Columns
The library and the democratic process
Santa Cruz Sentinel
September 25, 2021
By Stephen Kessler
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/09/25/stephen-kessler-the-library-and-the-democratic-process/
As reported in the Sept. 16 Sentinel, the City of Santa Cruz has signed a $2,289,550 contract with Jayson Architecture for design of the downtown library mixed-use project, formerly known (unofficially) as the Taj Garage for its combination of a five- or six-story block-long parking structure with the flagship branch of our public library tucked into a corner on the ground floor.
About four years ago, when this concept was just a gleam in the eye of then-City Manager Martín Bernal, then-City Councilwoman Cynthia Mathews, its most powerful political proponent (despite a real estate conflict of interest that disqualified her from voting for it on the Council), told me that the library had to be mixed with a garage because “we need the parking.”
The idea of moving the library, displacing the farmers market and cutting down the heritage trees on Lot 4 in order to construct such a monstrous building did not appeal to most of the community — communications with the Council ran heavily against it — so 50 units of “affordable housing” (meaning that much less parking) were blended into the mix in order to enhance its public appeal. In the latest iteration of the mixed-use project, parking is not even mentioned, and we’re told that not 50 but 107 units of “very-low-income” housing will be included. Why such housing must be combined with the library has not been explained. But the new mixed-use thing, with or without parking, could now be called the housing-project-library complex.
According to the city, the “pre-design, design and permitting” phase of the project should take “approximately 18-24 months,” with construction beginning sometime in 2023, to be completed by the end of 2024. This means that the referendum being organized by the grassroots groups Downtown Commons Advocates and the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation, if successful in collecting enough signatures, has time to be placed as a measure on the November 2022 ballot asking voters whether or not to save Lot 4 as a public plaza, construct affordable housing on other available sites and renovate the library where it stands, in Civic Center, across from City Hall. Conveniently, Jayson Architecture, at an earlier stage of planning and cost comparisons, has already sketched a design for such a renovation that could easily be the basis for saving the library in place and saving Lot 4 as open space.
The other good news is that despite the signing of the $2 million-plus contract, “The City will have the discretion to terminate the contract for any reason and the financial obligation to the Master Library Architect will be limited to services performed to the date of termination.” This means that if the voters next year reject the housing-project-library complex, the city can cut its losses despite already having wasted a ton of money.
In their Sentinel guest commentary of Aug. 11, Santa Cruz Mayor Donna Meyers and Councilwoman Martine Watkins made their case for a ballot measure to add a sales tax as a way to raise revenues for city services. “Our confidence in the democratic process underpins our vote to put a potential revenue measure before the voters,” they wrote. It would follow from this that the mayor’s and the Council’s confidence in the democratic process extends to such a controversial project as the garage-housing-library. So, the public may still have a chance to kill the ill-conceived mixed-use housing-library-garage, save the Lot 4 trees and farmers market space, renovate the library in place and build affordable housing elsewhere.
This drama will play out crucially over the next year, with pro-library-renovation and pro-mixed-use forces arguing their respective positions in the best democratic tradition while the people make up their minds about what kind of library, what kind of housing and what kind of parking they want, and where they want them.
The democratic process is in for a vigorous workout.
Stephen Kessler is a four-time recipient of the California Library Association’s PR Excellence Award for The Redwood Coast Review, which he edited from 1999 through 2014 for Coast Community Library in Point Arena.
September 25, 2021
By Stephen Kessler
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/09/25/stephen-kessler-the-library-and-the-democratic-process/
As reported in the Sept. 16 Sentinel, the City of Santa Cruz has signed a $2,289,550 contract with Jayson Architecture for design of the downtown library mixed-use project, formerly known (unofficially) as the Taj Garage for its combination of a five- or six-story block-long parking structure with the flagship branch of our public library tucked into a corner on the ground floor.
About four years ago, when this concept was just a gleam in the eye of then-City Manager Martín Bernal, then-City Councilwoman Cynthia Mathews, its most powerful political proponent (despite a real estate conflict of interest that disqualified her from voting for it on the Council), told me that the library had to be mixed with a garage because “we need the parking.”
The idea of moving the library, displacing the farmers market and cutting down the heritage trees on Lot 4 in order to construct such a monstrous building did not appeal to most of the community — communications with the Council ran heavily against it — so 50 units of “affordable housing” (meaning that much less parking) were blended into the mix in order to enhance its public appeal. In the latest iteration of the mixed-use project, parking is not even mentioned, and we’re told that not 50 but 107 units of “very-low-income” housing will be included. Why such housing must be combined with the library has not been explained. But the new mixed-use thing, with or without parking, could now be called the housing-project-library complex.
According to the city, the “pre-design, design and permitting” phase of the project should take “approximately 18-24 months,” with construction beginning sometime in 2023, to be completed by the end of 2024. This means that the referendum being organized by the grassroots groups Downtown Commons Advocates and the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation, if successful in collecting enough signatures, has time to be placed as a measure on the November 2022 ballot asking voters whether or not to save Lot 4 as a public plaza, construct affordable housing on other available sites and renovate the library where it stands, in Civic Center, across from City Hall. Conveniently, Jayson Architecture, at an earlier stage of planning and cost comparisons, has already sketched a design for such a renovation that could easily be the basis for saving the library in place and saving Lot 4 as open space.
The other good news is that despite the signing of the $2 million-plus contract, “The City will have the discretion to terminate the contract for any reason and the financial obligation to the Master Library Architect will be limited to services performed to the date of termination.” This means that if the voters next year reject the housing-project-library complex, the city can cut its losses despite already having wasted a ton of money.
In their Sentinel guest commentary of Aug. 11, Santa Cruz Mayor Donna Meyers and Councilwoman Martine Watkins made their case for a ballot measure to add a sales tax as a way to raise revenues for city services. “Our confidence in the democratic process underpins our vote to put a potential revenue measure before the voters,” they wrote. It would follow from this that the mayor’s and the Council’s confidence in the democratic process extends to such a controversial project as the garage-housing-library. So, the public may still have a chance to kill the ill-conceived mixed-use housing-library-garage, save the Lot 4 trees and farmers market space, renovate the library in place and build affordable housing elsewhere.
This drama will play out crucially over the next year, with pro-library-renovation and pro-mixed-use forces arguing their respective positions in the best democratic tradition while the people make up their minds about what kind of library, what kind of housing and what kind of parking they want, and where they want them.
The democratic process is in for a vigorous workout.
Stephen Kessler is a four-time recipient of the California Library Association’s PR Excellence Award for The Redwood Coast Review, which he edited from 1999 through 2014 for Coast Community Library in Point Arena.
Public health, architecture and parks
Santa Cruz Sentinel
June 26, 2021
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/06/26/stephen-kessler-public-health-architecture-and-parks/
By Stephen Kessler
Try this thought experiment. Imagine you are a public official — a public servant, a city planner or council member — and the value you hold in highest regard, along with fiscal diligence and environmental stewardship, is public health. You work and live in a small city growing steadily more urban because it is well situated, the climate is good and it has been discovered as a desirable place to live. In a rapidly developing downtown, where five-, six- and seven-story buildings are springing up like new growth after a wildfire, there’s a city parking lot that takes up half a block and has a cluster of large trees in the middle. Two proposals have been presented to redevelop the site: a five-story concrete parking structure with some other uses mixed in, or a public park where people would be able to take a break in some open space amid the increasingly vertical, building-crowded cityscape.
