During the Dec. 4 regularly-scheduled Council meeting, Scotts Valley removed a major impediment to building affordable housing and constructing a multifaceted mixed-use downtown, by agreeing to purchase a parcel of land that was once part of the Skypark airstrip from the City of Santa Cruz.
It also received a presentation from the consultant tasked with envisioning what the Town Center project should look like—right down to the thoroughfares.
“These streets are really important to knit everything together,” said Jane Lin, a partner with Oakland-based Urban Field, whose Scotts Valley-based dad came out to watch her present. “One thing that we know is that this is something that has to be attractive to the development community.”
The Town Center project has seen its fair share of false starts. And while many observers have complained about the sluggish pace, experts say it’s a good thing the original vision—which was rather retail-heavy—was never built, given developments in that vein built elsewhere are now failing (due to the rise of e-commerce).
There was a strong sense of optimism in Council Chambers, as Mayor Randy Johnson was able to sign-off on the property purchase terms before hanging up his Council cleats in a matter of days.
The land deal covers eight acres of the Skypark area. Scotts Valley agreed to pay $7.75 million for it. It will get an environmental cleanup credit of more than a quarter-million.
A deposit of $100,000 was due on signing, with a $1 million down payment required at close of escrow. The purchase will be financed over eight years at an interest rate of 4.5%. Scotts Valley hopes to be able to sell off the land to a developer and pay this debt off early.
Urban Field said it incorporated woodsy and water elements into the design and noted they factored in locals’ concerns about overdevelopment. The latest concept, prepared under a $160,000 contract authorized in October 2023, includes around 300 units of housing.
Johnson noted that the designs put forward by Urban Field are just a starting point.
“This is something that is living and breathing,” he said, adding that the plans are sure to change as dreams come up against various hard realities. “The community will come together.”
He’s been slogging away on the Economic Development Committee alongside Vice Mayor Derek Timm, who helped lead the charge to replace Kmart’s former home with a Target.
Timm said the fact that Scotts Valley already has a Nob Hill and a Target adjacent to where the new buildings are to go gives the project a huge leg up.
Allan Timms, the Council member from England, said he’s been hearing people are worried the Town Center could make traffic problems worse, and asked the consultant about it.
Lin said it’s too early to say for sure, but noted, if planners do things right, it could actually improve things.
“It will help alleviate some of your pinch points,” she said. “It just will flow better.”
Though it didn’t make it into the final design, they even considered a roundabout for Kings Village Road. This seemed to allay some of Timms’ concerns.
“Obviously, I’m a big fan of roundabouts,” he said, drawing laughter.
Ryan Call, another Urban Field principal, said the Town Center will have a “symbiotic” relationship with the surrounding area. He described one potential feature, one they’re calling Tower Point Plaza, which could include a structure that looks like an air traffic control tower and may serve as a “postcard moment” for visitors.
“We’re trying to connect through sight lines, through path-of-travel,” he said. “It starts to just build into your mind all the different exciting things you can do in this district.”
During public comment, Councilmember-elect Steve Clark congratulated staff on the hard work to get to this point. The former traffic cop also voiced concerns about potential parking issues. He said condos built recently near the Scotts Valley Drive and Mount Hermon Road intersection have led to people parking in surrounding neighborhoods.
But, overall, he was supportive of Urban Field’s plan.
“Let’s move forward,” he said. “Let’s make it happen.”
City Manager Mali LaGoe said Scotts Valley will work with Good City Company to update its Town Center Specific Plan, next year.
“That will include updated objective design standards,” she said, adding they’ll also be working on an environmental report. “We’re continuing down this path of removing barriers.”
This could be a challenging task for the City, considering it told the State that plan will pave the way for 657 housing units—of which 427 will be for people in the “Low and Very Low” Income category.
When questioned about the fact Urban Field is only planning for just 300 or so homes, LaGoe said the actual Town Center site is just a piece of the overall Town Center Specific Plan, adding there are other places that’ll be able to accommodate the rest.
And then, Scotts Valley will have to select a developer to take on the project.
In an interview with the Press Banner after the meeting, Timm said he was quite emotional at the progress.
“It’s been such a long road,” he said. “The community’s bought in. The Council’s bought in.”
It’s not possible for the folks running the State of California to be that stupid. They have to be intentionally trying to destroy this place. To pass laws requiring EVERY city in California no matter how small to build a lot of housing is just so impossibly dumb. California’s giant problem is traffic and pollution. There are others, but those are the two big ones. Building housing all over the state in every little town and village means all those people are going to pour onto the roads and freeways for their long commutes to work. All the new housing they are building in Scotts Valley and lots of little towns in the Santa Cruz Mountains will result in all those people in giant piggish SUVs and HUGE pickup trucks with 8 year old boy stickers of guns and skulls, etc. and all those people are going to get on highway 17 to drive to San Jose for work.
