Around Santa Clara Becomes Observeris and What Happened to Santa Clara's Downtown

I've decided to bring back my blog, but without necessarily focusing on Santa Clara. I might expand on the subjects I write about in the Santa Clara Weekly, or create links to related articles, but by and large this will be more free-ranging. I will also republish pieces that I've written for other websites that are now gone.

However to start off,  I'd like to republish a piece I did in 2008 for the Weekly about Santa Clara's lost downtown when Yet-Another-Plan-For-Downtown-Revitalization was on the table. Like all that  preceded it, that plan never got off the ground.

At last Tuesday's City Council meeting discussing Irvine's proposed Mission Town Center  at Benton and El Camino -- part of the pre-1960 downtown and currently home to aging warehouses -- a number of people mentioned they didn't know if Santa Clara ever had a downtown or what happened to it.

Irvine's proposal is the latest of many proposed to help rescue Santa Clara's historical center from continuing to be the dingy afterthought it is. With SiliconSage's Downtown Gateway under construction and Santa Clara University's proposal for a pedestrian mall on Franklin St., Irvine's project has a chance of not following other downtown revitalization plans into the dustbin of history.

But for any plan to succeed, and to have intelligent commentary on it, you have to know the history. Otherwise, we risk making the same delusional errors that doomed downtown in the first place. And if another 50 years go by, the Historical & Landmarks Commission might be talking about preserving the historic charm of the turn-of-the-21st-century El Camino.

I want to acknowledge Mary Hanel, now-retired head of Santa Clara City Library's Heritage Pavilion, without whom I would still be researching this story. Her vast knowledge of Santa Clara's local history resources was invaluable.

Downtown Santa Clara: Why There’s No There, There

With the success of the historic areas like Campbell’s downtown strip and the “faux” downtown of Santana Row, many regret that Santa Clara has no similar draw. But before we race to fix today’s perceived problem, history offers a cautionary tale for contemporary engineers of public space.

It’s the old story of good intentions gone awry. Santa Clara’s downtown fell victim to something intended to save it: the post-war urban renewal movement.

Urban Renewal: Post War Sign of the Times

The modern urban renewal movement began in the 19^th century Paris, slum areas and twisting narrow medieval streets were demolished and replaced with new neighborhoods, plazas, traffic circles, and broad, tree-lined boulevards that are still a Paris hallmark.

Fast forward to the U.S. in the 1930s.

Influenced by Robert Moses who drove development of highways, parks and low-income housing in New York City, the federal government passed the 1937 Housing Act, designed to develop housing in low-income areas.

The law provided money to municipal governments to build new housing but required that slum housing be demolished prior to new construction.

After WWII, wholesale demolition picked up steam with the 1949 Housing Act, providing provided generous grants for slum clearance. Entire neighborhoods were torn down in anticipation of new, tax-generating developments.

It was against this backdrop, and the “newer is better” postwar mindset, that the idea of redeveloping Santa Clara’s downtown took root.

Santa Clara's “Bright New Future”

Redevelopment of Santa Clara's downtown was first proposed in 1958 by then City Manager Lloyd Brady, according to the late former Mayor and Council Member Frank Barcells. “He was the instigator,” Barcells recalled in 2008.

The proposal was headlined as “Franklin Facelifting Plan Filed” in the Jan. 2, 1958 Santa Clara Journal. A perfect example of the thinking of the period, the article reflected no doubts about the soundness of the idea.

“Action to obtain federal assistance in a plan to remedy blight conditions of the Franklin street business section…was taken last week when Santa Clara City Manager Lloyd Brady and City Planner William Loretta filed the city’s application for government funds under the Urban Housing Act of 1954,” the Journal reported. “The proposal is to rehabilitate a section of the blighted area and reverse its ‘creeping’ effect from spreading to other areas.”

Planners anticipated $1.3 million in federal matching funds for demolition and reconstruction of what one contemporary promotional piece described as “the threshold of a bright new future.”

Redevelopment director Karl Pearman, in a1960 interview with the San Jose Evening News, described Santa Clara's future downtown as “old Mission atmosphere with a modern touch…flowered walkways about modern arcade-style shops.

“A farmer’s market with gay umbrella-covered tables…perhaps even muted music coming through dozens of hidden microphones…public benches along the streets…upholstered with in waterproof plastic for colorful décor.”

The consulting firm Wilsey & Ham went further, predicting that the area “will be rebuilt someday to be the place of history, pageantry, art galleries, libraries, coffee houses, museums and concert halls.”

The original plan encompassed 64 blocks from the Carmelite Monastery on Lincoln St. to the train tacks behind Santa Clara University, and from Bellomy Ave. to El Camino. The plan included a pedestrian shopping mall as well as high-density housing.

When the federal government objected to the plan as too ambitious, it was scaled back into three phases.

