Quick Take
Nationally recognized urban designer and consultant Robert Gibbs worked closely on downtown Santa Cruz a decade ago. We asked him about some of the issues facing downtown today.
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Downtown Santa Cruz is currently, as the young folks might say, going through a thing.
The downtown today is noticeably different than it was just a few years ago. This larval stage of downtown — new apartment buildings now open, a few others under construction, still others in the planning stages, new hotels, transportation hub, and possibly a big sports arena all in the works — has invited a great deal of free-floating anxiety and speculation about where the city is headed, much of it pessimistic, even apocalyptic.
The path to downtown’s future is not as linear as it might be under normal political/economic circumstances. Already, the emerging downtown is experiencing a slowdown, thanks to larger forces at work. It’s possible that the consequences of Donald Trump’s return to power will lead to a state of suspended animation in downtown, 2025 in freeze frame (serious nightmare fuel for many).
But with the faith — maybe naivete — that one day the transformation of downtown will resume toward a set plan with a few thousand new residents and several corresponding new business opportunities, it’s still worthwhile to ponder the principles of urban design, and where Santa Cruz stands according to those principles.
With that in mind, I had a conversation with Washington D.C.-based consultant and “urbanist” Robert J. Gibbs, author of the 2012 book “Principles of Urban Retail Planning and Development.” Gibbs is quite familiar with Santa Cruz, or at least pre-pandemic Santa Cruz. The city contracted with him and his firm for two separate economic development studies in the 2010s.
PREVIOUSLY IN THE SERIES
When we spoke, Gibbs was largely unfamiliar with what Santa Cruz has undergone since the pandemic. And he made clear that he was not a fortuneteller and that he was speaking generally when it comes to his ideas of urban design and how they might apply locally.
Fair enough. But for those who live, work or just love downtown Santa Cruz, Gibbs might have some insights to provide on what the city might look like once it completes its transformation. So, we chewed over a few questions.
Is there room for a new grocery store downtown?
Since New Leaf Community Market abandoned the old bank building at the corner of Pacific and Soquel avenues to reopen in a much larger space at the Gateway Plaza shopping center on River Street, downtown watchers have been wondering: Should downtown have another grocery store or supermarket?
An informal survey among downtowners I talked to revealed that there were basically three answers to that question: (1) yes, yes, a hundred times yes, (2) well, we still have Trader Joe’s, and (3) the new New Leaf location will still be a kinda/sorta downtown grocery store, especially if the San Lorenzo River levee, which is close to the new market, is “activated.”
On the grocery store question, Gibbs said, “More is more, when it comes to grocery stores. The more there are, the better they all do. In the U.S., the average household shops at four distinct grocery store brands. They’ll go to a large warehouse store like Costco. They’ll go to a local bakery or fish market. They’ll go to a conventional supermarket and then to maybe a small bodega or corner market.”
In the grocery chain world, Trader Joe’s is considered a “specialty market,” given that it largely sells its own brands. Gibbs said that Trader Joe’s is currently the top retailer for communities that his firm works with, with three times the sales per square foot of many mainstream supermarkets. “Everybody wants a Trader Joe’s, but it’s not a full-service grocery store,” he said. “But Trader Joe’s does better when it’s next to a big supermarket.”
What’s more, said Gibbs, a new grocery store brings with it other benefits: “The new grocery store will bring in the new florist, the bike shop, the frame shop, the hardware store. They all work together.” He said that a 40,000-square-foot supermarket (about the industry standard) could bring in and support another 40,000 to 60,000 square feet of other retail.
A grocery store will mostly be a boon for the several thousand new residents of downtown Santa Cruz who have not yet moved in. Downtown is already doing double duty as a kind of regional commercial district for tourists and local visitors and as a self-contained neighborhood for those who live nearby. An influx of new residents will shift that balance toward the neighborhood side, and in that calculus, a grocer would have to consider what it means for those living downtown who want to shop there without a car. That might mean, for example, a robust delivery service for residents who live within a few blocks. Such supermarkets exist, of course, in city centers. But, even with the new residents, will Santa Cruz reach the population density to make that feasible?
What about the parking?
Otherwise, a supermarket is going to require something that has been a flashpoint in downtown Santa Cruz for years: parking, lots and lots of easily accessible surface parking.
“Unless we’re talking about a major metropolis, they really do need parking, and at their front door,” said Gibbs. “People really do drive their cars when they go grocery shopping, and they really can’t carry them very far without their cars.”
(Trader Joe’s in Santa Cruz has exactly that kind of parking lot, and how maddening that parking lot can be has become a part of the daily conversation, underlining downtown’s demand for parking.)
