THE UNTOLD STORY OF LA BAHIA
By
Ross Eric Gibson
The City of Santa Cruz designated the La Bahia Apts. one of the most important historic assets on the waterfront, eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, whose restoration in tandem with other important nearby landmarks would restore the historic character of the Beach-Front for heritage tourism. So it was shocking when developer Craig French proposed to demolished 90% of the landmark, delist it, and built a Corporate International Style modern hotel in its place.
SPOKESMAN: To appeal the decision, I was appointed spokesman for the La Bahia Coalition, representing a wide number of former City Council members and mayors, City Officials associated with development of the B/SOL Plan, along with community leaders and preservation backers, all feeling the protections and development guidelines for the La Bahia landmark were being misinterpreted. And those who developed and/or approved the plan should know. During the 1990s, I was an Historic Preservation Commission representative to the Beach/South of Laurel Area Planning process (called B/SOL), authored by the Phipps Group of Washington D.C. I was one of only two listed B/SOL Preservation Analysts to the Plan. I was requested to write four reports on Beach-front history (one on La Bahia), with some phrases and photos from my reports making it into the B/SOL Plan.
ARG: The other B/SOL preservation analyst was the widely respected Architectural Resources Group of San Francisco, who wrote a report on La Bahia, its significance, what needs to be protected, and guidelines for a compatible addition to the landmark. They, too, indicated in the recent French project’s Environmental Impact Report (EIR) that the project didn’t comply with the stated B/SOL requirements for the landmark.
POSITION: The La Bahia Coalition pushed to save more of the landmark, and design the addition in the required Spanish Colonial Revival style. So how did we go from City requirements to save the landmark, to a City government intent on overturning their own requirements? This is my view of the events.
A SIGNIFICANT LANDMARK
CASA DEL REY: The Casa Del Rey Hotel was built in 1911, a 300-room structure connected to the boardwalk’s Cocoanut Grove by a bridge over Beach Street, including 150 cottages in back with golf and tennis facilities. The hotel and cottages rented by the day or week. But in 1926, they built the Casa Del Rey Apts. (now La Bahia), a private complex of 44 luxury suites so guests could enjoy an extended stay, with their own kitchenettes.
STYLE: The architecture was a rare example of Mediterranean hill villages, a handmade look, with clustered buildings that expressed the topography of the landscape, garden courtyards like outdoor rooms, and a maze-like layout of landscaped stairs, terraces, and passageways that unveiled framed vistas like stage-sets. The courtyards had optimal natural lighting, as an oasis of calm midst a bustling Beach-front. The apartments were a trip into the past, designed to look like they’d always been there. Honeymooners loved to return for anniversaries, and over the years, this was always the place to house special guests to the City.
IMPORTANT ASSOCIATIONS: The Apts. were designed by Wm. C. Hays, one of the founding professors of the UC Berkeley School of Architecture, who believed the relationship of architecture and landscaping should be taught together. The Apts. had ironwork and lighting fixtures designed by Russian-born Johnny Otar, a Santa Cruz craftsman known statewide as “Otar the Lampmaker” for outfitting homes and hotels.
RESIDENTIAL ERA: After World War II, the complex became private residential luxury apartments, renamed La Bahia in the 1960s. La Bahia was repurchased by the Seaside Company in 1985, who then rejected a County Landmark’s Plaque for the La Bahia (even though it was entirely honorary with no legal restrictions). The apartments have been used continuously up to today for student housing and summer employees, under minimal maintenance. When the 1989 earthquake brought about the demolition of the Casa Del Rey Hotel, the City decided to create guidelines for Beach-front redevelopment.
THE BEACH AREA PLAN
OUTREACH: The Phipps Group of Washington D.C. described their resulting “Beach/South of Laurel Area Plan” (or B/SOL) as the largest outreach program in Santa Cruz history, a 7-year project involving over 2,100 individuals, 20 organizations, plus City, County and Regional governing bodies. This consensus document reflected the wishes of the Beach-front’s chief stakeholders of business owners, neighbors and preservationists, making sure economics didn’t take precedent over neighborhood and landmark protections. The B/SOL Plan identified the Boardwalk, Wharf, La Bahia Apts., the Railroad Depot, and Beach Hill neighborhood, as the most important historic Beach-front assets, whose mutual restoration would revitalize the Beach-front’s early resort character, to generate Heritage Tourism. The Seaside Company had led the way seeking State Landmark status for the boardwalk, and National Register status for the Looff Carousel and Giant Dipper Roller Coaster, gaining a share of heritage tourists and international prestige.
