Quick Take
Housing activist Frank Barron rebuts a rebuttal here and insists he is not against responsible building. He believes the City of Santa Cruz can achieve its goals for the South of Laurel neighborhood, build a new Warriors arena and maintain current height limits, “which allow for around six to eight stories.”
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Casey Beyer, former chief executive officer of the Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce, misunderstood my position regarding the unintended consequences of the City of Santa Cruz’s proposed Downtown Plan Expansion project. In his Community Voices piece on March 6, he suggests I want to keep Santa Cruz a sleepy beach town, which is not my position.
I oppose the project as it is being proposed. I am not averse to building.
This project aims to upzone 29 acres in the South of Laurel area (SoLa), adding 1,600 to 1,800 new housing units in a series of 12-plus story high-rises, and a new Santa Cruz Warriors arena. The unintended consequence is that this rezoning as proposed, when combined with the new state 100% density bonus law (Assembly Bill 1287), would allow developers to build multiple 25-to-30-story skyscrapers in SoLa. And the city couldn’t say “no” because the state law trumps local height restrictions.
In my Feb. 16 op-ed, I used the proposed 16-story Clocktower Center shown above as an example of what this new density bonus law, AB 1287, now allows. This 192-foot building would be permitted in a 50-foot height limit zone, due to AB 1287. That’s 3.8 times the city’s height limit at that location. If the city council raises the height limit in most of SoLa up to 85 feet, as proposed, using the same calculus, 3.8 times 85 feet is 323 feet … that’s a 30-story skyscraper.
That’s surely not what the city leaders have in mind for SoLa, but that’s where they might be headed unless they change course.
Beyer assumed people like me, who are opposed to the massive SoLa upzoning, and its unintended consequences, are against the entire SoLa project or even against all new development in Santa Cruz. That is far from the truth.
Our new citizens’ group Santa Cruzans for Responsible Development is generally supportive of the SoLa project’s goals of 1,600 new housing units, with a net 20% “below-market-rate” and construction of a new Warriors/multiuse arena.
We just don’t want the city to unintentionally give developers a permanent entitlement to build 20-to-30-story skyscrapers.
The city does not need to do this upzoning to achieve its SoLa goals and to build a new arena. All this can be accommodated under current height limits, which allow for around six to eight stories when the new AB 1287 density bonus is added. Even the Warriors have said they can accomplish the project goals without going above seven to eight stories.
At six to eight stories, SoLa would have Paris-level density, and would provide plenty of housing for the “next generation” of Santa Cruzans. According to the city’s most recent Housing Element, there is ample room in SoLa, and throughout downtown and the rest of the city, to meet the state-mandated housing goals, without raising the city’s existing height and density limits.
The proposed SoLa upzoning would be a huge unforced error.
No one is saying we should go back to the 1970s, as Beyer implies. Most of us agree with him that SoLa is a good place for new residential and commercial growth and redevelopment, that it should have new public spaces, pedestrian infrastructure and a new multiuse arena.
If you would like to find out more about Santa Cruzans for Responsible Development’s effort to convince city leaders not to raise height limits unnecessarily, please join us at our first community meeting at London Nelson Center (Room 3) at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, April 5.
We can build responsibly, meeting our housing and community goals, without raising height limits and allowing for 20-to-30-story skyscrapers in Santa Cruz.
Frank Barron has lived in Santa Cruz County since 1969, and in the city of Santa Cruz most of the time since 1980. He is a retired urban planner, with 30 years’ experience working in the Monterey Bay region. He holds a master’s degree in urban planning from San Jose State University (1992) and a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from UC Santa Cruz (1985).