Scenes from a historic night in Santa Cruz
Walking into Santa Cruz City Hall last Tuesday felt like a Santa Cruz Warriors home game. The city council’s chambers were at capacity, all seven of the public’s pews packed with people wearing golden T-shirts from the team’s brief playoff run that read “Our City, Our Team.”
My editor joked that they were paid plants, placed by the multibillion-dollar Golden State Warriors organization to show support for what would be one of the evening’s marquee discussion: approving a southward expansion of downtown Santa Cruz zoning that would make room for taller, denser mixed-use developments and a new arena where their Santa Cruz G League team could play.
No paid plants as far as I could tell. What I did notice, however, was that many of the people donning gold made up a sort of who’s who on the growth-friendly side of Santa Cruz County civic life: former Santa Cruz mayors Don Lane and Hilary Bryant; Santa Cruz City Schools Superintendent Kris Munro; Kristen Brown, a former Capitola mayor who now runs county’s chamber of commerce; Housing Santa Cruz County Executive Director Elaine Johnson; Digital Nest founder Jacob Martinez, to name a few.
The stars were also out on the growth-skeptic’s side of the ledger. Former Santa Cruz County supervisor Gary Patton made a rare speech at the lectern, and former Santa Cruz mayor Chris Krohn, longtime environmental advocates Rick Longinotti and Gillian Greensite, as well as Frank Barron, who helped lead the unsuccessful Measure M campaign last year to cap building height, and former city council candidate Hector Marin each made an appearance in the chambers.
The tight crowd of civic A-listers was appropriate in proportion to the night’s importance to city history. The plan, which passed unanimously, carries the potential to permanently reshape society’s footprint on downtown Santa Cruz.
Despite what a unanimous vote might say to a historian years from now, the evening included a surprising level of negotiation and, from my seat, a sense that the city’s elected officials had actually listened, not only to the supporters of this grand plan, but its critics as well.
From the earliest discussions about expanding downtown, the most steady concern from many longtime residents was how tall new buildings would reach. Years of debate had whittled down envisioned building heights from 17 stories to 15, and, for the past two years, the city seemed intent on capping new construction at 12 stories.
However, after the public made their comments, Councilmember Scott Newsome (District 4) and Vice Mayor Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson (D3) proposed one last compromise — a height cap of eight stories. Their colleagues all agreed.
Whether the city will be able to actually keep new buildings in the neighborhood under eight stories remains to be seen, as a state program allows developers who build a certain level of affordable housing to ignore local height restrictions. But the 11th-hour compromise on height at least signaled to a certain sect of the community that their organizing and advocating had not happened in vain.
“I think that we do have a lot of aligned values,” Kalantari-Johnson said before Tuesday’s vote. “I think we all want to see a beautiful, inclusive, accessible Santa Cruz. We have different ways of getting there, and that’s clear here tonight, but at the end of the day, I think we want the same thing.”
OF NOTE
That new Santa Cruz Warriors arena now has some visuals: For the first time, the Santa Cruz Warriors organization released early renderings of the long-discussed new basketball arena proposed for in the city’s south of Laurel Street neighborhood downtown. Tune in later this week, as my colleague and photographer extraordinaire Kevin Painchaud hits the streets of Santa Cruz to get feedback from residents on this proposed design. Early feedback ranges from cool and modern to conference center chic.
With Cummings ousted, Santa Cruz County loses direct line to the California Coastal Commission: Speaker Robert Rivas’ appointment of Monterey County Supervisor Chris Lopez to the California Coastal Commission marks a dramatic change in philosophy as the state land-use agency faces mounting pressure from the Trump administration and legislators up and down California. Lopez, who represents a large swath of Monterey County’s Salinas Valley, has a history of accepting campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry and has been vocal about his desire to put more workforce housing in the coastal zone.
Capitola environmental commission to choose a wharf build-out plan: City staff is bringing forward seven options for the next phase of the Capitola Wharf construction. The options range from focusing on public space, to creating a permanent structure, fishing areas, vendors and a marketplace. The commission meets Wednesday at 6 p.m.
Let the war of housing initiatives begin: With the signatures now submitted, local housing advocates in the city of Santa Cruz and the real estate industry prepare to face off with their opposing affordable housing ballot measures likely to go before voters in November. Even in an off-year, the people of Santa Cruz just can’t seem to escape these heated ballot measure battles.
POINTS FOR PARTICIPATION
The impact of an additional $12 billion state deficit on Santa Cruz County’s already layoff-addled budget: Since the Trump administration took over and Elon Musk began cutting local funding, county officials cautioned that the federal side represented only one dimension of what could be a difficult budget year. Those officials all pointed to the state government’s May release of its revised budget. Well, that budget came out last week, and it signaled an additional $12 billion deficit. On Tuesday, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors will hear a presentation on just how the state’s dire fiscal straits will impact its own, already austere, budget.
Capitola City Council will decide how it wants to find an interim city councilmember: Earlier this month, City Councilmember Alex Pedersen abruptly resigned from his seat on the city’s dais, marking the second mid-term resignation in less than five months. On Thursday, the remaining four city councilmembers will vote on how they want to find a replacement: host a special election or vote to appoint. In January, the city council hosted an open application process, through which it selected former city councilmember Margaux Morgan to fill the seat vacated by Yvette Brooks.
ONE GREAT POEM
“Art and Life” by Robert Hass (2007)
I am just getting back from a part-time writing residency up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where I vowed to find the space to reconnect with poetry. I brought Czeslaw Milosz, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Mary Oliver, Kenneth Rexroth and Leonard Cohen, even read some Anna Akhmatova. Yet, to my surprise, I return to my regular existence now firmly attached to the work of that gentle and profound, and even slightly erotic, Bay Area bard, Robert Hass.
Particularly this poem, above, “Art and Life” in which Hass transforms some surface-level musings on his attraction to Vermeer’s milkmaid into fully living within the centuries-old painting, thinking about the work of restoration, and love, and art.
Despite its apparent boundlessness, I could not find a digital copy of this poem anywhere on the internet — only a video of Hass reading a version at the University of Arizona in 2000. What strikes me about this video is how different so many of the verses are from the published version. It got me thinking that poems, perhaps more so than any other piece of art, are able to remain alive and changing until their authors die. I smile when I consider that the great Hass, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his collection of poetry that includes “Art and Life,” continued returning to his works, always tinkering and keeping them young.