News

Bonnie Lipscomb and Peter Koht of the city's redevelopment agency present their recommendations. Photo by Jacob Pierce.

Bonnie Lipscomb and Peter Koht of the city's redevelopment agency present their recommendations. Photo by Jacob Pierce.

Anyone hoping to find out if Pacific Avenue can be a simple one-way or two-way street (and just how much parking would be lost) will have to wait a little longer—at least another three months to find out. Last week Chris Schneiter, assistant director of public works, had told Santa Cruz Weekly that public works employees .htmlwould be standing by at Tuesday night's study session to answer questions from preliminary studies on those options from November.

It looks like city staff is instead erring on the side of caution until it has more complete answers on the street's possible traffic scenarios.

Still the Nov. 29 study session on the Bob Gibbs retail analysis—which suggested Santa Cruz could accommodate $237 million more in retail if the city plays its cards right—offered a possible window into Santa Cruz’s future. And the city council unanimously voted to accept Santa Cruz Redevelopment Director Bonnie Lipscomb’s recommendations based on the Gibbs report. Some councilmembers also brought lists of what they would like to see downtown.

One of the RDA's recommendation was to secure a downtown anchor business (Gibbs mentioned a Forever 21, a Target and a host of suggestions) that would draw bigger crowds to Pacific Avenue. “This is obviously something we’ve been working on for a long time,” Lipscomb said.

The recommendations ranged from short-term goals over the next three months, such as downtown tree trimmings, to longer term ones like the Wayfinding signage program intended to show confused tourists how to get around Santa Cruz’s sloppy grid of streets. That program could take up two years and waits in limbo pending a California Supreme Court decision on the future of redevelopment funds.

Curious Tony

Councilmember Tony Madrigal showed up to this week’s 7 p.m. study session about five minutes late—just after roll call. And he soon retreated to the city offices, returning to the chambers after 7:30 pm with a glass of water in time for the first round of questions and answers. The councilmembers addressed a variety of topics like how to connect the university with the town and the possibility of studying a pedestrian mall.

Madrigal went in a different direction. He wanted to know, for example, why the city doesn’t leave Christmas lights on its trees year-round like Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade does—Madrigal’s favorite pedestrian mall. “It made the trees pop,” Madrigal said of Third Street. “I just wanted to toss that out [there].” Madrigal’s main suggestions had little to do with Bob Gibbs or his retail analysis.

“For years I’ve been bugging—dare I say harping on—y’all to create a Downtown free WiFi corridor,” Madrigal told Lipscomb and Peter Koht, the city's economic development coordinator. Lipscomb said that wasn’t in the scope of the Gibbs report. Koht said the city is expanding wireless Internet near city hall, but wireless internet for retail would require private investment.

Mayor Ryan Coonerty cautioned against the idea. “If you give everybody free Wi-Fi, then you’re turning all our downtown businesses into showrooms for Internet companies,” Coonerty said. “I just think we have to be careful that we don’t put our businesses into a situation where they paying sales tax and employing people and then—using a city infrastructure—we’re allowing people to buy from out state companies that don’t pay sales tax.”

Madrigal spent most of the meeting on his laptop. He twice walked to the other side of the chamber and whispered in Koht’s ear and once passed him a note. Strolling back to his seat, the councilmember would repeatedly look back at Koht and raise his eyebrows at him.

As for his wireless Internet and Christmas light discussion, Madrigal felt he was on a roll. “Since I had the floor, I kept going and going, and I’m glad nobody stopped me,” Madrigal said.

  • https://www.santacruz.com/news/how_retail_analysis_might_reshape_santa_cruz.html Unkle

    I don’t think that the term paper is the topic of the discussion.

  • https://www.santacruz.com/news/how_retail_analysis_might_reshape_santa_cruz.html fgnh