Suppose someone said your city could save some money by putting the public library in a corner of the garage and could help meet the growing need for “affordable housing” by slapping some cheap apartments on the façade to conceal the parking. Would the library have the cultural and architectural dignity such an essential institution demands? Would the apartments be more than window-dressing?
What if the garage-library idea was still so unpopular that its promoters found a way to double the amount of housing — low-income housing, no less. Who could object to that? At the expense of how many parking spaces it is unclear. Maybe they’ll add a couple more stories to the building. Maybe they’ll mix in some other uses. Whatever other uses are mixed into the structure, it will dominate its surroundings like a gigantic monolith.
In your small but more-urbane- than-ever city, such a large building should be architecturally distinctive, a work of urban art that would compensate in beauty, in sculptural elegance, for its disproportionate size. It should be a tourist attraction. But can the city afford to hire an architect with that kind of vision and artistry? And would any such architect want to invest their imagination in a building that hides a library under layers of housing and parking?
But there are other city lots on which housing can be built, so these uses could be unmixed and a housing project erected elsewhere.
The park or plaza proposal is less complicated, less fraught with contradictions and millions of dollars less costly to realize. The stand of mature trees — a green carbon collector and shady oasis — would be the park’s centerpiece. The asphalt of the surrounding parking lot would be torn up and replaced by a tastefully landscaped public square with paths and benches, a children’s playground, a performance space where seating could be set up or a lawn spread out, and market space as well, where artisans and farmers can sell their goods and engage directly in social and commercial intercourse with their customers.
In terms of public health, which is healthier — landscaped usable open space or a block-long, 60-foot-high rectangular mass? Which is better for people’s mental health — a massive multistory structure or a pedestrian-friendly town commons? Which is more climate friendly — the cutting of 11 mature trees to make way for construction, or the planting of more trees? Does the energy efficiency and “greenness” of the building compensate for the destruction of the trees? Is the open space at the center of downtown as appropriate a setting for such a building as the rapidly developing corridor just two blocks east?
Perhaps the promoters of the giant mixed-use housing-garage have persuaded you that it’s the only place your public library can go. But wait, there’s already a public library a few blocks away. With $30 or $40 million — in public funds and private donations (about the same amount it will take to build it in the housing-garage) — it could be renovated where it is with the dignity and respect it deserves.
Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.
June 26, 2021
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/06/26/stephen-kessler-public-health-architecture-and-parks/
By Stephen Kessler
Try this thought experiment. Imagine you are a public official — a public servant, a city planner or council member — and the value you hold in highest regard, along with fiscal diligence and environmental stewardship, is public health. You work and live in a small city growing steadily more urban because it is well situated, the climate is good and it has been discovered as a desirable place to live. In a rapidly developing downtown, where five-, six- and seven-story buildings are springing up like new growth after a wildfire, there’s a city parking lot that takes up half a block and has a cluster of large trees in the middle. Two proposals have been presented to redevelop the site: a five-story concrete parking structure with some other uses mixed in, or a public park where people would be able to take a break in some open space amid the increasingly vertical, building-crowded cityscape.
Suppose someone said your city could save some money by putting the public library in a corner of the garage and could help meet the growing need for “affordable housing” by slapping some cheap apartments on the façade to conceal the parking. Would the library have the cultural and architectural dignity such an essential institution demands? Would the apartments be more than window-dressing?
What if the garage-library idea was still so unpopular that its promoters found a way to double the amount of housing — low-income housing, no less. Who could object to that? At the expense of how many parking spaces it is unclear. Maybe they’ll add a couple more stories to the building. Maybe they’ll mix in some other uses. Whatever other uses are mixed into the structure, it will dominate its surroundings like a gigantic monolith.
In your small but more-urbane- than-ever city, such a large building should be architecturally distinctive, a work of urban art that would compensate in beauty, in sculptural elegance, for its disproportionate size. It should be a tourist attraction. But can the city afford to hire an architect with that kind of vision and artistry? And would any such architect want to invest their imagination in a building that hides a library under layers of housing and parking?
But there are other city lots on which housing can be built, so these uses could be unmixed and a housing project erected elsewhere.
The park or plaza proposal is less complicated, less fraught with contradictions and millions of dollars less costly to realize. The stand of mature trees — a green carbon collector and shady oasis — would be the park’s centerpiece. The asphalt of the surrounding parking lot would be torn up and replaced by a tastefully landscaped public square with paths and benches, a children’s playground, a performance space where seating could be set up or a lawn spread out, and market space as well, where artisans and farmers can sell their goods and engage directly in social and commercial intercourse with their customers.
In terms of public health, which is healthier — landscaped usable open space or a block-long, 60-foot-high rectangular mass? Which is better for people’s mental health — a massive multistory structure or a pedestrian-friendly town commons? Which is more climate friendly — the cutting of 11 mature trees to make way for construction, or the planting of more trees? Does the energy efficiency and “greenness” of the building compensate for the destruction of the trees? Is the open space at the center of downtown as appropriate a setting for such a building as the rapidly developing corridor just two blocks east?
Perhaps the promoters of the giant mixed-use housing-garage have persuaded you that it’s the only place your public library can go. But wait, there’s already a public library a few blocks away. With $30 or $40 million — in public funds and private donations (about the same amount it will take to build it in the housing-garage) — it could be renovated where it is with the dignity and respect it deserves.
Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.
Why the garage library not a done deal
Santa Cruz Sentinel
May 29, 2021
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/05/29/stephen-kessler-why-the-garage-library-is-not-a-done-deal/
By Stephen Kessler
The City of Santa Cruz is charging full speed ahead on the library-in-a-garage-withhousing- as-a-façade (aka the “Downtown Library Mixed-Use project”) with a series of “community engagement activities” meant to give the illusion of public participation in the city’s plan to massacre the heritage trees on Lot 4, in designing the new garage-library and in “visioning” the redevelopment of the site of the current library once it is demolished and hauled to the dump.
While some would have you think the official decision is final and irrevocable, there are many steps left in the planning process before the trees are slaughtered and construction begins, which could still be a couple of years out. Meanwhile the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation is preparing a petition to put a measure on the 2022 ballot to save Lot 4 and renovate the library in place because more parking is superfluous, the community doesn’t want it and housing can be built on other city lots. Downtown Commons Advocates is gaining momentum for popular support to turn Lot 4 into a public plaza.
The City Council has shown, in the TOLO homeless relocation fiasco, that with enough public pushback they can be persuaded to reverse an illconceived policy. So while a majority of the current council is in favor of the garage-library, it’s conceivable that the monstrosity-in-progress can be killed.
As you may have read recently in the Sentinel, the newly constructed Capitola branch is about to have a grand opening. All the other branches except the downtown flagship branch are either finished or well on the way toward renovation and/ or reconstruction. By now, $1.5 million has been diverted from the downtown branch’s original allotment of Measure S funds. Why, after all this time, is the downtown branch the furthest from completion — the one without even a design much less a start date for construction?
The city’s original idea of mixing the library with the bus station crashed and burned soon after it was proposed because people thought it was such a lousy idea. City staff then had the dubious notion of combining the library with a giant parking garage on Lot 4. This too was received with outrage and disbelief by enough of the public that the city manager and the Council started hiring consultants and initiating studies that have cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to gain approval of the garage-library concept. When the parking consultants concluded that a garage was not needed, the city and the Council simply ignored them.
