Quick Take
Community centers, open gardens, pallet homes and possible parking options are all being explored as part of the City of Santa Cruz’s current draft of a report on its long-term vision to transform the Coral Street neighborhood into a center for housing and support services for the unhoused. Several business owners and representatives from the Coral Street area raised concerns about the vision during a planning commission meeting Thursday night.
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Santa Cruz officials laid out an ambitious, decadeslong proposal for the expansion of the Housing Matters campus and homeless services at a special meeting of the city’s planning commission Thursday night.
Community centers, open gardens, pallet homes and possible parking in the already limited areas are all being explored as part of the city’s current draft of the Coral Street Planning Report. So is a successful San Francisco model for a navigation center — a multilevel, mixed-use residential and services hub.
Quick Take
A draft of the Coral Street Visioning Report, to be presented Thursday at a meeting of the City of Santa Cruz Planning...
“This is the preferred option,” Justin Doull of the city-hired design consultant Dahlin Group, told the commission via livestream. “Residential, lobby and a real expansion of service-provider space oriented internally to the campus.”
The discussion centered around three key opportunity sites identified within the draft — 125 Coral St., the River Street shelter on the Housing Matters campus, and 112-116 Coral St. Because the visioning report is just that — a report and not a development plan — it explored several options for each location to maximize the use of the sites.
Along with the three key opportunity sites for the expansion, the controversial draft report also highlights “future opportunity sites” — 133 Fern St. and 803 River St. along with 118 and 129 Coral St. — all of which are currently owned not by the city or the nonprofit Housing Matters, but rather by private businesses.
Several business owners and representatives from the Coral Street area expressed their concerns during the public comment portion of the meeting.
“This proposal has a lot of challenges for us as business owners,” Michael Wood, owner of Michael Wood Metalsmith on Fern Street, told the commission. “It’s really difficult to have a business in that area — people are scared to be there.”
Jennifer Gallacher, co-owner of Santa Cruz Rehearsal Studios at 118 Coral St., commented that the proposed expansion would only exacerbate many issues the area is currently facing such as limited parking, people defecating on the streets and openly using illegal drugs.
“I don’t understand how this vision jumps the problems of today and creates a utopia that doesn’t exist,” she said.
Gallacher, as well as representatives for Graniterock, located at 129 Coral St., have vocalized their discontent with the visioning report in the past, citing the fact that their businesses operate in the area specifically because it’s commercially and industrially zoned, away from residential locations.
According to the visioning report draft, the city is exploring plans to turn 118 Coral into a commercial-residential mixed-use building with additional parking and 129 Coral into either a parking lot for Housing Matters staff or a site for 15 additional tiny homes, if the city ever acquires the parcels.
However, the businesses say they have no intention of letting go of their buildings.
“The fact is it is not for sale,” Gallacher said of her building.
The city’s stance remains that the inclusion of the private businesses within the planning area is just part of the bureaucratic process and the logical conclusion of the expansion. If the properties ever become available, the city wants to be prepared.
Yet after the public-comment portion of the meeting, Commissioner Cyndi Dawson motioned to exclude the businesses recognized in the Future Opportunity Sites planning area — effectively requesting that the city ”redraw the lines” on its map of properties identified in the visioning report — and said she was “very uncomfortable” with their inclusion.
“I agree that drawing the line does not change the legalities, but it’s something the businesses are asking for,” Dawson said. “They’re not going to be excluded by changing the line, but it shows goodwill that we are doing exactly what the commission promised: that we’re planning for a vibrant and successful area for both the homeless services and the businesses down there.”
The motion was seconded by Commissioner Sean Maxwell. Dawson and Maxwell recently co-authored an op-ed on Lookout voicing their concerns that the City of Santa Cruz isn’t approving enough affordable housing and that the city council too often bows to the whims of local developers.
However, the motion was denied 3-2, with only Dawson and Maxwell voting for it. Peter Kennedy, Julie Conway and Michael Polhamus all voted against the motion. Commissioners Mark Mesiti-Miller and Timerie Gordon were not present for the meeting. Gordon recused herself due to a conflict of interest regarding work she has done with Housing Matters.
Kennedy told Lookout he understands the businesses’ concerns but said government planning means looking beyond the present.
“When planning for long range, you just have to assume the businesses might change hands,” he said. “A lot of the time businesses feel like you’re targeting them specifically, but when you’ve been around the town for 30 years you see that things change.”
The planning commission review is the next step in the process for the Coral Street Visioning Report before it is brought to the Santa Cruz City Council sometime in April or May.
