporters gathered in the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium to hear the report.

“The earthquake simply underscored the need for action,” she added.

But in the spirit of a consultant report, the panel said in so many words that all the problems and the quake added up to a unique development opportunity, given the history and location of the mall, and the affection for it by residents.

Giles in particular urged an intense mix of a range of housing in and around the mall, combined with new retail and office uses.

Former Beverly Hills planning director Irwin Kaplan added that the design should be in the spirit and scale of the old mall, and connected to the development, a few blocks away, of the San Lorenzo riverfront.

And all the panelists called for an accelerated approval process.

Most of what was recommended made sense, especially the emphasis on housing as the basis for a revitalized downtown.

That it was offered along with some hard facts of the marketplace made it that much more relevant. As Mayor Wormhoudt declared, it is time to rebuild.

Helping considerably is that Santa Cruz has an affectionate memory of a downtown, as well as a vision of itself, even if somewhat romanticized.

The planning and redevelopment process for Santa Cruz may have been lengthened by that spirit, but in the end, I am convinced it will make the difference.

After all, history has shown us that redevelopment projects do not sustain cities. Visions do.