The crowning insult to the public was the Downtown Library Advisory Committee, which put out a survey of what the public wants in a new library and came back with a long wish list of wonderful features in a “21st century library”— none of which included moving the library out of Civic Center much less parking it in a garage. Nor did Measure S, the library bond measure, say anything about moving the downtown branch or mixing it with a garage. So the project has been delayed repeatedly because the public didn’t ask for what the city was trying to ram down our throats.
If the city had taken the Measure S money and invested it promptly in renovation of the downtown library in its current, appropriate spot in Civic Center, we might be celebrating its grand reopening by now. The reason we’re not is that the political will and muscle were applied exclusively to the mixed-use garage. The process from the beginning has been scandalously undemocratic, devious and dishonest, and pseudo-rationalized with a fortune in consulting fees and reverse-engineered committees whose sole purpose was to achieve a preordained result.
There is no new downtown library because city officials with no clue as to a library’s civic and cultural function wanted to do something the public doesn’t want, and they have wasted four years and a fortune trying to force it past community opposition.
It’s not too late to stop this travesty.
Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.
May 29, 2021
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/05/29/stephen-kessler-why-the-garage-library-is-not-a-done-deal/
By Stephen Kessler
The City of Santa Cruz is charging full speed ahead on the library-in-a-garage-withhousing- as-a-façade (aka the “Downtown Library Mixed-Use project”) with a series of “community engagement activities” meant to give the illusion of public participation in the city’s plan to massacre the heritage trees on Lot 4, in designing the new garage-library and in “visioning” the redevelopment of the site of the current library once it is demolished and hauled to the dump.
While some would have you think the official decision is final and irrevocable, there are many steps left in the planning process before the trees are slaughtered and construction begins, which could still be a couple of years out. Meanwhile the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation is preparing a petition to put a measure on the 2022 ballot to save Lot 4 and renovate the library in place because more parking is superfluous, the community doesn’t want it and housing can be built on other city lots. Downtown Commons Advocates is gaining momentum for popular support to turn Lot 4 into a public plaza.
The City Council has shown, in the TOLO homeless relocation fiasco, that with enough public pushback they can be persuaded to reverse an illconceived policy. So while a majority of the current council is in favor of the garage-library, it’s conceivable that the monstrosity-in-progress can be killed.
As you may have read recently in the Sentinel, the newly constructed Capitola branch is about to have a grand opening. All the other branches except the downtown flagship branch are either finished or well on the way toward renovation and/ or reconstruction. By now, $1.5 million has been diverted from the downtown branch’s original allotment of Measure S funds. Why, after all this time, is the downtown branch the furthest from completion — the one without even a design much less a start date for construction?
The city’s original idea of mixing the library with the bus station crashed and burned soon after it was proposed because people thought it was such a lousy idea. City staff then had the dubious notion of combining the library with a giant parking garage on Lot 4. This too was received with outrage and disbelief by enough of the public that the city manager and the Council started hiring consultants and initiating studies that have cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to gain approval of the garage-library concept. When the parking consultants concluded that a garage was not needed, the city and the Council simply ignored them.
The crowning insult to the public was the Downtown Library Advisory Committee, which put out a survey of what the public wants in a new library and came back with a long wish list of wonderful features in a “21st century library”— none of which included moving the library out of Civic Center much less parking it in a garage. Nor did Measure S, the library bond measure, say anything about moving the downtown branch or mixing it with a garage. So the project has been delayed repeatedly because the public didn’t ask for what the city was trying to ram down our throats.
If the city had taken the Measure S money and invested it promptly in renovation of the downtown library in its current, appropriate spot in Civic Center, we might be celebrating its grand reopening by now. The reason we’re not is that the political will and muscle were applied exclusively to the mixed-use garage. The process from the beginning has been scandalously undemocratic, devious and dishonest, and pseudo-rationalized with a fortune in consulting fees and reverse-engineered committees whose sole purpose was to achieve a preordained result.
There is no new downtown library because city officials with no clue as to a library’s civic and cultural function wanted to do something the public doesn’t want, and they have wasted four years and a fortune trying to force it past community opposition.
It’s not too late to stop this travesty.
Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.
Commerce, Housing Density and Public Space
Santa Cruz Sentinel
March 27, 2021
By Stephen Kessler
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/03/27/stephen-kessler-commerce-housing-density-and-public-space/
In retrospect, for those of us who were here, the 20 years of the original Pacific Garden Mall (1969-1989) are remembered as a period of cultural and commercial renaissance in downtown Santa Cruz, a time when a sleepy conservative beach town where Republicans enjoyed the tranquility of retirement was transformed into a countercultural college town taken over by liberal activists, artists, entrepreneurs and politicians. A lot of those people, myself included, have poignant memories of coming of age in those heady days, and some still wish it could have stayed that way. But guess what: that town is long gone, and the transformation we were part of has been changed, again and again, by subsequent waves of newcomers and the perennial geophysical appeal of our little city and the increasingly urban pleasures it affords.
The restaurants, theaters, shops and sidewalks knocked sideways by a yearlong pandemic could be back on track to prosperity (if they’ve survived the blow) as soon as this summer. That impending resurrection gives us a chance, as after the 1989 earthquake, to re-imagine the city in the realistic light of its current desirability as a place to live and the attendant pressures of development. Housing is needed to accommodate people who want to reside and work here, whatever their occupation or income. If growth is arrested, as some “Save Santa Cruz” types desire, the increased exclusivity of the community will make it all the more unaffordable. A victim of its own success, Santa Cruz must now adapt to its attractiveness by making room for those who want to enjoy the advantages of a much bigger city on the intimate scale of a few square blocks.
In the days of the original Garden Mall, the two biggest buildings downtown were old hotels, the Saint George and the Palomar, which held many floors of low-rent apartments. The neighborhoods were steadily adding single-family homes, and the mall, revived by Chuck and Esther Abbott’s botanical designs, was a bustling commercial zone that doubled as public space in its parklike layout. Unlike the ironically named Abbott Square of today, the Abbotts’ curvy, leafy, leisurely main drag with its single snaky lane for automobiles between expansive promenades winding among benches and big planters with dozens of rare species of trees was a green oasis perfectly integrated into its commercial neighborhood. Stores’ doors opened directly onto a shady rambla.
Alas, as the trees grew, the shade grew darker. The Capitola Mall with its vast parking lots and national chains became a rival attraction to the smaller, mostly local businesses downtown. An “undesirable transient element” gravitated to the tolerance and random pleasures of Pacific Avenue, alarming the tourists and suburbanites who were the merchants’ customers, thereby alarming the merchants.
The Loma Prieta Earthquake solved that problem, and the enrubbled mall was resurrected as the straighter, more auto- and parking-friendly Pacific Avenue of today. Several large new multistory mixed-use apartment buildings have been added to the landscape with more on the way to meet the insatiable demand for housing and the expected revival of the local economy in a far more populous, pedestrian-friendly downtown. And public space, which the Garden Mall provided as a vital element of the merchant-customer relationship? What will downtown be like when the shadows are cast not by overgrown exotic trees but by five- and six- and seven-story concrete apartment complexes? Where will there be a spacious green break from chockablock buildings and commercial activity where visitors can hang out in the sun, under beautiful trees, where kids can play, or where an outdoor concert or festival can happen?