RATING: The La Bahia was already one of only a few specially designated City Landmarks, also listed in the Santa Cruz Historic Building Survey, rated “excellent” for its unique architectural character in 1976, then “exceptional” in 1984 by John Gilchrist when factoring in the significance of the architect. The City Council believed converting the La Bahia into a hotel was the best plan for saving the building.
ARG: In 1997, the City Council hired the San Francisco firm Architectural Resources Group (or ARG) to evaluate the landmark, and ARG called La Bahia the most likely eligible (later upgraded to definitely eligible) for the National Register of Historic Places, the nation’s highest landmark rating. ARG designated that the chief character-defining features to save would be its Beach Street facade, the courtyards and their facades, the passageways, as well as the general scale and detail. The ARG report concluded with detailed guidelines to make new development compatible with the landmark, through similar massing, and Spanish Colonial Revival style.
FOLLOW ARG: Fearing developers would treat the landmark site as a vacant lot, the City Council made the ARG criteria the definition of what was required to be saved in the B/SOL Plan, also referenced in the Local Coastal Plan (LCP), and even in the RTC Zoning. In the 1998 B/SOL Environmental Impact Report, the La Bahia Mitigation’s list required a developer to (1.) follow the ARG report, (2.) hire a preservation professional to help the developer follow the ARG report, then (3.) afterwards have historians assess if the developer followed the ARG report. The conversion of the La Bahia landmark into a hotel was found scattered in 56-pages of the B/SOL Plan-Guidelines-&-EIR, regarded as one of the most important B/SOL projects. In 2003, the Coastal Commission certified portions of the B/SOL Plan, the entire B/SOL Architectural Guidelines, and the B/SOL Final EIR containing the entire ARG Report.
FIRST PROPOSALS
SAVING THE LANDMARK: The B/SOL Plan had called for expanding the La Bahia lot to include Westbrook St. and what’s now the Coastview Hotel, to allow a hotel the size of the Casa Del Rey. However this plan died when Coastview Hotel owners refused to sell-or-partner with the project. In 2003, Barry Swenson Builder proposed a 118-room near- total preservation plan for converting the La Bahia into a hotel on the original site. The developer insisted it was exactly what he had to have for a viable project, and the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC), City Council, and Coastal Commission approved it. The developer soon dropped his project in 2005, later telling the Preservation Commission it wasn’t that they couldn’t make money with it, but that they felt they could make more money without the landmark.
HIGHRISE: In 2008, the developer proposed total-demolition of the La Bahia, maybe saving the cupola, and building an 8-story skyscraper of 125-rooms as a condo-hotel. Condominiums were actually forbidden in the B/SOL Plan LCP, unless it facilitated the restoration of the La Bahia. The Preservation Commission kept trying to get a meeting, as is required in the B/SOL Plan to advise the project in its formative stages, but the developer said he was trying to line up support for his highrise first, and didn’t formally meet with Preservation Commission until nearly a year later. The Commission formed subcommittee to work with the developer, and I wrote report-after-report to guide the project to meet the B/SOL requirements, but nothing in their proposed design ever changed, and after three months, the subcommittee stopped meeting.
SPOT ZONING: HPC learned the City let the developer know he could design anything he wanted on the site, then change all the site requirements to legalize his non-compliance with the B/SOL Plan and Local Coastal Plan (LCP). The developer was playing by his own rules, and HPC was futilely trying to apply the requirements. In just five years, the City had gone from requiring landmark preservation by law, to unofficially urging landmark extinction through an Anything Goes development strategy. The developer’s own former 2003 proposal was offered as the sole historic alternative, yet this time denounced by its creator as infeasible. The developer called all his alternatives infeasible. When the developer realized the 8-story height was an issue that might doom his new project, he quickly invented a “real” alternative called 3A for a 7-story hotel. It failed at HPC, passed without unanimous support at City Council, then failed at the Coastal Commission for Spot Zoning the site. This was a shock, because the developer had said “the Coastal Commission is on-board with this plan,” and the anti-preservation crowd tended to loudly blame Santa Cruz Coastal Commissioner Mark Stone for his “betrayal” by finding non-compliance, and myself for my extensive analysis of the plan’s non-compliance.
