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After the Civil War, the beachfront was becoming a tourist attraction with resort boarding houses forming a modest tourist economy. At the same time, downtown Santa Cruz rebuilt after a series of fires, becoming the center of full-service tourist activity. Its Pacific Ocean House luxury hotel replaced an outdated luxury hotel in 1866, and the St. George luxury hotel outdid all the rest in 1893-94. But construction of the Neptune Casino in 1904, the 1907 Boardwalk, the 1911 Casa Del Ray luxury hotel, and its 1926 luxury apartments, encouraged adjacent stores that turned Beach Street into a secondary business district.
Pacific Avenue’s central downtown business district was between Mission and Cathcart streets. The 1920s directly challenged downtown businesses, and new downtown buildings were constructed in Spanish styles or given a Spanish makeover, such as for the St. George Hotel. These were done to give the downtown as romantic a resort atmosphere as the waterfront. Yet the waterfront had seasonal tourism that often closed in the offseason. While the downtown long assumed their customer base was secure, they experienced a dozen to two dozen downtown storefront vacancies each year during the 1920s. The downtown was successful in reducing its storefront vacancies to 15 in 1929, only that year ended in the stock market crash.
During the Great Depression, the storefront vacancy rate for Pacific Avenue was 26 in 1932, 20 in 1933, 23 in 1934, 21 in 1935, 20 in 1936, 25 in 1937, 18 in 1938, 22 in 1939, 19 in 1940, and 25 in 1941. During this time, Depression-era property owners were horrified to pay taxes on empty storefronts, so they turned to a controversial source: chain stores. These stores were attracted to 50-year leases at low Depression-era rates. This brought discount chain stores like Woolworth’s five and dime, Western Auto, Gallenkamp’s Shoes, Penny’s Dept. Store, Safeway, National Dollar Store, Karl’s Shoes, Economy Drugs, Pure Foods grocery, J.J. Newberry five and dime, etc. It was salvation to some, but mom-and-pop merchants couldn’t afford to give the discounts that the chain stores gave, and the city feared chain store profits were shipped out of Santa Cruz to remote corporate headquarters. People who worried Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs could low-ball any downtown store, were further distressed to have delivery offices downtown for catalog orders from each of these mail-order giants.\u00a0 But everyone loved when the Golden State Theater chain built the Del Mar Movie Palace, where for 15 cents, anyone could enjoy the glamorous art deco theater, because art can dispel the gloom of Great Depression, if only for an escapist moment.
The downtown storefront vacancies ended with World War II in 1942, when soldiers filled the town for war-related services, enjoyed time on leave, stayed at the Naval Convalescent Hospital, etc. There was such war-related apartment and office demand that trailer parks proliferated, homeowners rented out rooms, barns, chicken coops and garages to fill this need, or built backyard apartments. With tropical rubber sources in enemy hands, tires were rationed, patches and retreads were common, and these limited rubber reserves were prioritized for military use. To further save on rubber and fuel, a national speed limit was set at 35 miles per hour, no new cars were produced during the war, and the remaining new car inventory of 500,000 went to doctors, clergy and essential workers. Gas rationing was actually to save on rubber, and while it cost around 20 cents a gallon, that was equal to $3-$4 a gallon today. Most motorists had “A Cards,” allowing up to four gallons of gas a week. War-related factory jobs got a “B Card,” doctors, farmers, construction and mail workers got a “C Card”, with B and C cards allowing up to eight gallons a week. The “X Card” was unlimited gas for clergy, police, firemen, civil defense workers and most scandalously to some: congressmen. Rationing gave railroads their highest usage carrying materials, troops and passengers, with 95 billion passenger miles recorded in 1944.
In 1945, the war ended and a number of those stationed in Santa Cruz left, as Santa Cruzans returned to the family house, or to rent rooms in a surplus of apartments, or to buy GI tract homes on the Westside, Opal Cliffs, Pleasure Point, etc. The end of the war also meant a return to new cars in 1946, and the styles were sleek and rocket-like in their new aerodynamics. This was the beginning of the car culture and its freeway movement. The downtown vacancy rate for storefronts were single digits, until the 1955 flood, which inundated Pacific Avenue businesses, silted-up basements, with flood waters up to the steps of City Hall. When the waters receded, there were repairs, digging out and closing of some businesses. This resulted in Pacific Avenue storefront vacancy rates of 26 in 1956, 27 in 1958, 30 in 1959 and 39 in 1961.