The last such open space downtown is Lot 4, where the Taj Garage-library-apartments are slated to replace the big magnolias and plane trees, obliterating nature. It’s not too late to save that block and turn it into the public plaza we desperately need.
Let the City Council know your thoughts: citycouncil@cityofsantacruz.com.
This column is one in a continuing series on the library, Lot 4, open space and the future of downtown Santa Cruz.
March 27, 2021
By Stephen Kessler
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/03/27/stephen-kessler-commerce-housing-density-and-public-space/
In retrospect, for those of us who were here, the 20 years of the original Pacific Garden Mall (1969-1989) are remembered as a period of cultural and commercial renaissance in downtown Santa Cruz, a time when a sleepy conservative beach town where Republicans enjoyed the tranquility of retirement was transformed into a countercultural college town taken over by liberal activists, artists, entrepreneurs and politicians. A lot of those people, myself included, have poignant memories of coming of age in those heady days, and some still wish it could have stayed that way. But guess what: that town is long gone, and the transformation we were part of has been changed, again and again, by subsequent waves of newcomers and the perennial geophysical appeal of our little city and the increasingly urban pleasures it affords.
The restaurants, theaters, shops and sidewalks knocked sideways by a yearlong pandemic could be back on track to prosperity (if they’ve survived the blow) as soon as this summer. That impending resurrection gives us a chance, as after the 1989 earthquake, to re-imagine the city in the realistic light of its current desirability as a place to live and the attendant pressures of development. Housing is needed to accommodate people who want to reside and work here, whatever their occupation or income. If growth is arrested, as some “Save Santa Cruz” types desire, the increased exclusivity of the community will make it all the more unaffordable. A victim of its own success, Santa Cruz must now adapt to its attractiveness by making room for those who want to enjoy the advantages of a much bigger city on the intimate scale of a few square blocks.
In the days of the original Garden Mall, the two biggest buildings downtown were old hotels, the Saint George and the Palomar, which held many floors of low-rent apartments. The neighborhoods were steadily adding single-family homes, and the mall, revived by Chuck and Esther Abbott’s botanical designs, was a bustling commercial zone that doubled as public space in its parklike layout. Unlike the ironically named Abbott Square of today, the Abbotts’ curvy, leafy, leisurely main drag with its single snaky lane for automobiles between expansive promenades winding among benches and big planters with dozens of rare species of trees was a green oasis perfectly integrated into its commercial neighborhood. Stores’ doors opened directly onto a shady rambla.
Alas, as the trees grew, the shade grew darker. The Capitola Mall with its vast parking lots and national chains became a rival attraction to the smaller, mostly local businesses downtown. An “undesirable transient element” gravitated to the tolerance and random pleasures of Pacific Avenue, alarming the tourists and suburbanites who were the merchants’ customers, thereby alarming the merchants.
The Loma Prieta Earthquake solved that problem, and the enrubbled mall was resurrected as the straighter, more auto- and parking-friendly Pacific Avenue of today. Several large new multistory mixed-use apartment buildings have been added to the landscape with more on the way to meet the insatiable demand for housing and the expected revival of the local economy in a far more populous, pedestrian-friendly downtown. And public space, which the Garden Mall provided as a vital element of the merchant-customer relationship? What will downtown be like when the shadows are cast not by overgrown exotic trees but by five- and six- and seven-story concrete apartment complexes? Where will there be a spacious green break from chockablock buildings and commercial activity where visitors can hang out in the sun, under beautiful trees, where kids can play, or where an outdoor concert or festival can happen?
The last such open space downtown is Lot 4, where the Taj Garage-library-apartments are slated to replace the big magnolias and plane trees, obliterating nature. It’s not too late to save that block and turn it into the public plaza we desperately need.
Let the City Council know your thoughts: citycouncil@cityofsantacruz.com.
This column is one in a continuing series on the library, Lot 4, open space and the future of downtown Santa Cruz.
Why Bury the Library in the Landfill?
Image by Russell Brutsche
Santa Cruz Sentinel Editorials
Stephen Kessler
February 6, 2021
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/02/06/stephen-kessler-why-bury-the-library-in-the-landfill/
Though I’d just as soon retire it as a topic, the proposal to move the downtown branch of the Santa Cruz Public Library out of Civic Center and into a garage-apartment complex blocks away must be subject to continued scrutiny. The idea that because it has been approved by the previous City Council and a ton of money has been spent (remember the millions wasted on desal?) it is therefore a done deal is delusional. A lengthy process must still be navigated before the mixed-use thing is designed let alone built. The new council has time to come to its senses and cut its losses.
I’m not the only one who thinks that when the true cost of this project is revealed — not even including maintenance costs — the sticker shock will be such that even some of the council members who voted for it will change their minds for reasons of fiscal responsibility, environmental sensitivity and popular opposition. (I have written to each current council member asking how this project aligns with their “health in all policies” and “bold climate action” principles and will let you know what I hear back in a future column.) Meanwhile the magnolias slated for sacrifice have not yet been massacred, and there is still a chance that Lot 4 can be saved and redesigned more economically as a public plaza or town commons, the last open space downtown amid an increasingly overbuilt urban landscape of towering, shade-throwing apartments.
But our subject today is the site of the existing library in Civic Center, whose structural bones have been deemed seismically sound but, according to official city wisdom, unaffordable to renovate as the 21st-century library everyone desires — and thus presumably too costly to renovate as anything else. So the city issued a request for proposals to replace the building with something new. From the RFP: “Following construction of the new library building, the existing library site and adjacent parking lots will become an opportunity site for re-development. Per direction received from Council, staff is to initiate a public process to consider reuse options for that site to include housing, a town commons, and/or other public uses.” (Four proposals were received, specifics pending.)
The subtext of those sentences is the city’s implicit intention to tear down the library, haul the debris to the dump — by what criterion of environmental stewardship it is unclear — and start with a clean slate. While the cost of renovating the library is said to be prohibitive, no one has yet said what it will cost to replace it with housing or some other “opportunity” appropriate to its location. The city has even borrowed the idea of a town commons from the grassroots group Downtown Commons Advocates, which has proposed such a community asset under the established magnolias and plane trees of Lot 4.
The Watsonville Public Library is often cited by mixed-use proponents as an example of wise development. It’s true that behind that four-story building is a parking garage; what they don’t mention is that the rest of the building is that city’s Civic Center and City Hall: the mayor’s office, council chambers, courtrooms and city offices. This is a natural place to put the public library, just as Santa Cruz Civic Center encompasses City Hall, the Civic Auditorium (also due for renovation) and the library.
Before they demolish the library and slaughter the trees on Lot 4, the city — including the council, if they have the independence, critical intelligence, courage and political will to admit the mistake of the plan to move the library — still has time to accept the idea of leaving the library where it is and, with a well-run campaign to raise the supplementary funds (which they would also need for their new library), build it back bigger and better.
Stephen Kessler is a four-time recipient of the California Library Association’s PR Excellence Award for The Redwood Coast Review, which he edited from 1999 through 2014 for Coast Community Library in Mendocino County.
