Quick Take
The Clocktower Center proposal in downtown Santa Cruz has been downsized, but tensions remain. While some praise its potential to address a housing shortage, critics argue it’s still too tall, too disruptive, and woefully lacking in parking.
Clocktower Center, the controversial mixed-use proposal in downtown Santa Cruz, is now nearly half the height as when local developer Workbench first proposed it earlier this year. Yet, the overwhelming message from the community during a meeting Monday remains the same: It’s too big, with too few parking spaces.
When Workbench initially submitted the proposal in March for the old Santa Cruz County Bank lot behind the town clock, the 16-story, 260-unit vision stirred a citywide frenzy and has since been the single most-talked about project in the county. No building proposed in Santa Cruz County had ever reached such heights, and if the Clocktower Center was indeed possible, residents expressed a mixture of dread and excitement over what might be ahead.
Workbench later discovered the vision was perhaps too ambitious and likely wouldn’t find funding in the conservative real estate financing market. Then, in October, Workbench resubmitted a proposal for a revamped vision: eight stories, 221 units with 32 units to be subsidized for low-income tenants. On Monday, Workbench and city staff reintroduced the project during a virtual town hall to collect feedback from the community.
Although some attendees lauded the project for bringing much-needed dense housing and subsidized units to downtown — with some even saying they were “disappointed” the project wasn’t taller — many of the comments criticized the proposal’s height and Workbench’s plan to include only 49 parking spaces.
“The idea that every apartment renter is going to be a bike rider is ridiculous,” Ana Rasmussen said. “We’re not at a place where everyone would rather have a bike than a car.”
City senior planner Tim Maier and Workbench CEO Tim Gordin emphasized multiple times that state law — Assembly Bill 2097, passed in 2022 — eliminated on-site parking requirements for housing projects near high-frequency transit stops. The Clocktower Center could technically be built with zero automobile parking spots on site.
Still, residents hung on to the parking issue, urging city staff to “just admit” that a downtown project that proposes 221 housing units with only 49 parking spaces is going to create a parking problem. Lee Brokaw, a local general contractor who is a fixture of these kinds of meetings, said Workbench could still be a good neighbor and provide more parking.
“Just because state law says you don’t have to provide parking doesn’t mean you can’t provide parking,” Brokaw said. “This whole trying to social engineer people out of cars when our entire infrastructure is built around cars is insane.”
Maier and Samantha Haschert, a principal planner with the city, tried to urge those attending the meeting to focus on “constructive feedback” that went beyond simple distaste. Hashcert said if “20 people came to this meeting” and said they wanted the building to look more like the town clock’s architectural style, then the architect might consider that and make changes.
However, the comments were less unified ideas and more individual grievances with the proposed appearance and scale, with multiple people critiquing the building’s color and its incongruity with the town clock, which many consider to be an essential element of the city’s built environment.
Former city councilmember Lynn Robinson said the developer and the city were destined to hear issues about the appearance since “most of us are going to respond to this building from the outside.” Robinson said despite the cleared political path for projects of this size, the city and its residents should still demand excellence in architectural design.
Workbench will have to get the Clocktower Center approved by the city’s planning commission and city council, though the timing still remains uncertain. Changes in state law over the past few years have slowly deteriorated local control and a city council’s ability to reject a dense housing project with affordable units like Clocktower Center.
“This sounds like a done deal and that really disturbs me,” a woman who went by M Peg Galli said. “The issue is the scale of this and all the buildings going up in Santa Cruz. I hope city planning staff will stand for us and not just the people who come in here” hoping to make a lot of money.
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