Quick Take
Pacific Elementary Superintendent Eric Gross is pitching an ambitious plan to purchase and redevelop the long-shuttered 172-acre Davenport cement plant into a new school campus with workforce housing and public safety facilities, backed by an anonymous local philanthropist willing to fund the acquisition and cleanup. The proposal faces major hurdles, including negotiations with owner Cemex, environmental remediation, zoning changes and ecological concerns.
Pacific Elementary School District Superintendent Eric Gross has big dreams for the Davenport community and the 193-student school he’s led there for the past decade.
He wants to replace aging school facilities, and he wants school staff to be able to afford to live where they work — a common challenge for employers in the town of about 400.
His plan: purchase and redevelop the out-of-operation, 172-acre cement plant adjacent to the town. Then, he wants to build a new school, workforce housing, a new sheriff’s substation, a Cal Fire station, a visitors center and other facilities.
It sounds like a dream, but now Gross has the help of a local philanthropist — who Gross said is choosing to remain anonymous — who wants to fund the purchase of the property, its cleanup and the new construction. For the first time, Gross is talking about the proposal publicly, with the hope that other interested investors or leaders might learn about the project and offer support.
He’s also selling his idea to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, Cal Fire and community organizations.
“Every single person I talked to in each of these institutions said almost verbatim, ‘We all have trouble retaining and attracting employees because of housing, and we all have facilities that do not adequately address our existing needs, let alone future needs,’” said Gross. “So we need a different vision. We need a new approach.”
Davenport, about 10 miles north of Santa Cruz, has a population of about 400. Since the Davenport cement plant, owned by Cemex, closed down in 2010, the facility has sat unused between the town of Davenport and the New Town neighborhood. In 2019, county staff suggested turning the property into an eco-lodge or housing for older adults, families and workers, but those proposals didn’t move forward.
Santa Cruz County Supervisor Justin Cummings told Lookout that he is aware of Gross’ attempt to revive the property.
“We want to do everything we can to help support moving in a direction where we can convert the Cemex plant into something that’s going to provide a community benefit,” he said.
Lottery dreams
Gross often spends sleepless nights thinking about his “lottery dreams,” plans he would pursue if he won the lottery, including providing affordable housing to his small community. Sometimes he talks to friends and colleagues about his ideas and refines them.
One day, about two years ago, he shared a lottery dream idea with Pacific Elementary parent Brett Gravlin.
“If I win the lottery, I would buy the cement plant and build a new school there, and then build staff housing on the existing campus.” Gross recalled saying. “And [Brett] looked at me and said, ‘We can do that.’”
A few weeks later, Gravlin told Gross, “I found him.”
He met a local philanthropist who liked the idea and wanted to fund the purchase of the property, the cleanup and construction. Soon after, Gross met with the philanthropist at the school and talked over the project. He was in, allowing Gross’ lottery dream to become a real project with financial backing.
Gross said the philanthropist has the means to live anywhere, but wants to live in Santa Cruz and believes it should be a place where working-class people can afford to live. He wants to fund this project to help make that happen, according to Gross.
He added that if a purchase were to be successful and the project goes forward, eventually the property would be donated (for a tax benefit) to a new nonprofit with a mission consistent with their goal of providing affordable housing to families and workers and new community resources to Davenport.
Cemex and other challenges
Gross said he gave the philanthropist the contact information for a senior vice president of Cemex, the plant’s owner, and he’s waiting to hear back about their discussion of the potential purchase. Gross said he doesn’t know how much money the philanthropist plans to offer.
Since the philanthropist came on board, Gross’ conversations with stakeholders such as the local unit chief for Cal Fire, the Santa Cruz County sheriff and community organizations have been positive: “Instead of laughing me off the stage, they keep saying, ‘Hey, that’s a good idea.’”
About two years into pitching, Gross said the project still has momentum, but he understands that it could fail. The biggest challenge right now is the purchase, he said. Then there’s a long list of obstacles, from the chemical cleanup to zoning changes. The site is also home to a protected red-legged frog, and the development would have impacts on the region’s water supply and traffic patterns.
Gross says that’s just work, and it’s work that can be done, even if it takes 10 years to complete.
“It certainly is a possibility that it’ll never happen. It’s also a possibility that it’ll take even longer than I’m guessing,” he said. “If it’s worth happening, and it’s possible that it could happen, then it’s worth working on.”
More on the Davenport cement plant
Built in 1905, the Davenport cement plant was in operation for more than 100 years until it stopped running in 2010. The plant sourced its raw materials from a nearby limestone quarry. Since 2005, the plant has been under the ownership of RMC Pacific Materials, an entity owned by Cemex, a building materials company based in San Pedro, Mexico.
The site spans 172 acres and has several industrial buildings including the former electric shop, kiln, burner building, oil storage, office and control room.
In its heyday, the plant supplied cement to help San Francisco and Oakland rebuild after the 1906 earthquake; it also provided cement to help build Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the Panama Canal, the Golden Gate Bridge and the California aqueduct system. Its cement also built the former Davenport jail, church and hospital. By 1910, the plant was producing 1.4 million barrels per year, and at one point it was the largest plant in the state, and the second-largest in the country, according to a county report.
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