1989 Quake Leaves an Uneven Legacy

They celebrated all day Thursday in this small coastal town. Hundreds of people and a marching band paraded down Main Street, church bells rang and city officials made speeches. Ford’s Department Store was back.

Two years to the day after the store was destroyed in the Loma Prieta earthquake, Watsonville proudly unveiled the new Ford’s, which houses the town’s first and only escalator. Reputedly California’s oldest department store, Ford’s had been the commercial high point of Watsonville from 1852 until the earth snapped a few miles away on Oct. 17, 1989.

For this farming town of 31,000, the reopening of Ford’s is an economic and emotional boost, and was taken as a sign of the end to two years of adversity. First came the earthquake, then the loss of hundreds of jobs from a devastating freeze and the move of some Jolly Green Giant food-packing operations to Mexico.

“Watsonville’s been searching for its identity of late,” said Jeff Brothers, president of the local farm bureau. “Ford’s is a harbinger of things to come. It’s done first class.”

Around Watsonville, five miles from the epicenter of the 7.1-magnitude quake, the rubble is long gone and most of the buildings have been repaired. The hundreds of residents left homeless for weeks after the quake have been accommodated, and the quake’s terror is beginning to fade from civic memory.

Watsonville’s progress stands in stark contrast to the scenes of disruption 20 miles away in Santa Cruz, where much of the city’s downtown business district still lies in ruin. Instead of parades and marching bands, Santa Cruz planned to mark the quake’s anniversary with a moment of silence at the town clock.

At the Pacific Garden Mall in downtown Santa Cruz, gaping holes in the ground remain in place of the historic buildings that were reduced to rubble. As they were on the one-year anniversary, dozens of stores remain closed and many businesses still operate out of large temporary tents.

“The town really hasn’t recovered from the earthquake,” said Myrna Sapunar, co-owner of the Santa Cruz Antique Collective, which has set up shop in one of the tents. “It’s very depressing for people to come downtown.”

Sapunar and other merchants blame the slow rebuilding of Santa Cruz on city officials who care little about local businesses. Others fault the business community for not effectively leading restoration efforts.

City officials say that rebuilding downtown Santa Cruz is a complex endeavor because many of the buildings were more than 100 years old, and residents have had conflicting thoughts about what stores and other services should be included in a new downtown.

Here in Watsonville--a mostly Latino town, smaller and less affluent than Santa Cruz--Mayor Todd McFarren said his town’s recovery is due largely to merchants and officials who began working immediately after the quake to pull the town together.

“Businesses decided early on they were going to come back,” the mayor said.

Located in the coastal Pajaro Valley, Watsonville suffered heavy losses that frightening afternoon two years ago. In all, 56 buildings in the downtown area were damaged or destroyed, including a bakery that collapsed and killed one person.

Signs of devastation are still evident. St. Patrick’s Church, an 88-year-old landmark near the center of town, lost its steeple in the quake and remains dark behind a fence. A $2.5-million rebuilding campaign is under way. Nearby, weeds grow on vacant lots where buildings once stood, and repair work is under way on many buildings.

But 35 of the buildings have been restored or rebuilt, the mayor said. Plans are in the works to rebuild 14 more.

About 25% of homes in Watsonville also were damaged. For months after the quake, many residents camped in a city park or lived in trailers. But now, the mayor said, 90% of the housing has been restored and no one is living in temporary housing.

With a population that is more than 60% Latino, Watsonville had long been polarized along ethnic lines. The city was the setting for a landmark legal battle over the Voting Rights Act that led to members of the formerly Anglo-dominated City Council being replaced by Latinos after the city’s at-large elections were ruled illegal.

But the tragedy of the earthquake brought a renewed sense of community to the town, McFarren said. “We learned to work together,” the mayor said. “Groups that had been at odds politically over the years came together.”

Now Watsonville, which is perhaps best known for its strawberries, is eagerly promoting itself as “New for the ‘90s.”

“There’s a general attitude amongst the community that when you’re dealt a hardship you don’t dwell on it,” said Brothers, the farm bureau chief. “You roll up your sleeves and get the job done. It’s been a pretty tough several years.”

Civic leaders said the most important piece of the recovery is Ford’s Department Store, founded in 1852 by failed potato farmer Charles Ford. Standing across the street from the town plaza and several blocks from City Hall, the new store is the centerpiece of a chain of 10 stores from Santa Cruz to San Luis Obispo.

To commemorate the earthquake and celebrate the reopening of Ford’s, the city staged an afternoon parade down Main Street, stopping to dedicate the restored Fox Theater and an earthquake monument outside City Hall.

At 5:04 p.m., two years to the minute after the earthquake hit, the bell of St. Patrick’s Church tolled in the town plaza. The bell had been hauled there on a flatbed truck for the occasion. A crowd estimated at 3,000 then headed across the street to Ford’s for the grand reopening.

Harold Hyde, senior vice president of Ford’s, said the department store chain has not decided whether to rebuild its store in downtown Santa Cruz. The store there also was destroyed in the earthquake, killing a customer in one of the fitting rooms.

The store’s site at the south end of the Pacific Garden Mall is now a parking lot where public markets are held once a week.

Quake Anniversary

Watsonville and Santa Cruz were among the most-heavily damaged cities in the 7.1 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake. The temblor’s two-year anniversary was marked in both cities on Thursday.