Quick Take
Pacific Station North, slated to break ground in February, will bring much-needed affordable housing to downtown Santa Cruz along with an updated Metro depot. However, that will come with traffic circulation changes and the loss of some street parking to make room for the buses that will need to operate off of the street while the new depot is under construction.
Among the many major changes to county infrastructure and transit services is Santa Cruz Metro’s goal of connecting badly needed housing to an updated public transit system. That’s where Pacific Station North and Pacific Station South come in.
Pacific Station South, stretching from the corner of Pacific Avenue and Laurel Street to the corner of Laurel and Front Street, has gone up very quickly since its May 2022 groundbreaking. Its final form will be a seven-story building with 70 affordable studios, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units. The bottom floor will include more than 3,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space as well as room for community services.
Pacific Station North involves the redevelopment of the current Metro depot directly adjacent to the Pacific Station South building. It is slated to include 128 affordable units and a new bus and transit hub facing Front Street. The project is expected to break ground Feb. 1 and take two years to complete.
All that will mean that Metro will be on the move — literally. The agency is planning to vacate its main transit center between Pacific Avenue and Front Street at Elm Street starting in February.
John Urgo, director of planning and development for Santa Cruz Metro, said Metro operations will move a block north for the next two years, to the area bounded by Soquel Avenue, Front Street and River Street surrounding Trader Joe’s and CVS Pharmacy.
The transit agency plans to reserve all street parking along the block of Front Street from outside that shopping center and continuing alongside the River Front Garage and Wells Fargo Bank branch for bus parking during layovers, which are the breaks that buses and operators take between runs.
The Trader Joe’s/CVS parking lot will remain open and accessible to the public. Urgo said the city is working on installing parking spots near the corner of Front and Cooper streets to make up for the loss of on-street spaces.
Metro’s existing stop on Front Street near the back door of Trader Joe’s will become its hub for routes serving Watsonville and the San Lorenzo Valley. The stop on Soquel Avenue in front of CVS will be the home for regional service like Highway 17 routes.
Urgo said Metro will operate its UC Santa Cruz service from a new stop to be built near the corner of River Street and Soquel Avenue, where the bridge begins. Metro’s customer service office will operate out of a storefront next to Oswald Restaurant.
The buses will take up the on-street parking from 6 a.m. to midnight and will stay in the Metro yard toward Highway 9 overnight.
Since Metro services will operate from the street, that means some temporary changes to downtown roads for the next couple years. River Street will become a one-way street going southbound so buses can use the northbound lane, though the city plans to install a new bike lane going in both directions.
“We’re going to have so many buses in the area that we just need the space and circulation to be able to run the service reliably,” Urgo said.
Latest news
Check out our Carmageddon road delay list here. This week, pay particular attention to:
Restriping along Highway 9 will close down one lane of traffic at various segments from San Lorenzo Avenue in Felton to the intersection of Highways 9 and 35. The closure will last from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. Monday through Friday, and one alternating lane of traffic will be open while the work is ongoing.
Northbound Highway 1 will see pavement work at several on- and off-ramps in South County, prompting closures of the exits for Airport Boulevard and Buena Vista Drive from Monday through Thursday between 9:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning.
The Pure Water Soquel wastewater purification project continues pushing forward in Santa Cruz. Crews will remain working on an architectural cover for the Laurel Street bridge so that the segment of pipe running along the bridge will fit aesthetically with the rest of the design. That will render one westbound lane of Laurel closed between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. from Monday through Friday.
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