Stephen Kessler
February 6, 2021
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2021/02/06/stephen-kessler-why-bury-the-library-in-the-landfill/
Though I’d just as soon retire it as a topic, the proposal to move the downtown branch of the Santa Cruz Public Library out of Civic Center and into a garage-apartment complex blocks away must be subject to continued scrutiny. The idea that because it has been approved by the previous City Council and a ton of money has been spent (remember the millions wasted on desal?) it is therefore a done deal is delusional. A lengthy process must still be navigated before the mixed-use thing is designed let alone built. The new council has time to come to its senses and cut its losses.
I’m not the only one who thinks that when the true cost of this project is revealed — not even including maintenance costs — the sticker shock will be such that even some of the council members who voted for it will change their minds for reasons of fiscal responsibility, environmental sensitivity and popular opposition. (I have written to each current council member asking how this project aligns with their “health in all policies” and “bold climate action” principles and will let you know what I hear back in a future column.) Meanwhile the magnolias slated for sacrifice have not yet been massacred, and there is still a chance that Lot 4 can be saved and redesigned more economically as a public plaza or town commons, the last open space downtown amid an increasingly overbuilt urban landscape of towering, shade-throwing apartments.
But our subject today is the site of the existing library in Civic Center, whose structural bones have been deemed seismically sound but, according to official city wisdom, unaffordable to renovate as the 21st-century library everyone desires — and thus presumably too costly to renovate as anything else. So the city issued a request for proposals to replace the building with something new. From the RFP: “Following construction of the new library building, the existing library site and adjacent parking lots will become an opportunity site for re-development. Per direction received from Council, staff is to initiate a public process to consider reuse options for that site to include housing, a town commons, and/or other public uses.” (Four proposals were received, specifics pending.)
The subtext of those sentences is the city’s implicit intention to tear down the library, haul the debris to the dump — by what criterion of environmental stewardship it is unclear — and start with a clean slate. While the cost of renovating the library is said to be prohibitive, no one has yet said what it will cost to replace it with housing or some other “opportunity” appropriate to its location. The city has even borrowed the idea of a town commons from the grassroots group Downtown Commons Advocates, which has proposed such a community asset under the established magnolias and plane trees of Lot 4.
The Watsonville Public Library is often cited by mixed-use proponents as an example of wise development. It’s true that behind that four-story building is a parking garage; what they don’t mention is that the rest of the building is that city’s Civic Center and City Hall: the mayor’s office, council chambers, courtrooms and city offices. This is a natural place to put the public library, just as Santa Cruz Civic Center encompasses City Hall, the Civic Auditorium (also due for renovation) and the library.
Before they demolish the library and slaughter the trees on Lot 4, the city — including the council, if they have the independence, critical intelligence, courage and political will to admit the mistake of the plan to move the library — still has time to accept the idea of leaving the library where it is and, with a well-run campaign to raise the supplementary funds (which they would also need for their new library), build it back bigger and better.
Stephen Kessler is a four-time recipient of the California Library Association’s PR Excellence Award for The Redwood Coast Review, which he edited from 1999 through 2014 for Coast Community Library in Mendocino County.
Library plan – Development, density and open space
Santa Cruz Sentinel
November 14, 2020
By Stephen Kessler
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2020/11/14/stephen-kessler-library-plan-development-density-and-open-space/
As you know if you’ve been following the story, the City of Santa Cruz has signed a $240,000 contract with a construction company for the first, pre-construction phase of the mixed-use, six-story, block-long parking-housing-library project known to some as the Taj Garage. Among the pre-construction enigmas of this multimillion-dollar misconception is how much each component will actually cost — as if that can possibly be known before the monstrous building is designed. Spoiler alert: It will cost much more than whatever is currently projected. Where this extra funding will come from — various grants, private donors, local taxpayers — remains to be seen. Related question: What is the value — esthetic, psychological, economic — of open space in a densely developed urban landscape?
City Lot 4, along Cedar Street between Lincoln and Cathcart, studded with mature magnolia and London plane trees and current home to the weekly farmers market, is the largest remaining open space downtown. Measure S, which provided $27 million in funding for main branch library renovation, said nothing about moving the library from Civic Center, much less parking it in a garage; worse, the survey of the public as to what they want in a new, improved library, had no reference to the library as part of a garage in a new location. When that was revealed, there was overwhelming public opposition to the bait-and-switch the city had pulled off, so in order to manufacture consent for the project, the city then invested much time and money in a series of studies and committees reverse-engineered to achieve the desired result — belatedly including, in order to coerce community support, “at least 50 units of affordable housing.”
In context of other development plans for downtown, including several other large mixed-use housing projects — at least one of them on city-owned land and therefore potentially 100% “affordable” — let’s zoom out for a look at the bigger picture to consider how development of these properties within a downtown plan (designating city lots mostly for housing and parking with commercial storefronts at street level) is likely to affect local quality of life in the economically unpredictable decades ahead.
Parking, library and housing in that location must be weighed against what would be lost, for locals and tourists alike, in room to move and breathe.
While plans to develop the San Lorenzo River into a Central Park-like scenic and recreational attraction sound good, loss of Lot 4 and its trees would be a devastating blow to our built cityscape. The grassroots group Downtown Commons Advocates has reasonably proposed saving the Cedar-Cathcart-Lincoln block redesigned as a public plaza, and while this idea appears to have more popular support than moving the library, the city is undeterred in its resolve to build the mixed-use megalith regardless — because, the argument goes, we need the new library, the new housing and the new parking (to replace surface lots that will be developed as yet more housing) — even though why these three distinct components must be combined on that specific piece of land has not been persuasively explained.
Whether on strictly environmental grounds (waste of a seismically sound building in Civic Center, massacre of heritage trees on Lot 4, placing the new library in a flood plain, encouragement of more automobile traffic) or quality-of-life considerations (the public health, including mental health, benefits of open noncommercial space in an urban center), there are good reasons to reject the library-garage-apartments as developmental overkill. There is nothing wrong with density — housing is needed —and development is inevitable, but the value of “negative space” should not be underestimated. A civic plaza has many unquantifiable qualities, among which is a physical break from an increasingly chockablock multistory constructed landscape. As a tourist attraction, a “town commons” is far more enticing than a monstrous concrete building, no matter how nice a library or how many cheap apartments it includes.
It’s not too late for the new City Council to stop and reconsider the wisdom of such a costly investment against the loss of irreplaceable open space.
Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.
November 14, 2020
By Stephen Kessler
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2020/11/14/stephen-kessler-library-plan-development-density-and-open-space/
As you know if you’ve been following the story, the City of Santa Cruz has signed a $240,000 contract with a construction company for the first, pre-construction phase of the mixed-use, six-story, block-long parking-housing-library project known to some as the Taj Garage. Among the pre-construction enigmas of this multimillion-dollar misconception is how much each component will actually cost — as if that can possibly be known before the monstrous building is designed. Spoiler alert: It will cost much more than whatever is currently projected. Where this extra funding will come from — various grants, private donors, local taxpayers — remains to be seen. Related question: What is the value — esthetic, psychological, economic — of open space in a densely developed urban landscape?
