Why Bright Plaza matters for Santa Cruz’s housing future

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.

Our potential project, Bright Plaza, at Seabright and Soquel avenues in Santa Cruz is still in its early stages, and the design we’ve submitted remains preliminary. Our hope at Workbench is to create more than 200 affordable homes for people who work in this community, along with a thriving, local-business-focused ground-floor experience.

Even so, it has already generated a lot of discussion around town. 

We’ve been listening to that conversation, which has included questions, criticism, support and ideas from neighbors, local businesses and others in the community. One message we’ve heard repeatedly — including from area business owners — is how urgently Santa Cruz needs more affordable housing. Because the project is still taking shape, we want to share what we know today, explain the priorities guiding our work, and invite continued community input as the design develops. 

We hope you will consider attending the project’s first community meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 29, at 6 p.m. via Zoom. We will share the early design direction, answer questions and listen to feedback. After the meeting, we plan to keep a survey open on our website for one week so those who are unable to attend can still give feedback.  

BRIGHT PLAZA: Read more Lookout news and Community Voices opinion coverage of the project here

We are especially interested in hearing from people who work in Santa Cruz and qualify for, need or have experience seeking affordable housing; those perspectives are too often underrepresented in local public processes. 

Three priorities are guiding the project from this early stage forward: (1) developing sites where the city, through years of community discussion, planned for high-density, mixed-use housing projects; (2) helping meet the urgent need for more affordable housing in Santa Cruz; and (3) continuing neighborhood-serving commercial activity on this site. 

We are also thinking carefully about how the housing and commercial spaces can serve people and small businesses that are often left out of development decisions, and how a new building can reinforce Seabright’s identity.   

The first priority is especially important because this site’s high-density zoning is the result of a long local process. For the better part of 20 years, the future of Santa Cruz’s commercial corridors was one of the most widely debated topics in our civic life. Thousands of people participated. The general plan adopted in 2012 called for upzoning the corridors, and it took more than a decade after that for the zoning rules to be defined and adopted. While the final zoning does not reflect complete consensus, it does represent the outcome of many years of public discussion and local decision-making. The zoning for this site allows for a tall, mixed-use building, and that is what we are working toward developing in an effort to work within the vision Santa Cruz developed through its own public planning process. We will share more details at the meeting. 

We are also working within the detailed local standards Santa Cruz has adopted, including objective development standards, setbacks, right-of-way improvements and active and public transit improvements. These standards reflect broad community input and provide an important framework for the project. 

In addition, we intend to pursue local goals such as increased energy and water efficiency and reduced climate impacts. 

We know not everyone will agree with the conclusions reached through those planning processes – at times we feel the same way – and we respect the concerns people bring forward. Community planning often requires balancing values that are all important, even when a perfect outcome for everyone is not possible. 

Our goal is to listen carefully, take questions seriously, and do our best to work within the public framework Santa Cruz has already established. 

The second priority is the urgent need for more affordable housing. 

Santa Cruz remains the most expensive rental market in the country, even as average rents have stabilized over the past two years, thanks in part to a long-awaited acceleration in housing construction. We see the effects of high housing costs throughout the community: shrinking schools, local businesses struggling to hire and retain workers, long commutes that worsen traffic, and neighbors who are displaced or unhoused. Preserving what matters most about Santa Cruz — the people who live and work here — requires continued progress in building more housing at all income levels.  

Santa Cruz is currently on track to meet some of its state-mandated housing goals, which identify how many homes at each income level need to be built to keep the housing crisis from getting worse. To meet these goals by 2031, the city will need to continue seeing mid-rise, infill apartment buildings built at roughly the same pace of recent development downtown and on the Westside. 

That includes additional housing along our corridors. If Santa Cruz can do that, we have a better chance of reducing displacement in the years ahead. 

The third priority is bringing local businesses back to the site. 

Within the redevelopment, we believe it is possible to create new commercial space and keep rents low enough that existing businesses may be able to return, while also creating opportunities for new local businesses. We have been meeting and will continue to meet with businesses in and around the plaza to better understand their needs and make the transition as successful as possible. 

Several questions have come up repeatedly, and we want to address them as clearly as we can at this early stage. 

Many people have asked, why this location? 

This site has been zoned for high density and is one of the larger sites in the area. Most other available locations on this corridor are much smaller lots, which makes building affordable housing more difficult and, more importantly, most of those properties are not for sale. 

From a planning perspective, this site has many of the qualities Santa Cruz has long identified for additional housing: It is close to groceries, schools, jobs, transit, services and existing infrastructure, and it is in a location where people can walk, bike and take the bus to many daily needs. 

People often ask, will it really be affordable? 

The project is currently being pursued as a 100% lower-income affordable housing project, with homes affordable to households earning between 30% and 80% of area median income. 

That range includes many people working essential jobs in our community who cannot afford to live near where they work. This level of affordability is not a requirement for the site; it is an intentional choice we’re making because that’s what our community needs. If the project moves forward as planned, the rents would be governed by a 55-year regulatory agreement. 

On all our projects, people understandably ask about parking, traffic and height. 

We take those concerns seriously. The biggest traffic challenges in our region are tied to the long commutes many people make because they cannot afford to live near their jobs. This project follows a widely recognized planning approach: adding homes in locations with lower vehicle miles traveled, near transit, services, jobs and daily needs. 

The design is still preliminary, but we are currently exploring approximately one parking space per home, with additional parking for the commercial spaces. We are also coordinating with the city’s public works and transportation staff on pedestrian and bicycle safety, transit access and improvements to the public right-of-way so the project can better support walkability and public safety. 

We know building height is a significant concern, and it is closely connected to other design choices: more on-site parking requires more building area and more height, while less parking requires careful attention to transportation options and neighborhood impacts, and reduces height. 

Our goal is to find the right balance among homes, commercial space, parking and a building design that fits thoughtfully into the neighborhood as it exists today and as it continues to evolve. 

For us, this work is both professional and personal. 

Workbench is a small local team, and we feel the same housing pressures that affect so many people in Santa Cruz. This reinforces our commitment to finding practical ways to create more housing in our community.  

Bright Plaza is still in the early stages, and many important details are still being shaped.

We welcome your questions, ideas, and concerns as we move forward. We also hope you will join the community meeting and take the survey so your feedback can help make the project stronger. 

Jamileh Cannon, Tim Gordin and Sibley Simon are the owners of Workbench.