CURRENT PROJECT
Craig French became the new developer for the Seaside Company, saying he’d learned the lessons from the previous project. Yet the lessons he learned, were that some City officials publicly announced they were still upset that the 7-story highrise was killed at the Coastal Commission. By bemoaning the La Bahia’s condition and the need for tax revenues, these officials were hinting that landmark extinction and non-compliant Anything Goes development was perfectly acceptable, and to regard this as a vacant lot project instead of a preservation project. The developer proposed a 165-room 6-story hotel, but articulated so that no more than 4-stories face any one street. He said he would demolish the majority of the landmark, saving only the tower wing, and delist the landmark since his plan obviously destroyed its National Register eligibility. The new hotel was designed in Corporate International Style, falsely claiming it is the required Spanish Colonial Revival Style. The developer claimed modernism is required to differentiate old-from-new under the Secretary of the Interior Standards for National Register landmarks (which this would not be). The developer felt he could justify all his non-compliance with his own interpretation of the B/SOL policies and preservation guidelines.
INADEQUATE ANALYSIS: It was obvious preservation was never a priority. Without hiring the preservation professional mentioned in the B/SOL Plan and FEIR mitigations lists to help achieve restoration, the developer’s Economic Analysis report had no credibility for a landmark conversion project, as it was not based on an examination of successful historic hotel conversions, concluding only new construction was viable. Likewise, his Structural Analysis was irrelevant to whether the building should be demolished, as the B/SOL Plan required reconstruction of demolished wings, meaning the new construction deemed economically feasible in his Economic Analysis, actually supported the required reconstruction of the La Bahia.
NO HARDSHIPS: The B/SOL requirements had included fail-safes to ensure preservation, but the developer used them to justify demolition-without-reconstruction, in order to satisfy the conditions of an Historic Demolition Permit. This demo. permit was not part of the B/SOL requirements, nor was it in any way specific to La Bahia. It requires proving economic hardship, abatement of a hazard, and that demolition is compatible with preservation requirements. Yet, if the La Bahia is unsound, it was due to negligence by the owner resulting in demolition-by-neglect, a self-imposed hardship. If it is abating a hazard, then the developer is saying the tenants have been endangered by the continuous occupation of the apts., again only a self-imposed hardship.
NOT CONSISTENT: Finally, you must find “demolition is consistent with the purpose of historic preservation.” Yet there is no provision that says 90% demolition satisfies the required preservation of the landmark’s specified “Character-Defining features,” especially since the landmark must be delisted for losing its National Register eligibility. The ARG authors of the preservation guidelines were hired to review the French proposal’s level of compliance with B/SOL. ARG cited La Bahia’s National Register eligibility as evidence of its significance, in an apartment complex defined by “…the interrelationships between the individual buildings and landscape components. By reducing the historic property to a single building, the proposed project would eliminate these characteristics. Such an adverse change to a CEQA-defined historic resource, constitutes a significant impact.” Thus, the project does not comply with the preservation requirements, and saving a single building does not preserve its national significance, and thus does not comply with preservation requirements. Further, a finding that the La Bahia no longer has any significance can only be rendered after the building’s significance is destroyed by the developer. Perhaps all you need to demolish an important landmark now is to personally destroy its significance.
NOT CONSIDERED: But there’s no evidence preservation was even considered. The developer hired an architectural firm with nothing but modern architecture on their website, obviously not expecting anything in the required historic style. If you overlay a map of the current landmark on the proposed structure, you see a vacant spot sufficient to contain the Court of the Troubadours as required, but missing. The Court of the Canyon and the Rabbit’s Hole breezeway could have been incorporated with little effort, while the Court of the Mariners had its footprint saved, but is to be gutted and turned into a driveway. If the developer had prioritized saving the landmark’s features, he could have placed the valet service in a special lane in front of the landmark, which would have pleased the Public Utilities Agency, which has complained the last two projects illegally introduce a new driveway opening onto active railroad tracks. So this project doesn’t abate a hazard, but introduces ahazard. Further, if the developer had split the hallway behind the tower wing, he could have made space for the Court of the Laurels in its place as required. But, as evidence by the non-complying mass-produced features of the modern building, the designers have little imagination or sensitivity to National Cultural Resources, if they happen to be associated with Santa Cruz.
AT HPC: When the project was brought before the current Preservation Commission, one of the new commissioners summed up their confusion this way: “What do they want from us? The City Council’s already made up their mind to support this, and our vote doesn’t count. So what’s our responsibility? Are we supposed to support the City Council, or support Preservation?” Two longer-serving members voted for preservation, while the new commissioners voted to support the City Council. Retired Capitola Museum head Carolyn Swift nearly wept speaking before them, wondering what they were there for if it wasn’t preservation?
