ACTION NEEDED TO SAVE LOCAL BUSINESSES & PRESERVE A HUGE ASSET & TAX BASE FOR THE CITY OF SANTA CRUZ

ACTION NEEDED TO SAVE LOCAL BUSINESSES & PRESERVE A HUGE ASSET & TAX BASE FOR THE CITY OF SANTA CRUZ:

Tearing down Seabright Plaza on Soquel Ave. to build housing that could be built elsewhere in Santa Cruz will:

Eliminate an estimated 140 local incomes & permanently destroy the fabric of Seabright Plaza. Residents will need to travel miles to get supplies & food, adding to traffic if the following are gone:
Ace Hardware
Akira
The Bagelry
CleanStyle Laundromat
Fog City Tattoo
Forever Thrift
McCarty’s Custom Window Coverings (currently relocating)
Pleasure Head Salon
Real Thai Kitchen
Sure Cuts
Tropical Nail Salon
Yoga Center Santa Cruz
Compromise Medical Emergency Access: Soquel Ave. is a critical high-traffic artery used directly by Fire, Police, & EMS units to reach regional medical centers, including Dominican Hospital. Jamming a massive 281-unit residential complex directly onto the bottlenecked intersection of Soquel & Seabright (likely over 400 more residents)—with virtually no vehicle setbacks or adequate parking—will cause unprecedented gridlock & directly threaten emergency response times.

Our regional medical resources are already heavily burdened & lack the surplus capacity to support such rapid, unchecked density at a single intersection.
Severe Traffic & Pedestrian Danger: Soquel Ave. is officially recognized as one of Santa Cruz County's primary high-crash corridors for cyclists & pedestrians. Funneling hundreds of new daily transit trips into this corridor will severely escalate the frequency & severity of traffic accidents.
Economic Damage to Our Tourism-Driven Economy: Santa Cruz County's economic stability relies heavily on tourism, with 1 out of every 6 local jobs tied to the hospitality sector. Gridlocking our main thoroughfares will directly deter visitors and harm local merchants citywide. This extreme density ignores the context of regional growth, including the projected influx of approximately 8,500 NEW off-campus UCSC students over the coming years due to UCSC's planned expansion. 
 
 This Petition's Demand to Decision Makers:

We, the undersigned residents & patrons of Santa Cruz, formally petition the Santa Cruz City Council, the Planning Commission, & the Community Development Department to DENY approval for the six-story Bright Plaza proposal (CP26-0103 / CP26-0104).

We demand that the City protect the Seabright neighborhood by enforcing the following mandates:

Deny the Out-of-Scale Massing: The City must require the developer to scale down the height, unit count, & overall massing to fit within the historic architecture of the Seabright intersection.
Protect Local Livelihoods of Current Residents: The City must prioritize the preservation of our existing local businesses & the over 140 livelihoods they support. The City must refuse any development plan that triggers the mass displacement & loss of essential neighborhood employers.
Mandate Comprehensive Safety & Infrastructure Audits: Before any further project approvals are considered on Soquel Ave., the City must execute full, independent traffic safety, fire/EMS response-time impact, & hospital capacity infrastructure reports that account for the cumulative regional growth of Santa Cruz, with the inclusion of the summer months in the reports. https://saveourseabright.com/
Save our jobs. Save our safety. Save Our Seabright!