Quick Take
After five years, Seabright Social will serve its last meal at the end of the month, with owners citing the Murray Street Bridge closure as the clear cause of a 30% drop in business. The loss of the neighborhood’s largest restaurant underscores the steep toll the multiyear retrofit project is taking on Seabright and harbor-area businesses.
After five years, Seabright Social, the largest restaurant in the area and an anchor for Santa Cruz’s Seabright neighborhood, is closing at the end of August. According to co-owner and general manager Jon Bates, blame rests solely on the closure of the Murray Street Bridge.
“One hundred percent, the reason we’re closing is because of the fiasco of the bridge and the lack of people coming to Seabright,” said Bates. “You can come at 2 p.m. on a Saturday when there should be lots of people walking around and the whole area is devoid of people.”
Like many restaurants, Seabright Social runs on thin margins, and those margins have become even thinner with steep increases in the costs of insurance, electricity and food. But after a rocky start opening during the pandemic in 2020, things were going well. Business was growing, and the more people in the community were recognizing the restaurant for its food and service, said Bates. “We were in a place where we were looking forward to the future,” he said.
That changed when the bridge closed to westbound traffic in late March. Business dropped by 15%, but with the changing political climate and tariff fears making headlines, it was difficult to pinpoint a single reason for the dip, said Bates. But when the bridge closed to all vehicle traffic in late June and sales dropped another 15% – a 30% total drop since the beginning of the year – the cause was obvious to him and his business partner, Keikilani McKay.
In April, they went on a month-to-month lease. Over the summer, they decided not to renew when the five-year lease came up for renewal. “It didn’t make sense to commit knowing that [the construction and closures] would continue for another three years,” said Bates. “It’s so sad for all of us. We have 19 employees that aren’t going to have a job.”
On Tuesday, Bates and several other Seabright and harbor-area business owners spoke at a city council meeting about the dramatic effect the closure has had on the neighborhood. The owners of longstanding businesses like The Crow’s Nest, La Posta and Java Junction said they are suffering from plummeting sales due to dramatically decreased traffic, and questioned whether they could survive through the construction period. The bridge is undergoing seismic retrofitting, with partial and full closures, through early 2028.
Bates said he thought many of the proposals at the city council meeting, such as opening the nearby rail line to pedestrians and cyclists, forgiving area businesses from city taxes, and low-interest loans, could help other owners, but would have been more effective if they’d been done before the bridge closed. He also said he thought community events like wine walks and block parties would give people an additional excuse to come to the area.
Bates has spent decades working in fine dining restaurants throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Oliveto in Oakland and Soif Wine Bar in Santa Cruz. For now, he plans to focus on two other passions: selling Italian wines and foraging and brokering wild mushrooms to chefs, as well as spending more time with his wife. “I can’t imagine I won’t be involved in food and wine in some way,” he said. “That’s my life.”
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