Quick Take
Santa Cruz mayoral candidate Ryan Coonerty says he will fight against the six-story housing project proposed at Seabright and Soquel. Housing projects outside of downtown should be limited to granny units and modest buildings that are designed at scale with the neighborhood and include reasonable parking and setbacks, writes Coonerty.
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Like most Santa Cruzans, when I saw the plans submitted to the city for the Ace Hardware shopping center at Soquel and Seabright avenues, my reaction was instant: I hate it.
If elected mayor, I will fight this proposal with every legal tool available.
The developer, Workbench, filed two concepts: a six-story building with either 173 senior residences or 281 affordable apartments, plus 5,000 square feet of commercial space. The city says the Soviet-looking renderings are preliminary, not a finished design.
Good. Now is the time to say the massing and nearly everything about this project is wrong.
The proposal is several stories too tall for this neighborhood. The drawings show a structure pushed to the sidewalk, with no meaningful setback. One concept provides a mere 23 parking spaces for hundreds of residents and businesses. Pretending that nearly everyone will live car-free does not make cars disappear; it punishes residents and pushes them onto nearby streets, which in turn impacts residents and businesses in the neighborhood.
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Even worse, the project would demolish an active and vibrant neighborhood center. The Bagelry, Ace Hardware, Akira, Real Thai Kitchen, Surecuts, Fog City Tattoo, CleanStyle Laundry Lounge and other businesses provide needed services, jobs, tax revenue and gathering places. They make the neighborhood walkable and unique. They give us character. Moving a small business is expensive and risky. Many businesses never reopen.
We desperately need affordable housing. But affordability cannot be a blank check for bad planning. If we destroy places that provide jobs, services and character, we have not created a healthy neighborhood or city.
Santa Cruz is actually doing its part to address the housing crisis. We’ve earned some room to slow down, listen more to the community and get the next projects right.
California housing regulators require Santa Cruz to plan for 3,736 new homes through 2031 – nearly five times our previous allocation. Yet a CalMatters analysis shows Santa Cruz is permitting housing faster than the overall pace needed. We are at 197% of the required pace for very-low-income homes and 248% for low-income homes. Statewide, only 5.9% and 13.4% of jurisdictions are even on track in those categories.
To meet our allocation, I believe most large-scale development should be located downtown. Developments should be shorter than our tallest existing building – the Palomar – and well-designed. Underused parcels and surface parking lots should be the priority for development.
Downtown is walkable and close to jobs, transit, shopping and services. It can support more residents without forcing six-story monstrosities into Santa Cruz’s neighborhoods.
Outside of our city center, we should welcome well-designed, at-scale housing projects – including “granny” units and modest multifamily buildings – that fit their surroundings, provide reasonable setbacks and parking and minimize displacement.
One of the most important things we can do is join with other communities with a university to push Sacramento to count new UC Santa Cruz housing toward our allocation. Because UCSC housing doesn’t currently count, our community is being doubly impacted by its growth plus our state mandates.
We also must require UCSC to build housing on campus before it adds more students.
None of these changes will be easy. Since 2017, Sacramento has enacted 209 housing laws, taking away local power and discretion. Santa Cruz needs a mayor with experience navigating complicated state statutes and regulations – and who knows how to turn the authority we still possess into results.
State law has narrowed the city’s authority, but it hasn’t erased it. Santa Cruz can use regulatory power and incentives. When necessary, we should go to court. The next mayor’s job is to find every remaining point of leverage and use it to benefit our community.
I have experience doing exactly that. I’ve worked to bring disaster resources and relief from the state and federal government to our community, as well as hundreds of millions in grants for water, roads and bike routes. Over the years, I’ve successfully pushed back against policies that would harm minority communities, small businesses and nonprofits.
After public outcry over the Seabright project, my opponent, Ami Chen Mills, now says she opposes it. I welcome that. But her views on housing policy, as detailed by Santa Cruz Local, would increase development pressure on smaller neighborhoods while de-emphasizing new projects downtown. In a Facebook post from July 10, Chen Mills wrote that her housing policy is that Santa Cruz should “spread new housing throughout the city.”
It’s far past time to address the constant development pressure that is negatively impacting small neighborhood business districts, where height, traffic and parking impacts are hardest to absorb.
The choice is not between building housing and preserving Santa Cruz. The question is whether we grow according to a coherent plan that protects neighborhoods or scatter oversized projects across the city and fight over them one neighborhood at a time.
I support housing – especially affordable housing for local working people, seniors and families. Residents also deserve a city that protects local businesses, respects the neighborhood scale, and builds beautiful places that people will value for generations.
The Seabright project and several others proposed or being built on Mission Street, Water Street and Soquel Avenue fail that test. Santa Cruz can build the housing we need without losing the character and small businesses that make us special.
Ryan Coonerty is a candidate for mayor of Santa Cruz. He is a Santa Cruz High graduate and former county supervisor.
