Quick Take
Chris Krohn, a former Santa Cruz city councilmember and mayor, believes the city is moving from an era of progressive politics to one where greed and transactional relationships are the primary motivators. He sees comparisons between Donald Trump’s “drill baby drill” politics to the Santa Cruz developer practice of what he calls “build baby build.” Here, he names names and suggests a response to those who are buying and selling our community.
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In the 1960s, Santa Cruz was the fastest-growing county in California. Progressives applied the brakes on those growth-at-any-cost public policies, and that culminated in five decades of left-leaning politics. The current Santa Cruz City Council is now making up for lost time and has taken up profit-driven municipal priorities.
While the progressives pursued big projects that benefited the public at large, the 2025 version of the Santa Cruz City Council appears hell-bent on pursuing only big projects that make big bucks for big developers. Given this luxury-housing-first economic picture, it is unlikely that our beloved wharf will be rebuilt any time soon, or all those shuttered downtown businesses – Peet’s Coffee, Palace Arts, Logos bookstore, Cafe Pergolesi, New Leaf, O’Neill Surf Shop and Rip Curl – will be coming back.
When New York investment bank Goldman Sachs bought the Outlook apartments on Western Drive in 2018 for $55.2 million, I knew Surf City was on Wall Street’s “greed is good” map.
Today, for what appears to include little public benefit, corporations like Anton DevCo of Sacramento (800 Pacific Ave.), Dinerstein Co. of Houston (555 Pacific) and Eagle Point Hotel Partners of Brooklyn, New York (Cruz Hotel), are making mincemeat out of our local government under the guise of “affordable” housing. These one-size-fits-all buildings are producing large profits for these corporations.
We’ve traded away our public benefits values for the soulless, late-stage capitalism of, by, and for the corporation. We’ve gone from the progressive era to the greed era in a few short years. Similar to the Donald Trump presidency, the era of greed in Santa Cruz flows only in the direction of the rich. This largesse is not ending up in the working-class pockets of locals, or Bay Federal Credit Union, but in the vaults of New York and San Francisco banks.
These massive building projects also employ few community members. Why has the city council not enforced its local-hire ordinance during this building boom, or passed a commercial vacancy tax to fill all those empty storefronts on Pacific? And why aren’t locals getting first right of refusal on all new affordable units?
Looking back, it was perhaps the enactment of the California Coastal Act, passed in 1976 by the state legislature, which brought together a cross-section of local environmental, social and political activists. Land-use attorneys like Gary Patton, Celia Scott and Jonathan Wittwer were all part of the Santa Cruz open space campaigns, which empowered local voters.
The progressive era was built on the notion that people can make history, individually and collectively. They were leaders in a political era who sought to enfranchise people through door-knocking and town hall meetings, not sideline them on Zoom meeting scams in which developers are able to not even acknowledge most public concerns.
A confluence of varied interests – hippies, labor, academics and the LGBTQ community – shaped this progressive period. There was a notion that environmental review was considered necessary and critical to our local quality of life. That the Commission for the Prevention of Violence Against Women would control its own budget and that the police department would be better working with a civilian review board. It was an era that saw the birth of the Diversity Center and put forward the idea that the budget for social services and the parks & recreation department might some day rival that of the police. Water conservation, alternatives to single-occupancy vehicles, sanctuary city status and affordable housing are the pillars of local progressive politics going on five decades now.
National political issues have always helped buoy local progressives, too: the Equal Rights Amendment, rent control, a ban on offshore oil drilling, opposition to Ronald Reagan’s Central American wars and Bernie Sanders’ call in 2016 for progressives and socialists to get active in local and domestic issues.
During this progressive era, we witnessed big plans come to fruition such as the Dolphin-Lee and Sycamore housing projects, Gault senior housing, the Salz Tannery Arts project and open space initiatives including Lighthouse Field, the Pogonip, Wilder Ranch and the Moore Creek uplands. The current era of greed has produced none of these types of community benefits.
Progressives often said no to bad projects, too. There is no convention hotel on Lighthouse Field, no 10,000 units of housing on Wilder Ranch or a nuclear power plant in Davenport. We opposed George W. Bush’s costly invasion of Iraq, the Patriot Act, reckless Beach Boardwalk expansion, a desalination plant and a freeway to the beach. Santa Cruz progressives were serious about carrying out the spirit and letter of the 1976 Coastal Act: “Protect, maintain, and where feasible, enhance and restore the overall quality of the coastal zone environment and its natural and artificial resources …”
This act truly saved Santa Cruz from looking like Miami Beach or downtown San José.
When does the current era of greed come to an end?
When we reclaim our politics and exercise power for the whole of Santa Cruz. While these corporate titans are watching their bank accounts grow, they remain wholly uninterested in protecting and preserving our natural beauty and the place we call home.
But, Santa Cruz is for sale only if we let it be.
It is time to get involved. Call a meeting, or attend one. It’s difficult to fight Trump’s Washington political reign of error, but we can still affect positive change here at home. We have to keep our eye on the prize that is Santa Cruz, and it’s the dreaded ninth inning. Our town is losing in this development game, but it’s a home game, and you know what, Mr. Developer? All of us who call this community home, we get to bat last. See you at the ballot box for some last licks!
Chris Krohn is a former Santa Cruz city councilmember and mayor, who for 20 years ran the environmental studies internship program at UC Santa Cruz. He retired last year.