Quick Take
A joint city council/planning commission meeting Tuesday is the first step in moving forward with what is now a concrete plan for expanding downtown Santa Cruz into the area south of Laurel Street, with a new, permanent Warriors arena and up to 1,600 housing units.
All of the surveys, policy directions, debates and discussions over the past 18 months around a proposed expansion of Santa Cruz’s downtown have finally been distilled into a concrete draft plan. Published earlier this month, the public review draft of the plan for the South of Laurel Area District, which Lookout is naming the “SoLa” district, represents the city’s first real swing at shaping a once-in-a-generation reimagining of downtown Santa Cruz.
We are still a ways out from a formal vote on the plan, which senior city planner Sarah Neuse said could come as soon as the beginning of 2025 “if everything goes smoothly.” But such a dramatic and complicated reshuffling of downtown to make room for a new, permanent Santa Cruz Warriors arena and up to 1,600 new housing units — fit into what could be 12-story towers — requires some analysis by those who will vote on it. On Tuesday, the city council and planning commission will convene to begin doing just that.
The study session, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. at city hall, will give councilmembers, planning commissioners and the public a chance to ask staff questions about the proposal for the area south of Laurel Street, give feedback and discuss whether the plan represents an agreed-upon vision for the future of the city.
The public will have until July 10 to submit comments on the SoLa vision, which is a first, but comprehensive, draft of the district’s land-use plan. Tuesday’s meeting will be only a study and feedback session. No action or adoption will occur at the meeting or immediately afterward. If all goes smoothly, Neuse said, the city could begin hosting public meetings on a final draft of the plan near the beginning of 2025, followed by city council, then California Coastal Commission, votes.
City planners envision SoLa taking what works along the heart of Pacific Avenue and expanding it south, connecting downtown Santa Cruz with the San Lorenzo Riverwalk to the north and the beach to the south. What today is largely defined by an outdated and temporary Kaiser Permanente Arena, an Ace Hardware store, a used car lot and Firefly Coffee House could within 10 to 15 years host a modern, 4,000-seat-capacity Santa Cruz Warriors arena, about 1,600 housing units (at least 20% of which will be affordable) and residential towers rising to 12 stories. In March, the plan sat in the crosshairs of Measure M, but voters defeated that ballot measure, which would have capped building height throughout the city and strained the ability of developers to build 12-story buildings.
In 2022, the downtown expansion plan once mulled allowing 15-to-17-story towers to maximize the housing potential. That idea, which drew furor from residents across the city, got squelched by city council at the start of 2023. Led by Mayor Fred Keeley, the city set a policy of capping building heights in the area at 12 stories and the total unit at 1,600 units, while reserving at least 20% of the total new units for low-income tenants.
Headed into Tuesday’s meeting, Keeley reemphasized that 12 stories, 1,600 units and 20% affordability is the city’s policy — which he calls the 12/16/20 plan — and that he won’t accept a deviation from those numbers.
“This isn’t some new look at the downtown plan,” Keeley told Lookout. “We’ve already decided what we’re doing, this meeting is all about how we do it.”
“The city council unanimously adopted the [12 stories, 1,600 units and 20% affordability] plan in January 2023 and that is the plan,” Keeley said in an email. “The [downtown expansion plan] work from here is to implement that plan.”
How the city contains development to a specific height and unit count has gotten more difficult in the modern era of California housing laws, which incentivize developers to build large, dense projects by enticing them with carrots such as unlimited height in exchange for commitments to include affordable housing in their projects. To see what state law makes possible in today’s housing landscape, look no further than the Clocktower Center project proposed by Workbench, featuring an up to 16-story tower behind the city’s town clock.
Neuse said city planners set out to get as close to 12/16/20 as possible but that the state’s incentives, which override local rules on density and height, make it challenging.
“We’re still at the point of saying, ‘We’ll do our best,’” to encourage development to fall into a 12/16/20 shape, Neuse told Lookout. But she said the city will need to compete with state incentives that “have gotten sweeter.” The city is not sure how it will do that, and Neuse expects that to be a centerpiece to the conversation around SoLa on Tuesday and moving forward.
Keeley said he is mulling the creation of a special zoning district for the neighborhood, the details and impact of which he plans to unveil at the Tuesday meeting. The goal, he said, is unchanged from the city council’s policy direction from last year.
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