There were two themes to recent Santa Cruz meeting about a hotel: precedent and integrity.
Council approved the hotel in 2011. They came back to it to revisit parking issues—that essentially took out five rooms spaces and added 24-hour valet to accommodate reduced spots—re-opening a discussion about what message city leaders should send to developers. Some community members challenged the city council to have the courage to stand up to a proposed Hyatt hotel they worried would crowd street parking and choke traffic between Ocean Street and San Lorenzo Boulevard.
Bill Tysseling, executive director of the chamber of commerce, looked at it from a different direction. “Somebody said, ‘This decision is all about integrity,’ and you bet that’s exactly what this decision is about,” Tysseling told council at the Jan. 14 meeting. “You told them in 2011 that they could count on you—that this project would go through. Now you’re asked to make a modification, which represents no substantive change in the project. Integrity requires you to go through with this project.”
He added that backing out on the project—which police believe will benefit an area riddled with drug use and prostitution—would be a bad business omen.
“People who want to develop in Santa Cruz will see this is not a very safe place to invest, and they won’t,” Tysseling said.
The council did look a little different in 2011 when this was first approved. Current city councilmembers Cynthia Mathews, Pamela Comstock and Micah Posner weren’t on it.
And Posner, who lives a couple blocks from the site, noted the project faced tremendous opposition all along in it its proposed residential neighborhood—where was allowed an exemption for commercial use. He worried about the message the council would send if it started making exceptions for commercial use in residential zones. “I don’t like the precedent of forcing something on a neighborhood that’s not zoned for it,” he said.
Vice Mayor Don Lane said, when it comes to the validity of the project, it was too late to turn back now.
“That decision was already made a couple years ago, and to undo it would be very damaging to the community in general would be unfair to the developer,” Lane said before council approved the parking modification 5-1 with Posner dissenting.
“They may not have worn this on their sleeve, but I happen to know they’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. For us to say now, ‘Oh, we really didn’t mean it’ would really be harmful, and I don’t think that would be a good decision.”