Then, the idiots are going to say, “We need to spend $15 billion to widen highway 17 or bore tunnels through the mountain to create a superhighway because it’s not a 2.5 hour commute from Santa Cruz or Scotts Valley to San Jose.
There’s also the urban rural interface. Humans really mess up nature. It’s best just to not put humans close to nature. They want to “enjoy” nature by coming in giant SUVs and pick up trucks with knobby tires and stare at cell phones and smoke and vape while they make videos and take cell phone pictures of “nature” while they are hyperventilating from carrying their very large bodies a few hundred yards into the forest.
There are the fires. The lack of fire insurance. The State of California: You MUST build lots of houses right next to the forest. Then, you can’t buy homeowners insurance. So the State will subsidize it and homeowners will pay a fortune and the state will screw it up anyway and end up using taxpayer money and driving us deeper into debt.
Even a small child would know that if you want to build a lot of houses in California, you have to build them next to jobs to avoid creating unbearable commutes.
Then, there’s the town center. They’ve been trotting that out every election year in a big presentation mostly to the trailer parks because those have dense enough populations that they can swing Scotts Valley elections. Show up there, be respectful to the people there, give them a presentation about the town center and also about how important they are. Hand out chewing gum and stickers and maybe M&Ms or something, free issues of the AARP magazine. And then that disappears until the following election cycle.
The town center is destined to be a disaster. It’s just going to be housing with a stage or something. So what. 300 housing units? What two, three, four people in each one? At least two cars per unit? Looking around – just OPENING YOUR EYES – you can imagine that it’s going to be 80% GIANT SUVs and trucks, maybe 10% of which will have aftermarket EXTREMELY LOUD exhaust pipes because the next best thing to having something meaningful in your life or accomplishing something significant, or just being good at conversation and friendship is to… BE REALLY LOUD SO THAT PEOPLE WILL TURN AROUND AND LOOK AT YOU.
So, we’re going to have maybe 600 or 700 more cars. They are all going to be looking for parking. If these new people are anything like the majority here now, they are GOING TO DRIVE FROM THE TOWN CENTER TO SAFEWAY to get groceries – because I live in Scotts Valley and my own neighbors drive 0.25 miles to get a coffee or breakfast. And 60 or 70 of those new cars are going to be INTIMIDATION THEATER vehicles where the drivers are 5′ 7″ tall men who really want to pretend to dominate others by making really loud burble burble truck sounds.
If you really just THINK about it, the town center is just going to be a lot of housing. There’s already the aptly named “Theater” in Scotts Valley, which is nice. There are concerts at Sky Park, food trucks, etc. in the summertime. The town center, assuming it ever gets built, is going to have one effect on the town – more cars, more noise, more traffic, more angry people arguing over parking spaces. It’s going to mean more people cutting through residential neighborhoods in a desperate attempt to evade the soul crushing traffic in our little mountain town and encouraged by the city council who doesn’t know what to do except to encourage more building and have a foolish, really just ignorant optimism that it will just work itself out.
They are already planning like 100 new houses and apartments where the old golf course was just a block and a half from the “town center” which could really be called “the Scotts Valley Projects” because it’s going to be dense housing an that’s it.
A LOT of people are leaving California for other states. This just keeps going on. California’s government is encouraging it. Maybe it will be livable here in a generation if 40% of the population leaves and the state goes bankrupt.
Look at the traffic now. Just stand on Mount Hermon Road or Scotts Valley drive. It’s bumper to bumper traffic. A lot of people look angry. People honk, cut off other drivers. They speed and weave through traffic. The town is essentially a lot of strip malls and a couple of wide streets that look no different than anyplace in the Silicon Valley or the San Fernando Valley for that matter. Just streets and strip malls.
It’s tragic because it could be so much better. The surrounding area is so beautiful – the forests, hills, the San Lorenzo River, the wildlife and birds. But you can’t hear the birds because there are REALLY TOUGH AND DANGEROUS elderly bikers who are actually engineers or accountants and who are like 65 or 68 and have black leather jackets that say “The Awfully Dangerous and Extremely Frightening Motorcycle Club!” etc. and they make as much noise as possible because without that noise, they are just nobodies – old, lonely, unknown obese people and they get transformed into imaginary dangerous criminals and men of mystery just by putting on a costume and making a lot of noise.
The town center is going to be more of that because that’s what a lot of people are like. At best, a lot of big cars that you can’t see over or around littering every part of the visual landscape, and for some of them, it’s going to be wake you up, interrupt your phone call, make it so that you can’t work from home or read a book or sleep except for those moments when they decided to not pass by.
What if a whole bunch of us just leave and go to Arizona, or Texas or Florida or someplace else. It might have the same problems as here, but at least it’s cheaper. Maybe if enough people leave, the won’t have to build any new houses because nobody will need or want them.