City Lot 4, along Cedar Street between Lincoln and Cathcart, studded with mature magnolia and London plane trees and current home to the weekly farmers market, is the largest remaining open space downtown. Measure S, which provided $27 million in funding for main branch library renovation, said nothing about moving the library from Civic Center, much less parking it in a garage; worse, the survey of the public as to what they want in a new, improved library, had no reference to the library as part of a garage in a new location. When that was revealed, there was overwhelming public opposition to the bait-and-switch the city had pulled off, so in order to manufacture consent for the project, the city then invested much time and money in a series of studies and committees reverse-engineered to achieve the desired result — belatedly including, in order to coerce community support, “at least 50 units of affordable housing.”
In context of other development plans for downtown, including several other large mixed-use housing projects — at least one of them on city-owned land and therefore potentially 100% “affordable” — let’s zoom out for a look at the bigger picture to consider how development of these properties within a downtown plan (designating city lots mostly for housing and parking with commercial storefronts at street level) is likely to affect local quality of life in the economically unpredictable decades ahead.
Parking, library and housing in that location must be weighed against what would be lost, for locals and tourists alike, in room to move and breathe.
While plans to develop the San Lorenzo River into a Central Park-like scenic and recreational attraction sound good, loss of Lot 4 and its trees would be a devastating blow to our built cityscape. The grassroots group Downtown Commons Advocates has reasonably proposed saving the Cedar-Cathcart-Lincoln block redesigned as a public plaza, and while this idea appears to have more popular support than moving the library, the city is undeterred in its resolve to build the mixed-use megalith regardless — because, the argument goes, we need the new library, the new housing and the new parking (to replace surface lots that will be developed as yet more housing) — even though why these three distinct components must be combined on that specific piece of land has not been persuasively explained.
Whether on strictly environmental grounds (waste of a seismically sound building in Civic Center, massacre of heritage trees on Lot 4, placing the new library in a flood plain, encouragement of more automobile traffic) or quality-of-life considerations (the public health, including mental health, benefits of open noncommercial space in an urban center), there are good reasons to reject the library-garage-apartments as developmental overkill. There is nothing wrong with density — housing is needed —and development is inevitable, but the value of “negative space” should not be underestimated. A civic plaza has many unquantifiable qualities, among which is a physical break from an increasingly chockablock multistory constructed landscape. As a tourist attraction, a “town commons” is far more enticing than a monstrous concrete building, no matter how nice a library or how many cheap apartments it includes.
It’s not too late for the new City Council to stop and reconsider the wisdom of such a costly investment against the loss of irreplaceable open space.
Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.
Stephen Kessler gets it right on reconstructing the Downtown Library at the Civic Center!
Be green now Save Lot 4 Rebuild the library
By Stephen Kessler
Op-ed, Santa Cruz Sentinel
January 3, 2020
Last month I attended the Santa Cruz Downtown Library Renovation Cost Assessment Community Meeting, an opportunity for Abe Jayson and Katie Stuart of Jayson Architects to introduce the public to their ideas for redesigning and rebuilding the Church Street library on its current site within the budgetary constraints ($27 million) given to them by the city. Jayson was not advocating for this option but presenting a picture of what is possible and evaluating its feasibility. Their presentation was the first specific example we’ve been given—unlike the purely conceptual and imaginary notion of a mixed use parking-library-housing (-office-retail?) thing—of what a reconceived library might look like, and what it would cost at current rates (expected to escalate 8 to 10% per year).
The city’s premature attempt to impose on Santa Cruz their ill-conceived garage-library elicited a backlash in the community that has moved the City Council to appoint a subcommittee (Justin Cummings, Sandy Brown and Donna Meyers) to evaluate possible options. Jayson’s objective take on renovation was a reality check for partisans of all persuasions. By reducing the footprint of the existing building to its seismically sound core 30,000 square feet with a higher proportion of publicly accessible space, replacing the one-story outer sections with landscaping and usable outdoor patios, and turning the entrance toward Center Street facing City Hall, the newly redesigned and reconstructed library would remain, appropriately, an integral part of Civic Center. When the Civic Auditorium is renovated, as planned, the combination will revitalize the civic (as distinct from commercial) heart of Santa Cruz.
Rebuilding the library where it stands would also spare the magnolia trees and open space of Lot 4, targeted as the site for the garage based project a few blocks away. The reduced square footage would make for a less expansive space than some would like to see, but no one has shown us how the mixed use model would produce a better library. And while some of the adult book collection would have to be distributed among the branch libraries to make more room for children’s books, the system would continue to function as it does now, with books freely circulated from one branch to another. Renovation of the two story core of the library would also be a far “greener” use of the existing building than tearing it down or constructing a concrete behemoth on Cedar Street. And it costs less to heat and cool and maintain a smaller building.
The rub is that in order to do more than a bare-bones renovation for $27 million it will cost an additional $7 million (at current rates) to add the esthetic touches and handsome landscaping that would make it a stunning architectural attraction. Additional funds would likewise be needed to build the library-garage, and nobody knows or is willing to guess how many more millions of over-the-top dollars that would require. Ace fundraiser Vivian Rogers of Friends of the Library claims that it’s easier to raise money for a new and bigger project than for the scaled-down remodel of the old library—but that is a self-defeating prophecy reflecting her own institutional preference for the mixed-use megalith. Someone who believes in the value of conservation and renovation, a well informed, articulate enthusiast, could surely convince prospective donors of both bang-for-the-buck and environmental benefits of leaving the library in Civic Center, where it belongs.
The next stage of this saga is a call for proposals, with specific designs rather than vague ideas, of what the mixed-use block-long five story structure would actually look like, and what it would cost. Then the City Council and the community can compare the choices and people can decide for themselves what is most healthy for downtown, long term.
If I had $7 million to spare, I would rather invest it in an environmentally sensitive, appropriately scaled and located rebirth of a building whose bones are good than in a space-consuming, auto-centric Taj Garage that would obliterate one of downtown’s most attractive open spaces.
Op-ed, Santa Cruz Sentinel
January 3, 2020
Last month I attended the Santa Cruz Downtown Library Renovation Cost Assessment Community Meeting, an opportunity for Abe Jayson and Katie Stuart of Jayson Architects to introduce the public to their ideas for redesigning and rebuilding the Church Street library on its current site within the budgetary constraints ($27 million) given to them by the city. Jayson was not advocating for this option but presenting a picture of what is possible and evaluating its feasibility. Their presentation was the first specific example we’ve been given—unlike the purely conceptual and imaginary notion of a mixed use parking-library-housing (-office-retail?) thing—of what a reconceived library might look like, and what it would cost at current rates (expected to escalate 8 to 10% per year).
The city’s premature attempt to impose on Santa Cruz their ill-conceived garage-library elicited a backlash in the community that has moved the City Council to appoint a subcommittee (Justin Cummings, Sandy Brown and Donna Meyers) to evaluate possible options. Jayson’s objective take on renovation was a reality check for partisans of all persuasions. By reducing the footprint of the existing building to its seismically sound core 30,000 square feet with a higher proportion of publicly accessible space, replacing the one-story outer sections with landscaping and usable outdoor patios, and turning the entrance toward Center Street facing City Hall, the newly redesigned and reconstructed library would remain, appropriately, an integral part of Civic Center. When the Civic Auditorium is renovated, as planned, the combination will revitalize the civic (as distinct from commercial) heart of Santa Cruz.