Underground or garage parking is simply not an option for many communities. “Underground parking is impractical everywhere we go right now,” said Gibbs. “It’s about $100,000 per [parking] space.”
Grocery store or not, Gibbs said that parking in downtowns is simply a critical factor for whether or not merchants and business owners can make it. “Generally speaking,” he said, “each parking space, if metered or managed, generates about $200,000 per year in retail sales directly.”
But is it worth it for the grocer?
The 2020s have so far been very hard on new construction projects, and grocery chains would be looking at a sobering investment to build a new grocery store in Santa Cruz.
Nate Rose, the vice president of communications for the California Grocers Association in Sacramento, said escalating costs are a critical factor in determining whether a grocery store will come into a new area.
“What does it take to come into a new community and build a store, or retrofit an empty space?” said Rose. “What grocers are telling me is that it’s a minimum of $15 million up to $30 million to build out these stores. And just for a point of comparison, four or five years ago that cost was more like $8 million.”
PREVIOUSLY IN THE SERIES
It’s a big commitment for an industry that exists on low profit margins, about 1.6% on average, said Rose.
“So, whenever a grocer makes that decision, it’s not made lightly. It has to work over a very long time horizon,” he said. “They tend to think in decades not really years. They’re going into a relationship with that community.”
Rose also said that something unique to Santa Cruz — the city’s controversial Measure Z soda tax, which passed last November — could also play a big factor in attracting a supermarket. The tax generally is troubling for food retailers, said Rose.
“It’s less about the sugar-sweetened beverage itself,” he said, “and more about how it’s applied. It could apply to anything, like any product in the store, that it means that they could impose a business tax. And the interesting thing about the sugar-sweetened beverage ordinance is that it’s a business tax, it’s not a consumer tax. It’s not like a sin tax or regressive tax in the way we normally talk about it, where it’s a direct disincentive for the consumer. It’s actually levied on the distributor. So it’s a little bit of a different thing.”
How about a pedestrian-only mall?
The debate about closing streets permanently to car traffic has been going on for decades, and with Santa Cruz in a state of transition, the proposal is surfacing yet again. A significant number of downtown merchants are dead set against the permanent closure of Pacific Avenue or other intersecting streets to cars. And they have a champion in Robert Gibbs, who says flatly that such pedestrian-only malls are a romantic idea that simply don’t work in practice.
“Unless you’re in a major city, or have a major university in the downtown area, they don’t work,” said Gibbs, who noted that such pedestrian-only malls were popular with urban planners a half-century ago. “We found that generally there were about 250 pedestrian malls built in the ’60s and ’70s. Of those, only 10 worked, while 40 failed immediately, within two years.”
A pedestrian-only space, of course, requires parking that is even more inconvenient than it would be otherwise. And Gibbs said his research found that shoppers do not like remote parking: “There is a direct relationship between how long it takes to park and get to the store, and how much time you have left for shopping.”
On the other hand, carless spaces work wonderfully for outdoor restaurants and outdoor spots like downtown’s Abbott Square.
“My recommendation at this point would be: Don’t close it,” said Gibbs of his general advice to cities contemplating closing off their main downtown streets to cars. “If you do close it, it would become a great place for restaurants and dining, and it would become a really great place for the community just to get together and hang out. But it would not work as a shopping district.”
Are the retail vacancies concerning?
The precarious state of the Trump-tariff economy notwithstanding, Gibbs is bullish on downtown retail, even in Santa Cruz, which can sometimes feel hollowed out with retail vacancies.
“Santa Cruz is one of the great demographic markets,” he said. “Great weather, great tourist attraction. And the downtown should be having much more retail than it is. I think there’s unmet demand, especially if you have permission to build high-rise residential towers. I know firsthand that there are large shopping center developers looking for places just like that to open.”
New construction will also bring new, cleaner public spaces. When Gibbs and his company did two retail studies downtown in the previous decade, he reported that people from out of the area were reluctant to go downtown because of a general feeling of shabbiness on the streets. “I’m not going to blame all of it on avoiding loitering or homelessness,” he said. “It was more that the public realm just looked run-down, the streetscape, the landscaping, graffiti, dirt and grime.”
Gibbs was engaged in his work in Santa Cruz when Forever 21 opened on Pacific Avenue. That chain’s closure of its store in Santa Cruz was one of a series of closures that caused widespread consternation last winter. (In the case of Forever 21, it was nothing personal to Santa Cruz. The clothing chain is in bankruptcy and in the process of closing all its stores.)
“But there was a lot of controversy when Forever 21 opened there,” he said. “But within the first month, people were lined up around the block to go into it. It was amazing.”
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