AT CITY COUNCIL: At the City Council hearing, councilman Micah Posner (sympathetic to preservation) said there’s a feeling that Ross is probably right in what the requirements are. But Posner felt people are tired of the delays, and approving the modern hotel would put it on the fast track. He felt what he heard from business interests made
him think probably 80% of Santa Cruz wanted the dilapidated landmark
gone, and a modern structure built.
RESPONSE: Except the same business interests also supported the near-total landmark preservation project in 2003, as well as the highrise project in 2008. It’s the spirit of our business community to boost all local improvements. The 80% figure has no facts behind it, and doesn’t reflect the large number of preservation well-wishers I have encountered every day in all walks-of-life, who at one time were equal stakeholders in the B/SOL Plan. Any “delays” were caused by the developers, in killing the first project after it was approved, then ignoring six years of warnings that Spot Zoning was not likely to pass the Coastal Commission. And if the Council thinks this is the fast track, why did they replace the normal 3-year building permit with a 10-year building permit, if not because they lack confidence that the project can find investors before the year 2025?
THE APPEAL
On Sept. 25, the La Bahia Coalition filed to appeal the landmark demolition to the Coastal Commission. Our long list of non-compliance included housing, traffic, heritage trees, an on-site spring and archeological features, etc. But we simplified it to our basic goals: to saving more of the landmark, and make the addition in Spanish Colonial Revival style. The Dec. 11 meeting was supposed to be a 3-minute examination to prove Substantial Issue of concern to the Coastal Commission, which could grant us a full hearing. However, the Developer wanted 10 minutes for their case, so we were given 10 minutes under equal-time rules.
STAFF REPORT: The Coastal Commission staff report repeated the developer’s mis-statements, falsely asserting the project was in Spanish Colonial Revival style. The staff report claimed the B/SOL policies did not prevent demolition but offered it as an alternative, and wrongly implied non-B/SOL demolition and delisting guidelines specifically indicated La Bahia. The staff report claimed the B/SOL policies “did not ultimately include any explicit guidance regarding future development on the La Bahia site itself” (ignoring ARG’s detailed La Bahia report, partly titled “…& Recommendations for New Development” in the Certified B/SOL EIR and referenced in the LCP Zoning and Mitigations lists). The staff report falsely claimed (as was quoted in the Sentinel) that the Coastal Commission had approved “a separate coastal plan” to which this project complies. I asked the local Coastal Commission office about it, and was told this referred to the portions of the B/SOL policies that had been certified by the Coastal Commission. Thus, there is no separate plan; the LCP is imbedded in the B/SOL policies, dependent on the larger B/SOL document to understand context and intent.
RESPONSE: We provided 10 quotes requiring La Bahia preservation from the ARG report, the B/SOL Plan, the Certified B/SOL Final EIR, RTC Zoning, and the Implementation Policy, then focused on the non-existence of a Demolition Option.
NO DEMOLITION OPTION
Celia Scott was mayor when the B/SOL Plan was approved. She wrote the Coastal Commission during the appeal: “… La Bahia was to be part of a larger revitalization strategy to attract heritage tourism, and thus a demolition option was NOT part of the B/SOL plan.” In fact, none of the architectural guidelines even make sense without the landmark. The articulated massing, height provisions, and architectural style, were all intended to lessen the impacts of the addition on the La Bahia Complex, which the Plan stated unambiguously would be saved. But the staff report said demolition is mentioned throughout the B/SOL reports as an accepted option to preservation, as if it were a foregone conclusion, yet without any quotes to prove it. In fact, La Bahia demolition is not mentioned at all in the B/SOL Plan or Architectural Guidelines, except to say structural problems would allow certain specified wings to be replaced with replicas. Demolition is mentioned in the B/SOL EIR as follows.
