The 19-unit complex is slated for a surprisingly diminutive piece of asphalt at Walnut and Center.
If all goes according to plan, Sue Lawson will leave her home in La Selva Beach, where she’s been 32 years, for a new place where she hopes to really get to know the people around her. Lawson intends to move into a proposed 19-unit housing complex that’s up for a Santa Cruz City Council vote July 24. It would include a community kitchen and activity room—all in the name of getting to know the people next door a little better. “This is why it’s called an intentional community,” the 74-year-old Lawson says. “We meet once a week, and our building isn’t even going to be built for a year and a half.”
At least one city councilmember is already “excited” about the plan for downtown housing in what’s now a vacant parking lot at Center Street and Walnut Avenue, near the Cruzio building where the Weekly has its offices.
“This is really an ideal infill project,” councilmember Ryan Coonerty says of Walnut Commons. “It’s built at a location where they won’t generate much traffic because they can walk to everything they need.”
The new project fits nicely with the city’s general plan and its Climate Action Plan, both of which council recently approved. Both those plans emphasize the importance of infill, or the conversion of empty or under-utilized lots to increase urban density.
By increasing density, the thinking goes, planners allow residents to walk, bike or bus to their destinations instead of driving—thus reducing the city’s carbon footprint. (Santa Cruz has a goal of reducing local car trips 10 percent by 2020.)
The basement will have 29 bike parking spots as well as 21 car parking spaces in the basement. Each unit will also have a kitchen, dining area and living room.
Anyone who’s walked past the small corner of asphalt across the street from the fire station might think a 19-unit complex sounds like a tight squeeze for the spot. But Don Lauritson, who’s studied the project, insists it will work fine.
“It’s a three-story building, so they can fit them, and they’re not big units,” Lauritson says.
Coonerty notes that there’s one more thing that makes the inter-generational complex interesting: it will be aimed at people who are getting older but don’t feel like moving into a stuffy retirement home. “It gives people a great option to continue to live independently but in a supportive community,” Coonerty says.
The project has moved forward with little community opposition. Early in the process, leaders from the Prophet Elias Greek Orthodox Church voiced concerns stemming largely from privacy issues. As a result, the Walnut Commons’ team has agreed to build an 8-foot concrete or block wall and possibly a landscaping buffer.