Rebuilding the library where it stands would also spare the magnolia trees and open space of Lot 4, targeted as the site for the garage based project a few blocks away. The reduced square footage would make for a less expansive space than some would like to see, but no one has shown us how the mixed use model would produce a better library. And while some of the adult book collection would have to be distributed among the branch libraries to make more room for children’s books, the system would continue to function as it does now, with books freely circulated from one branch to another. Renovation of the two story core of the library would also be a far “greener” use of the existing building than tearing it down or constructing a concrete behemoth on Cedar Street. And it costs less to heat and cool and maintain a smaller building.
The rub is that in order to do more than a bare-bones renovation for $27 million it will cost an additional $7 million (at current rates) to add the esthetic touches and handsome landscaping that would make it a stunning architectural attraction. Additional funds would likewise be needed to build the library-garage, and nobody knows or is willing to guess how many more millions of over-the-top dollars that would require. Ace fundraiser Vivian Rogers of Friends of the Library claims that it’s easier to raise money for a new and bigger project than for the scaled-down remodel of the old library—but that is a self-defeating prophecy reflecting her own institutional preference for the mixed-use megalith. Someone who believes in the value of conservation and renovation, a well informed, articulate enthusiast, could surely convince prospective donors of both bang-for-the-buck and environmental benefits of leaving the library in Civic Center, where it belongs.
The next stage of this saga is a call for proposals, with specific designs rather than vague ideas, of what the mixed-use block-long five story structure would actually look like, and what it would cost. Then the City Council and the community can compare the choices and people can decide for themselves what is most healthy for downtown, long term.
If I had $7 million to spare, I would rather invest it in an environmentally sensitive, appropriately scaled and located rebirth of a building whose bones are good than in a space-consuming, auto-centric Taj Garage that would obliterate one of downtown’s most attractive open spaces.
Important column on how an unneeded parking garage gets justified. Bowling alley and swimming pool will be next add-ons! We need a great library and we need affordable housing but we don't need a parking garage on lot 4.
"You want some affordable housing with that?"
by Stephen Kessler
Santa Cruz Sentinel
November 16, 2019
Remember Downtown Forward? That was the organization or civic group or marketing slogan formed a few months ago, organized by Councilwoman Cynthia Mathews, whose main purpose was to promote the mixed-use garage-library-housing thing on Lot 4 in downtown Santa Cruz. Downtown Forward as a brand name appears to have disappeared, but perhaps its agents have just gone underground to operate independently. In any event they have mounted their final offensive via Op-Eds and letters on this page promoting their Taj Garage, which now prominently includes “affordable housing,” everybody’s political magic words.
Originally the garage was a garage because we were told we desperately needed the parking, and to build a new library into it would save big bucks by pooling various resources. “Staff,” City Manager Martín Bernal told me, came up with this brilliant concept, no doubt because they sincerely thought it was best for the city. But a lot of local people did not agree and the idea was sent back to whatever committee rethinks bad ideas. Presto change-o! “Affordable housing” was added into the mix, and now it is neither the garage nor the library that gets top billing, but affordable housing.
I have asked before why, if we needed parking so badly, we can now sacrifice hundreds of parking spaces for floors and floors of apartments where cars were supposed to be parked. No answer has been forthcoming. But everybody loves affordable housing, so as an artificial sweetener to the garage-library we now are told to expect a lot of affordable housing besides. The fact that the current library can be rebuilt as a fresh component of a renovated and revived Civic Center—the Civic Auditorium also to be updated and remodeled—doesn’t seem to matter to those, like Mathews (who happens to own a historic house kitty-corner from the proposed library-garage, which disqualifies her from voting as a council member but not as an orchestrator for the development), hell-bent on parking the library in a towering concrete behemoth.
Whether they can’t see the forest for the trees, or the cars for the apartments, or they’re just so fixated on their bottom line that they can’t see what’s in front of them, these well meaning community leaders, instead of just leaving the library out of it where it belongs, have added affordable housing because who could be against that? But what exactly does “affordable housing” mean? And affordable to whom? A schoolteacher? A police officer? A restaurant worker? A hotel housekeeper? A firefighter? A store clerk? A disabled homeless person? What’s affordable to one of these might not be affordable to another. So who decides what is affordable to whom, and on what basis?
Homeless-rights activists and property-rights advocates have this much in common: they all love affordable housing. What’s not to love? It can rationalize whatever you want to do. Who finances, designs and builds such housing, and who if anyone profits, or breaks even, or writes it off, is seldom explained. The mixed-use library- housing-garage promoters have no design, no plans, no builder, no bids and no idea what their chimera will cost, and therefore they can’t honestly guarantee anything about it, least of all that it will be in any way affordable to anyone.
Staff, the city, Councilwoman Mathews and Downtown Forward should think ahead for quality of civic life and leave Lot 4 to be redesigned and developed as a public plaza, for much less money than a multi-story garage and for far lighter environmental impact; leave the library where it is and custom-rebuild it to the patrons’ needs per a proposal already sketched by a prospective architect; and rebuild several stories taller the two large two-story parking structures already scheduled to be “decommissioned.” Other city lots can be developed as affordable housing if creative planners and housing promoters can figure out a way to pay for it. That means putting together deals with banks and developers and government entities that can benefit from doing good.
Santa Cruz Sentinel
November 16, 2019
Remember Downtown Forward? That was the organization or civic group or marketing slogan formed a few months ago, organized by Councilwoman Cynthia Mathews, whose main purpose was to promote the mixed-use garage-library-housing thing on Lot 4 in downtown Santa Cruz. Downtown Forward as a brand name appears to have disappeared, but perhaps its agents have just gone underground to operate independently. In any event they have mounted their final offensive via Op-Eds and letters on this page promoting their Taj Garage, which now prominently includes “affordable housing,” everybody’s political magic words.
Originally the garage was a garage because we were told we desperately needed the parking, and to build a new library into it would save big bucks by pooling various resources. “Staff,” City Manager Martín Bernal told me, came up with this brilliant concept, no doubt because they sincerely thought it was best for the city. But a lot of local people did not agree and the idea was sent back to whatever committee rethinks bad ideas. Presto change-o! “Affordable housing” was added into the mix, and now it is neither the garage nor the library that gets top billing, but affordable housing.
I have asked before why, if we needed parking so badly, we can now sacrifice hundreds of parking spaces for floors and floors of apartments where cars were supposed to be parked. No answer has been forthcoming. But everybody loves affordable housing, so as an artificial sweetener to the garage-library we now are told to expect a lot of affordable housing besides. The fact that the current library can be rebuilt as a fresh component of a renovated and revived Civic Center—the Civic Auditorium also to be updated and remodeled—doesn’t seem to matter to those, like Mathews (who happens to own a historic house kitty-corner from the proposed library-garage, which disqualifies her from voting as a council member but not as an orchestrator for the development), hell-bent on parking the library in a towering concrete behemoth.
Whether they can’t see the forest for the trees, or the cars for the apartments, or they’re just so fixated on their bottom line that they can’t see what’s in front of them, these well meaning community leaders, instead of just leaving the library out of it where it belongs, have added affordable housing because who could be against that? But what exactly does “affordable housing” mean? And affordable to whom? A schoolteacher? A police officer? A restaurant worker? A hotel housekeeper? A firefighter? A store clerk? A disabled homeless person? What’s affordable to one of these might not be affordable to another. So who decides what is affordable to whom, and on what basis?
