UCSC goal: Housing 10,100 students after current projects, including new Delaware Avenue Project, are completed

A new off-campus Westside housing project that will house about 400 UC Santa Cruz undergraduates and offer 62 units for university employees is starting construction this summer and is expected to open to residents by fall 2026. 

The development, near the intersection of Delaware Avenue and Swift Street, is part of the larger UCSC plan to expand student housing, culminating in more than 10,000 total housing units by the end of 2026.

Known as the Delaware Avenue Project, the property and development will be owned and constructed by a local limited partnership, Redtree Partners. 

Redtree is leasing the units to the university under a 30-year lease agreement. Campus spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason said the university hasn’t set the exact rates for the units yet, but UCSC will be offering rents at 20% below market rate for students and 5% below market rate for employees.

Hernandez-Jason said employees interested in living there will fill out an application as they do for employee housing the university offers.

The property is a vacant lot near Venus Spirits and Cat & Cloud and has been owned by Redtree since the company purchased 20 acres of land in the neighborhood in 2005. Redtree executive Doug Ley said he thinks it’s “fantastic” that the university is part of the project. 

“I think it will bring a lot of additional activity to the Westside,” he said, adding that an exact summer groundbreaking date isn’t scheduled yet.  

Part of larger UCSC housing push

Securing the lease for the Delaware Avenue complex is one of several housing developments the university has been pursuing to relieve the housing burden on its students and the greater Santa Cruz community. For the second consecutive year, Santa Cruz County was named the most expensive rental market in the country, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. 

While the university offers housing to more than 9,300 of its more than 19,000 students – with the majority of it on the residential campus – many students and families say the rates are unaffordable and in some cases, the units are in poor condition or students are in doubles converted to triples and lounges converted into bedrooms. 

To address the housing crisis for its students, the university has been pursuing multiple projects over the past few years – some of which have been delayed by litigation.

Student Housing West, once completed, will have two locations on campus and house a total of about 3,000 students. The first phase, Family Student Housing, is slated to open in late 2025 with 120 units, while the larger Heller Drive location for about 2,900 undergraduates will be ready for occupancy by fall 2028. 

In addition, the university has been renovating and expanding Kresge College and, once completed during the 2025-26 academic year, it will provide about 600 more beds than it originally housed. 

Hernandez-Jason said the campus expects to be able to provide housing for about 10,100 students — about 800 more than it does currently — after the Kresge, Delaware and the Family Student Housing projects are completed. 

Off campus, in addition to Delaware Avenue, the university is jointly developing a housing project at Cabrillo College for students of both institutions. By the expected opening date in fall 2027, of the 624 beds there, 248 will be for UCSC students. 

The new Delaware complex

The Delaware Avenue Project plans include three residential buildings: two for students and one for employees. Two smaller buildings are also being developed there by Redtree: One will be leased to UCSC for a fitness center and the other will be developed for retail by Redtree. City of Santa Cruz Principal Planner Samantha Haschert said the developer’s building permit hasn’t been issued yet, but is almost done being reviewed. 

The plans also include open courtyards for each building, a public plaza, a playground near the staff building and two spas. The developer is also planning a surfboard storage space, a bike repair space and pet wash area. The addresses for the student buildings is 100 Ingalls Alley and for the employee building 400 Ingalls Alley. 

Haschert and Ley said the building permit plans under review have a layout that consists entirely of one- and two-bedroom units for all three buildings. 

Under a potential new revision, however, Hernandez-Jason said the university is planning to offer 300 triples, 48 doubles, 32 quads and 21 singles among the two student buildings. In the employee building, it is planning 28 one-bedrooms, 22 two-bedrooms and 12 three-bedrooms, he told Lookout.

Ley said Redtree is assisting university officials as they explore the revisions, but the building permit plans haven’t been changed yet. 

In 2016, Redtree planned to build market-rate apartments on the site, but the construction costs increased dramatically so it paused the project, according to Ley. The pandemic then lengthened the delay.