MITIGATIONS: The La Bahia Impacts Mitigation list has been offered by the developer as what must be done to mitigate the elimination of the landmark. Except this again is a misreading. In the Certified Final EIR, the authors of the requirements explain that the massive expansion of the landmark into a hotel is considered an impact on the integrity of the structure, so it’s the addition that must be mitigated. {Certified B/SOL FEIR Sect. VI 35-36}. As a result, two versions of the Mitigations lists were prepared in the Draft EIR and the Certified Final EIR. They require adherence to the ARG protections for La Bahia, extensive documentation of any alteration on the La Bahia as a guide for restoration, and salvaging architectural features from wings that are being demolished, for use on the reconstructed wing to maintain historic continuity. So in these cases, demolition is only mentioned as part of the restoration process. However, the developer chose to read the procedures list backwards, starting with demolition, then using the mitigations to forgive the devastation, rather than to mitigate the expansion.
CEQA: After the B/SOL EIR came out in 1998, there was alarm from the Coastal Commission, HPC, and members of the public, that a La Bahia demolition-without-reconstruction option had been inserted with the phrase: “If the La Bahia is demolished, destroyed, or [inappropriately] altered…[it] would result in an unavoidable significant impact to historic resources.” The B/SOL authors replied in the Certified B/SOL FEIR that this phrase is required by CEQA (Ca. Environmental Quality Act) to assess these various impacts on the landmark. Yet they added, ‘The intent of the B/SOL Area Plan is to restore and expand the La Bahia, not ‘wholesale obliteration.'” Therefore, this does not constitute a demolition option, just as it’s also not permission for a disaster or inappropriate-alteration.
WORST CASE SCENARIO: Even if the Mitigations and CEQA boilerplate were confusing, it should have been perfectly clear what the last demolition mention means. The B/SOL FEIR states: “…In order to develop a 125-135 room hotel on the smaller footprint site [of the La Bahia]…it is likely that the La Bahia would be demolished under this alternative, in order to maximize the developable area for the hotel.” It sounds straight-forward as justification for how the developer approached the project. But in fact, this was Alternative E., a worst case scenario if the B/SOL Plan were not passed. The quoted portion ends with “…[This] alternative…would require demolition of the La Bahia, rather than an adaptive reuse of the building as proposed by the [B/SOL Plan] project.” It further notes this “…would not meet one of the primary purposes of the B/SOL Plan, to ‘enhance the historic resort attributes of the Beach area for residents and visitors alike.'” So this worst case scenario was not intended to happen because the B/SOL Plan was approved: requiring La Bahia Rehabilitation as part of the overall restoration of the waterfront’s most important features, to serve a primary B/SOL goal of generating heritage tourism. Therefore, demolition without reconstruction is non-compliance, accomplished by twisting restoration requirements, compatibility guidelines, and National Register Standards to help destroy the La Bahia’s significance, demolition most of the landmark, eliminate its national standing, and build an ultra modern replacement structure.
DECISION: The staff suggested the LCP had a range of options that left landmark protections up to the whim of the developer, and the Commission can’t look at material not in the LCP. One Commissioner contradicted this, saying understanding context and interpretation has always allowed examination of peripheral data. She observed that the developer’s economic analysis showed his preservation alternatives all made money, but was concerned his 10% profit model is not a universally accepted evaluation standard. Several other commissioners seemed sympathetic, but in the end only one voted to grant us a hearing.
CONCLUSION
LOSS: With the La Bahia’s demise, what we’re losing is that unique, intimate nature-oriented kind of landmark that characterizes the artistic soul of Santa Cruz, and was intended to knit-together a vista of waterfront landmarks to attract the deep-pockets Heritage Tourism as a cultural destination. Instead, we’re getting bland Freeway Vernacular motel-modernism (not allowed in the certified Architectural Guidelines), noted for its uniformity of mass-produced elements (not allowed in the certified Architectural Guidelines), imposing Corporate International Style to reflect the Corporate ambitions of the City, and attract a hopefully self-indulgent Corporate crowd.
PRECEDENT: Meanwhile, a development plan to enfranchise the largest number of Santa Cruzans, has turned into a project to disenfranchise neighbors and preservationists. Those defending the development of La Bahia according to the B/SOL Plan are accused of being anti-business and trying to stop progress. The City spent time and money devoting 56 pages to a La Bahia Preservation Plan (exceptional in Santa Cruz preservation history), and still ended up with the Worst Case Scenario that was warned against if the B/SOL Plan weren’t approved. Seeing nothing wrong with this, the Coastal Commission has set a low bar by creating the La Bahia Precedent for developers who don’t want to keep a protected landmark. All they have to do is reinterpret the LCP protections into non-protections, dismiss the authors of the requirements as having no authority over what it means, rewarding lack-of-maintenance with demolition, and planning to ruin a landmark’s historic integrity with delisting.