Homeless-rights activists and property-rights advocates have this much in common: they all love affordable housing. What’s not to love? It can rationalize whatever you want to do. Who finances, designs and builds such housing, and who if anyone profits, or breaks even, or writes it off, is seldom explained. The mixed-use library- housing-garage promoters have no design, no plans, no builder, no bids and no idea what their chimera will cost, and therefore they can’t honestly guarantee anything about it, least of all that it will be in any way affordable to anyone.
Staff, the city, Councilwoman Mathews and Downtown Forward should think ahead for quality of civic life and leave Lot 4 to be redesigned and developed as a public plaza, for much less money than a multi-story garage and for far lighter environmental impact; leave the library where it is and custom-rebuild it to the patrons’ needs per a proposal already sketched by a prospective architect; and rebuild several stories taller the two large two-story parking structures already scheduled to be “decommissioned.” Other city lots can be developed as affordable housing if creative planners and housing promoters can figure out a way to pay for it. That means putting together deals with banks and developers and government entities that can benefit from doing good.
A call for sanity on a downtown public space for Santa Cruz!
Leave a little open space downtown
by Stephen Kessler
SANTA CRUZ SENTINEL
September 29, 2019
Santa Cruz city planners have a plan to develop virtually every square foot of available land downtown with five- and six-story mixed-use buildings—housing, parking and commercial structures—to meet perceived demand for all three things. The rationale for this high-density vision is to create a more pedestrian-friendly urban core, a residential, dining and shopping district that will concentrate much of our growing population in a few square blocks of living space where complementary activities will benefit everyone and advance the city’s economic and cultural development.
A key piece of real estate in this big-picture plan is Lot 4, along Cedar Street between Lincoln and Cathcart, where officials envision the centerpiece of downtown development as a block-long parking-library-housing complex that would supposedly be a tourist and community magnet where kids could cultivate their extracurricular education, drivers could park their electric cars and residents could reside in affordable apartments. What “affordable” means in the context of growing demand for housing is unclear, but presumably it suggests that working people of modest means could afford to live there. Like “vibrant,” another favorite buzzword of downtown boosters, “affordable” is relative and vague and never defined by those who claim to favor such feel-good adjectives.
Without significant public investment—also known as taxes —affordable housing in newly constructed developments with “green” environmental standards will never be affordable to build. Measure H in the last election, written to address this problem with a modest property tax increase endorsed by a broad array of community leaders, was defeated. So how to achieve popular buy-in for government-subsidized affordable housing remains an open question, to which the popular answer has thus far been “No way.” One way municipal budget jugglers are attempting to get around this fact is to combine available funds, on Lot 4, in the library-garage-apartment complex, whose parking component keeps shrinking as the housing component grows. (No design as yet exists for this concept, so any estimate of cost is purely speculative.)
Meanwhile another group of local citizens and downtown business owners has been generating popular support for another option for Lot 4: an open plaza or town commons that would use the existing features of the site—nearly a dozen large magnolias and liquid amber trees that shade the weekly farmers market—to create an inviting gathering place for outdoor community events and cultural and social activity, including that most civilized activity of doing nothing in particular; of hanging out, and of breaking up the architectural mass of large buildings. In Healdsburg, in Sonoma, in Paso Robles and other charming California towns, such plazas enhance the quality of life immensely.
When you picture Santa Cruz 20 or 30 years from now, which do you think would be a greater civic asset: a public park that affords relief from the surrounding massive blocks of hulking buildings, or yet another enormous sunlight obliterating structure (even if it includes the socially redeeming element of a library)? As a longtime local resident and a realist, I have no objection in principle to increased density downtown. What I and many others object to is an urban center chockablock with huge, architecturally mediocre monoliths and no complementary open space between them.
To build a park or plaza on Lot 4, renovate the library where it is in Civic Center, put parking where it belongs around the periphery, and construct whatever housing the market and the public can bear is a holistic plan that makes more long-term sense than cramming as many big buildings as possible into what space remains. The leafy relief of a green commons will even make the surrounding buildings look better. Why champions of the Taj Garage, with their eyes on the bottom line (and thus oblivious of the increasingly crowded skyline) can’t see the logic of this remains a mystery, especially when a plaza would cost far less to build while creating a center of downtown life more vibrantly inviting for everyone.
SANTA CRUZ SENTINEL
September 29, 2019
Santa Cruz city planners have a plan to develop virtually every square foot of available land downtown with five- and six-story mixed-use buildings—housing, parking and commercial structures—to meet perceived demand for all three things. The rationale for this high-density vision is to create a more pedestrian-friendly urban core, a residential, dining and shopping district that will concentrate much of our growing population in a few square blocks of living space where complementary activities will benefit everyone and advance the city’s economic and cultural development.
A key piece of real estate in this big-picture plan is Lot 4, along Cedar Street between Lincoln and Cathcart, where officials envision the centerpiece of downtown development as a block-long parking-library-housing complex that would supposedly be a tourist and community magnet where kids could cultivate their extracurricular education, drivers could park their electric cars and residents could reside in affordable apartments. What “affordable” means in the context of growing demand for housing is unclear, but presumably it suggests that working people of modest means could afford to live there. Like “vibrant,” another favorite buzzword of downtown boosters, “affordable” is relative and vague and never defined by those who claim to favor such feel-good adjectives.
Without significant public investment—also known as taxes —affordable housing in newly constructed developments with “green” environmental standards will never be affordable to build. Measure H in the last election, written to address this problem with a modest property tax increase endorsed by a broad array of community leaders, was defeated. So how to achieve popular buy-in for government-subsidized affordable housing remains an open question, to which the popular answer has thus far been “No way.” One way municipal budget jugglers are attempting to get around this fact is to combine available funds, on Lot 4, in the library-garage-apartment complex, whose parking component keeps shrinking as the housing component grows. (No design as yet exists for this concept, so any estimate of cost is purely speculative.)
Meanwhile another group of local citizens and downtown business owners has been generating popular support for another option for Lot 4: an open plaza or town commons that would use the existing features of the site—nearly a dozen large magnolias and liquid amber trees that shade the weekly farmers market—to create an inviting gathering place for outdoor community events and cultural and social activity, including that most civilized activity of doing nothing in particular; of hanging out, and of breaking up the architectural mass of large buildings. In Healdsburg, in Sonoma, in Paso Robles and other charming California towns, such plazas enhance the quality of life immensely.
When you picture Santa Cruz 20 or 30 years from now, which do you think would be a greater civic asset: a public park that affords relief from the surrounding massive blocks of hulking buildings, or yet another enormous sunlight obliterating structure (even if it includes the socially redeeming element of a library)? As a longtime local resident and a realist, I have no objection in principle to increased density downtown. What I and many others object to is an urban center chockablock with huge, architecturally mediocre monoliths and no complementary open space between them.
To build a park or plaza on Lot 4, renovate the library where it is in Civic Center, put parking where it belongs around the periphery, and construct whatever housing the market and the public can bear is a holistic plan that makes more long-term sense than cramming as many big buildings as possible into what space remains. The leafy relief of a green commons will even make the surrounding buildings look better. Why champions of the Taj Garage, with their eyes on the bottom line (and thus oblivious of the increasingly crowded skyline) can’t see the logic of this remains a mystery, especially when a plaza would cost far less to build while creating a center of downtown life more vibrantly inviting for everyone.
