Quick Take
Santa Cruz’s iconic Cocoanut Grove rebrands as “The Grove,” to reflect its shift from mainly ballroom to primarily a conference and event center, sparking a backlash among some locals upset at the loss of its neon-green sign and nostalgic for its history of big-band beachfront glamor.
The Cocoanut Grove is no more. The 20,000-square-foot ballroom and event space with ocean views will now be known simply as “The Grove: Santa Cruz Event Center.”
Kris Reyes, spokesperson for the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, which is operated by the Santa Cruz Seaside Company, said the rebranding had to do with the space’s shifting usage from band concerts, galas and weddings to a more professional atmosphere of conferences, seminars, meetings and trade shows.
“We rebranded the Cocoanut Grove to The Grove: Santa Cruz Event Center to reflect how the usage of this unique space has evolved, while still honoring our rich history,” Reyes said via text message.
Across the street, the La Bahia Hotel & Spa is on track to open Sept. 1, with reservations already available for rooms starting at over $500. The new La Bahia started construction in 2022 and replaces the Spanish colonial La Bahia Apartments, which was called the Casa Del Rey Apartments when it opened in 1926.
“There has been a considerable increase in the quality and quantity of hotel inventory in Santa Cruz, which is providing our community an opportunity to compete for larger conference, meeting and special event business that in the past we struggled to land,” Reyes said.
The green neon “Cocoanut Grove” sign was replaced in April, but the rebranding triggered an angry backlash on social media only this week after a picture taken from a side angle showing the outline of the old sign still visible under a heavy layer of blue paint was posted to the Reddit group r/SantaCruz. (The post has since been deleted.) Photographer Mark Woodward, who goes by Native Santa Cruz, posted a picture to Facebook that generated hundreds of comments.
“Seaside Co. missed so bad w/ this one,” someone wrote on Reddit. “Damn this might be the death of all things cool in SC,” wrote another. A lack of aesthetic sensibility bothered one Facebook user, who said the new design reminded her of the “Days Inn.”
But not to worry, the neon sign was kept and stored in the company’s archives, according to Reyes. He added the name change is not a “radical concept.” The Grove is still the same as the Cocoanut Grove, minus the cocoanut.
The Cocoanut Grove was originally dubbed the Casino Ballroom and opened in 1907 as part of confidence man and future Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Swanton’s second casino at the Boardwalk’s current site after the first went up in flames. In 1934, the Boardwalk rebranded Swanton’s Casino Ballroom to its more famous longstanding name, “Cocoanut Grove.”
The society of the 1930s was crazy for cocoanuts, spelled with an exotic “a.” “Cocoanut” is an archaic spelling of “coconut.” The “a” was possibly excised from “cocoanuts” to avoid confusion with the cocoa bean as cocoa became a more popular product, according to Merriam-Webster.
A 1929 Marx Brothers movie “The Cocoanuts,” the “Cocoanut Grove” ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and the 1938 film titled “Cocoanut Grove,” among others all shared that spelling of the name.
From the ‘30s to the ‘50s, the Cocoanut Grove featured big bands decked out in tuxedos who entertained beach crowds with brassy jazz and the swirl of saxophonic swing music. The Cocoanut Grove was the place to be seen and go for a good time out on the town.
“The young women come in their Saturday night finery, slinky cocktail dresses and nylons with a seam down the back of the leg,” Lookout’s Wallace Baine wrote in 1991 in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, describing the glamor of the spot’s glory days on the occasion of the Cocoanut Grove’s last big band concert.
Further back, a 1937 Sentinel headline reads, “Cocoanut Grove to be Remodeled and Made Modern.” Part of the $5,000 redesign was adding “metal cloth drapes” behind where the band sat “in the very latest of the modernist designs.”
No remodeling was done as part of the rebranding. The current suite of rooms and the glass-ceiling sun room were last remodeled in the 1980s.
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