Then, in fall 2022, the company started discussions with university officials about the project. 

Redtree Partners’ origins go back to 1923, when Ley’s grandfather, George Ley, started Santa Cruz Lumber Company by selling stock to people, according to Ley. 

After Santa Cruz Lumber Company shut down in 1986, Ley and others from the company started a limited partnership. 

“Our ownership is descendants of George Ley and descendants of 30-40 people who invested back then,” he said. 

Redtree owns several buildings in Santa Cruz, such as the Forever 21 building on Pacific Avenue downtown, but no other properties similar to the Delaware Addition property. 

The Delaware Avenue Project is part of the larger Delaware Addition, a mixed-use community planned by Redtree. The 20-acre area includes land Redtree has sold and that has been developed by others — like the NIAC (Nonprofit Insurance Alliance) building and the Venus Spirits building — and land the company still owns. 

“We’ll be selling some, and we might develop some,” said Ley. 

Because the master plan for the 20-acre site has been permitted only for three residential buildings, the buildings that are being leased to the university are the only “purely” residential buildings at the property, he said. 

The permits allow some buildings that are in the rest of the project, south of Ingalls Alley, to have “flex units,” which allow for residential units to be incorporated as part of the commercial space. For example, the Caletti Cycles building sees a residential unit above it. 

Ley said Redtree still owns three building pads, with roads and sidewalks, that are ready for sale and to be developed, and about 8 acres of completely vacant land. Ley said the vacant land isn’t planned for sale or development until after the UCSC residential buildings are completed. 

Reaction to the project

Fourth-year UCSC student Bodie Shargel said he supports the Delaware Avenue Project and would live there himself if he had the chance. Shargel, who lives off campus, is the president of the Student Housing Coalition, a student advocacy organization that supports building more housing. 

“The overall takeaway is just that more housing is good, especially when it’s going to be housing that students are going to be able to live in,” he said. “And working-class folks as well. That’s obviously a good thing.”

Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley said he’s in support of the project and the university’s commitment to offer students the 20% below market rate. 

“I’ve been an advocate for the university to undertake student housing – as much of it they can build on campus the better, and as long as they’re not displacing any current residents in the city,” he said. “Building a limited amount of off-campus student housing near the university is fine with me. However, it cannot be displacement.” 

Keeley said he hopes the university pursues building more on-campus housing. “This is the overall issue that I have with the university. I love the University of California in Santa Cruz, but I’m not in love with the pace at which they are building new housing,” he said. “I’m happy to see Student Housing West underway, and they should do more and more and more of that.” 

Over time, the city and county of Santa Cruz have filed multiple lawsuits against the university’s efforts to grow enrollment without significantly increasing its units of on-campus housing.

One ongoing lawsuit argues that the university hasn’t done enough to mitigate the impacts of its growing student population on the local community. For decades, government officials have argued that the university should cap its enrollment growth to the amount of housing it can offer and alleviate the stress on housing, water and traffic infrastructure in the county. 

Groups fighting to preserve open land on campus, or who are skeptical of the university’s promises of offering affordable housing, have filed several lawsuits against Student Housing West. Don Stevens of Habitat and Watershed Caretakers previously told Lookout that one lawsuit the group has ongoing against Student Housing West has a hearing on Aug. 15. 

City attorney Tony Condotti said while the city hasn’t filed a lawsuit against Student Housing West, it has filed lawsuits generally against the university’s plans to grow its enrollment. 

Sean Venus, owner of Venus Spirits, said since the distillery-restaurant opened in August 2020 it has been looking forward to the possibility of residential housing being built in the Delaware Avenue area. 

“We’ve been really excited to have that project come into fruition,” he said. 

Venus said the neighborhood might complain about traffic, but personally he’s noticed that whenever there’s a new building in the area, “it strengthens the neighborhood” and reduces crime. 

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