Consultants described Santa Cruz as a rinky dinky tourist town, making some of the business owners ashamed of their town, especially its old-fashioned carnival-like architectural details and wanting respectable modernism. The downtown needed a revival, and starting in 1960, the Santa Cruz of Tomorrow committee made recommendations, ending with a master plan in 1963 by Williams and Mocine. Williams and Mocine felt Santa Cruz looked like any other traditional downtown, where the ugliness and inconvenience went unquestioned. “Inconvenience” meant parking, Santa Cruz having 900 on-street spaces, 350 off-street spaces, and 1,030 private off-street spaces. Random demolition of blocks for parking lots, were dubbed “parking pox” by the public. Yet the master plan treated the downtown as a mistake and proposed replacing everything, reorienting the roads to more of a grid system of larger blocks, introducing freeway exchanges, shopping malls, cinderblock stores and apartment towers, shown in freeway vernacular style. Victorian neighborhoods were proposed for business development.
Williams and Mocine estimated a purchase of all private property for the initial phase would be $450,000 through eminent domain, but a councilman said the figure was barely half its value. Williams and Mocine’s own study showed that the downtown business district earned $21 million (45% of all city sales), which was an increase over 1953 before the flood, when downtown earned $18 million (47% of all city sales), and while they were losing customers to other areas, they had gained 13% in dollar volume since 1953. This sounded like a recovery, so why was the master plan to demolish the existing downtown? Wouldn’t it disrupt the current business climate while seeking something else?
The answer was the master plan was building for 1990, raising the downtown population from 35,000 to a speculative 125,000. The university had yet to open. Therefore, clinging to outdated architecture as the character of the town was denying the reality of a freeway vernacular future, with smokestack industries and corporate style high rises and box stores. The Sentinel reported Aug. 9, 1960, that merchants wanted a citizens committee or the City Council to have the power to reject developments considered “ugly.\u201d
Then Chuck and Esther Abbott came to town in 1963 with a different perspective. They loved the historic downtown and were offended when the Hodges Building chiseled ornaments off its facade, or the Odd Fellows discarded its clock tower for a boxy sheet metal facade covering historic details, or Leask’s created a big bland box. The Abbotts pointed out that restoring downtown buildings to their former glory would be quicker and cheaper than following the master plan’s extensive demolitions. So the Pacific Garden Mall was opened in 1969 as a Downtown National Historic District, drawing tourists and engendering community pride.
Only a few years later, there was concern that building the Capitola Mall would drain business from downtown Santa Cruz. When the Capitola Mall opened in 1977, it was discovered the locally made Santa Cruz businesses were different enough from chain stores to keep Santa Cruz alive as a unique old-fashioned shopping and arts experience. In 1986, David Steeves, chief building official for the city of Santa Cruz, was concerned about the downtown soil conditions, subject to liquefaction in an earthquake. He warned downtown merchants and the City Council that around 35 buildings were seismically unsafe, and proposed an ordinance to require seismic retrofitting, that could cost building owners millions of dollars. He was told he misinterpreted the law. Most of the storefronts downtown held small businesses, who feared closing for renovation or red tagging, would greatly disrupt the downtown economy. Business leaders saw this as too speculative a reason to proceed, since this supposed earthquake was possibly many years off.\u00a0 (Tony Russomanno, Channel 7 News, Oct. 19, 1989).
Three years later, it took 15 seconds of quaking to damage 125 buildings on the seven-block Pacific Garden Mall, with three people losing their lives downtown. Due to 31 downtown landmarks demolished, the Downtown National Historic District lost its status. Tent pavilions were erected for displaced businesses. A sympathetic City Council promised they would save as many of the remaining historic buildings as possible and would develop Humanist design guidelines for historic compatibility, so these buildings wouldn’t appear to be orphans in a modernist \u201cblandscape.” As a result, the city held workshops in nearly every part of the city to get input from the public for design guidelines. These workshops drew a substantial number of participants, showing the guidelines reflected the will of the public, to retain architectural character and avoid ugly buildings.
ROMA design consultants presided over downtown design guidelines. They said old buildings with their construction costs paid off, can provide affordable business space, bringing mom and pop specialty stores that better reflect the character and preferences of the local community. The cost of new business space can make it hard for any but chain stores to lease, and while chain stores can be anchor stores that draw customers to surrounding businesses, the cost of new business space makes any potential tenants very selective.
Today, we’ve evicted mom and pop businesses to build high rises and many new business spaces. The emphasis on affordable apartments has overlooked affordability of store leases. Some chain stores require corner lots only. Potential stores often judge a site on 1. Foot traffic; 2. Adequate parking; 3. Visibility, 4. Customer appeal features, 5. Streetscape appeal; and 6. Cost of leasing the storefront. A downtown business owner said he hoped the rows of empty storefronts will be filled in short order, since a ghost town of vacant storefronts tends to keep people away.
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