Good morning! It is Tuesday, May 6, with a foggy start around Santa Cruz County forecast to give way to mostly sunny skies and temperatures ranging from the mid-60s to mid-70s.
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Lookout’s series on the future of downtown Santa Cruz continues, with Lily Belli digging into vacancies in the area and the hurdles to getting tenants into storefronts on Pacific Avenue and elsewhere. Not surprisingly, it’s a complicated picture.
Santa Cruz nonprofit Senderos, which teaches Latino culture and history through dance and music, has seen a federal grant canceled as part of the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts, Tania Ortiz reports. “It wasn’t a surprise, it was just disappointment,” Senderos’ executive director says.
Lookout photojournalist Kevin Painchaud was on hand Monday at Evergreen Cemetery as the City of Santa Cruz recognized May 5 as London Nelson Day, honoring the formerly enslaved man who donated land for the city’s first permanent schoolhouse in 1860.
Evergreen Cemetery is also the subject of an op-ed in Lookout’s Community Voices opinion section, with UC Santa Cruz student Phoebe Blackman writing about her experiences volunteering with maintenance and cleanup there. She marvels at the cemetery’s history but worries that much of it could be lost if the community doesn’t do more to preserve it.
The day’s headlines also include news on summer entertainment at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and praise for a member of the sheriff’s K9 unit – keep on reading.
Empty space: Why some downtown Santa Cruz storefronts stay dark for years
Despite new business openings in downtown Santa Cruz, several high-profile storefronts on Pacific Avenue — including the former homes of Palace Arts and Peet’s Coffee — have sat vacant for years, raising questions about barriers to revitalization. City leaders hope a proposed “vibrancy ordinance” will push property owners to lease long-empty spaces, but high renovation costs, permitting delays and market mismatches continue to stall progress. Lily Belli has the latest in our series on the future of downtown Santa Cruz.
➤ MORE COVERAGE: Find the full series here
Days after cultural celebration, Trump administration revokes Senderos arts grant
Senderos, a Santa Cruz-based nonprofit, faces funding cuts from the National Endowment for the Arts. The nonprofit received an email Friday night from the federal agency that it will no longer receive a $10,000 grant. Tania Ortiz reports.
DAILY DIGEST
That’s the news from Lookout this Tuesday morning, and we’ve got plenty more in the pipeline, with lots of ways you can keep up to date. Download the Lookout Santa Cruz app in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store to bring our award-winning local coverage along with you, and sign up here for breaking news alerts and all of our other newsletters. (One programming note: No newsletters this week from Lily Belli, who’s on vacation; Lily Belli on Food and Eaters Digest will resume next Tuesday and Friday, respectively.) You can also find Lookout’s mix of news and views on social media – come follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Bluesky.
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Thank you for reading – have a good Tuesday.
Will McCahill