Quick Take
Housing activist and emeritus UC Santa Cruz sociologist John Hall sees Santa Cruz’s choices about growth – particularly the placement of a new Warriors arena – as pivotal to the future. “Is our city to become a ‘San Jose-by-the-Sea’ with high-rise skyscrapers looming over Monterey Bay?” he asks, or a “gridlocked Saint-Tropez?” He thinks there is another way and looks to Santa Barbara as a model for building heights and human-scale architecture.
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Today, we live with the sometimes weird, sometimes visionary results of planning decisions made decades ago: the crazy street intersections, Lighthouse Field, train tracks running down Chestnut Street, earthquake recovery on Pacific Avenue. Soon, Santa Cruz will decide where to locate a larger, permanent Warriors arena. This decision will affect traffic, housing and the character of downtown. It will stamp the basic future of our community.
Will people in the future see us as smart and visionary, or will they curse us?
In some American cities during the early 20th century, progressive civic leaders, philanthropists and planners created park systems, vital shopping districts and parkways. Elsewhere, what’s called the “urban growth machine” drove and continues to drive urban planning. Growth is led by a loose alliance of real-estate interests, politicians, local businesses and cash-strapped city governments that seek to increase tax revenues. They coordinate to ensure zoning laws and infrastructure that developers assert are necessary to make projects “pencil out.”
No surprise, Santa Cruz has long had its own urban growth machine, intensified by its draw as a tourist destination. Sometimes, citizen movements have successfully opposed growth-oriented schemes like a desalination plant. But after the 2018 recall of two city councilmembers, the growth machine gained considerable steam.
Now city staff are revising the draft of a Downtown Plan Expansion (DPE) proposal for developing 1,600 units of housing – 20% of it affordable – and a permanent Warriors arena in the area south of Laurel Street (SoLa). This is today’s litmus test about our future.
The city needs more housing downtown and the plan has many good features. But it can be improved by considering the SoLa district in relation to the city as a whole. The draft plan needs basic revisions to address three connected issues – traffic, where to locate the new Warriors arena, and building heights.
Surprisingly, SoLa draft plan documents do not consider the proposed expansion’s impacts on vehicular traffic. Could major “arterial” streets handle the additional traffic from building a large arena and 1,600 units of housing? Would parking be adequate? What about the effects of more traffic for biking safety?
The traffic capacity in the SoLa district is limited. Only two arterial streets – Front Street (north/south) and Laurel Street (east/west) – serve the district’s core. (Pacific Avenue is, at most, a sub-arterial.) Already, there are frequent traffic jams. And new developments on Front Street north of Laurel are causing increasing congestion, even without SoLa expansion.
Good city planning will assess alternative SoLa plan scenarios for overall traffic impacts. On the face of it, expansion will create substantial gridlock unless the DPE is substantially modified.
How to avoid a future traffic nightmare?
The obvious answer is to put the Warriors arena elsewhere, rather than on the SoLa parcel owned by the Santa Cruz Seaside Company.
To attract people, the arena must be accessible. Visitors coming off Highways 1, 17 and 9 already confront traffic “friction” getting downtown. It’s an “urban cul-de-sac.” Putting the Warriors arena in the SoLa district would discourage fans and substantially increase traffic overload downtown. Far better to locate the arena at the intersection of Highways 1 and 9, where city consultants some years ago called for “creative redevelopment” of Gateway Plaza on River Street. This site – with far superior vehicle access and a much-improved parking situation – would attract more visitors.
Many cities across the U.S. have developed vibrant downtowns without sports facilities. For the SoLa district, moving the arena elsewhere would make more space available for housing. SoLa can become a hip downtown neighborhood, cultural district with shops, restaurants and a strong connection to the Boardwalk, wharf and beaches. Putting the arena at Gateway Plaza can be a win-win-win for the Warriors, the downtown and the wider community.
Traffic and the arena location are basic urban planning issues.
But the DPE raises an even bigger decision about the character of Santa Cruz as a city. The stakes have to do with how to accommodate more housing, especially affordable and workforce housing, while retaining a skyline and building heights that foster community on the streets around them.
Urban planner Jan Gehl has shown that as buildings rise beyond around four floors in height, they create a divide between their occupants and ground-level community life. Residents increasingly go to and from their housing without engaging the world below. On the streets, taller buildings block out sunlight and make people feel hemmed in. These problems increase when the distance between buildings is narrower.
Is additional height necessary? No.
Other cities demonstrate that a city can thrive and fulfill housing needs without tall buildings. Santa Barbara, for example, has a downtown zoning height limit of about four stories and it is rightly the envy of other California beach cities.
Santa Cruz can address its housing crisis while limiting building heights. The city’s own June 2024 study session shows that with present zoning and 50% density bonuses, even if the Warriors arena remained in the SoLa district, 1,400 housing units could be developed there. With the arena elsewhere, even the council’s more ambitious goal of providing 1,600 units in SoLa can be achieved – all without changing present zoning.
With SoLa district development, Santa Cruz faces a basic choice about its future. Is our city to become a “San Jose-by-the-Sea” with high-rise skyscrapers looming over Monterey Bay? A gridlocked Saint-Tropez with six-story apartment buildings rolling down the hillsides to the Mediterranean? Or should we follow the example of Santa Barbara and set limits on building heights in order to activate placemaking at a human scale?
The urban growth machine has a civic responsibility to make good choices for the future of Santa Cruz.
John Hall is the co-chair of Our Downtown, Our Future, a church representative to the Peace Village housing project developer and an emeritus UC Santa Cruz research professor of sociology.