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Re: Requiem for the Santa Cruz Branch
Author: Beach Cruiser
Date: 01-06-2012 - 19:25
Omahahaha Wrote:
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> If you go into Gilda's they have photos of the
> last Navy cruiser to visit Santa Cruz, was about
> 1991 or 1992. Yes, it happened.
>
The last 2 visits were '99 and '00. I should know as I watched them from the end of my street and heard the roar of the tenders from dawn till late into the night.
Santa Cruz hasn't been "normal" for decades. The loss of Wrigley, etc. was largely due to consolidation and such, just as it has in the rest of the region. That said, local government attitudes have kept any major replacements from filling those buildings. A great example was Texas Instruments vacating their plant on the westside. According to a source on the real estate team, they tried valiantly to find a buyer which would use the plant for manufacturing and bring jobs/tax revenue into the city. It had recently been upgraded with onsite gensets, etc. Everyone including the water district had their hands in the pockets of prospective buyers with a litany of new/increased fees and mitigation demands. Prospective buyers rightly balked, leaving TI to effectively donate the whole thing to UCSC with a sale price that was a fraction of appraised value just to rid itself of the whole debacle. Cue the property being taken off the property tax rolls, the water district losing its largest customer (telling the public this was a good thing, then crying poor and inching rates higher to make up the difference), and another industrial site left half vacant with no hope of housing actual businesses. In the meantime they hire consultants and business development directors to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars to study why businesses aren't relocating into the city.
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> If you go into Gilda's they have photos of the
> last Navy cruiser to visit Santa Cruz, was about
> 1991 or 1992. Yes, it happened.
>
The last 2 visits were '99 and '00. I should know as I watched them from the end of my street and heard the roar of the tenders from dawn till late into the night.
Santa Cruz hasn't been "normal" for decades. The loss of Wrigley, etc. was largely due to consolidation and such, just as it has in the rest of the region. That said, local government attitudes have kept any major replacements from filling those buildings. A great example was Texas Instruments vacating their plant on the westside. According to a source on the real estate team, they tried valiantly to find a buyer which would use the plant for manufacturing and bring jobs/tax revenue into the city. It had recently been upgraded with onsite gensets, etc. Everyone including the water district had their hands in the pockets of prospective buyers with a litany of new/increased fees and mitigation demands. Prospective buyers rightly balked, leaving TI to effectively donate the whole thing to UCSC with a sale price that was a fraction of appraised value just to rid itself of the whole debacle. Cue the property being taken off the property tax rolls, the water district losing its largest customer (telling the public this was a good thing, then crying poor and inching rates higher to make up the difference), and another industrial site left half vacant with no hope of housing actual businesses. In the meantime they hire consultants and business development directors to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars to study why businesses aren't relocating into the city.