 A 6-1 Vote for the Wrecking Ball

Despite fierce public debate, on Sept. 29, 1960 the City Council voted 6-1 to approve the Santa Clara downtown “Urban Renewal Plan “after a stormy session that came close to bedlam,” Dick Cox wrote in Sept. 30, 1960 Mercury News report.

“The motion for approval was made by Councilman James Viso,” Cox wrote. “He stated… ‘I know from the bottom of my heart that urban Renewal is the salvation of this community.’” Viso was later to change his mind.

The near-arrest of Bill Wilson Jr., of Wilson’s Bakery on Franklin St., an outspoken redevelopment opponent, was the climax of the meeting. 

Notified that his allotted three minutes was up, Wilson replied, “I’ll speak three minutes for someone who doesn’t want to talk,” Cox reported. “When two police detectives took him by the arm he started to take hold of the microphone, then shrugged and stepped aside.” Half the audience walked out with Wilson.

In the vote, Austin Warburton was the sole dissenter. Favoring the plan were Mayor Al Levin, and Council Members Jim Viso, Robert Simons, Maurice Dullea, Joseph Rebeiro, and Matt Talia.

And in February 1965, Santa Clara fixtures like the Franck Building (ca. 1900) and Pereira’s Men’s Store Building (ca. 1920) and Wade’s Mission Pharmacy fell victim to the wrecking ball. Later that year William Wilson Sr. and Austen Warburton were the first purchasers of parcels in what was to become the Franklin Mall.

Original business owners, with the exception of Wilson’s Bakery, didn’t come back.

Although owners received market prices for their property, the size of the new parcels put a return to downtown economically out of reach for most, according to Frank Barcells, who was among the purchasers of the phase one development. “I wanted to see the city subdivide each piece into small parcels. Those people couldn’t afford to buy all that land. They just went out of business or they left.”

Failed Expectations

By the end of the 1960s, the tide turned against urban renewal. In 1969, led by Frank Barcells and Larry Fargher, Council voted 4-3 to shut down the redevelopment agency. Council Member William Kiely commented at the time that it represented a $5 million vote for Santa Clara taxpayers.

But the city couldn’t shut the door on problems spawned by the project.

Phase two plans stalled as financially-troubled Realtech, contracted in 1970 to develop the property over five years, failed to perform and fell behind on taxes and rent.

After the City Council fired Realtech and regained title to the land in 1977, no developers were interested in the Santa Clara project.

“No one was prepared to do the work,” former Planning Director Geoff Goodfellow said in a Jan. 9, 1987 Santa Clara American story. “No developer was willing to put the funds together.” The area was zoned commercial and population didn’t justify an exclusively commercial center. The only way to get developers interested was to rezone for residential building.

Plans circulated for high-rise luxury condos and office buildings, supermarkets and shopping centers. All of them come to nothing and dust continued to blow over the empty 7.6-acre lot, now a public eyesore.

In 1978, former Council Member Jim Viso offered about $600,000 for a six-acre parcel with a plan that included office buildings, commercial space and racquetball courts.  At the time Viso described his investment as an attempt to make amends for a bad decision back in the 1950s.

“I feel I have a responsibility for this project,” Viso said in a July 18, 1978 Santa Clara Sun story. “I don’t consider myself just another developer. I grew up in Santa Clara and feel a deep commitment to it.”

Viso was unable to interest any businesses in the development. In the early 1980s, Prometheus Development came forward with a proposal to build condominiums on the land. Initially rejected, in Council later voted 3-1 in 1985 to approve the developer’s plan.

Viso sold the land to Prometheus in 1985 at a profit and some felt that he took unfair advantage of his position. “Why didn’t somebody else buy it if it was such a great deal,” Viso replied in a Jan. 9, 1987 Santa Clara American story. “It was a gamble.”

Some area homeowners opposed the development. They feared the neighborhood would suffer if a large number of renters moved in, Old Quad Homeowners Association vice president Shirley Odou said at the time.

After a quarter century of politicking, in 1987 Prometheus began construction of 193 condo units, 

Was Downtown Really “blighted”?

Blight, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.

One contemporary observer was former City Manager Don Von Raesfeld, then director of Public Works and Utilities. Many downtown buildings were in bad shape, he told Ronald Campbell in a 1974 interview.   

“When urban renewal was started…the buildings in the downtown area for the most part were badly deteriorated, lacking in public parking facilities. They were low-expense type of business operations and the city would eventually have been confronted with forcing the owners to have them torn down and rebuilt.

“Some of those people would have been incapable of doing that,” Raesfeld continued, “and if the city hadn’t done that, the downtown would have continued to deteriorate to where it would have been nothing. Lots of people would have lost their life-long savings, or been unable to retire out of them.”

Barcells disagreed with Von Raesfeld’s assessment.

“All the building owners had to do was clean up the buildings and bring them up to code,” he said. “I thought it would be feasible for them to bring their own buildings up to code. That’s what they did in Los Gatos and Campbell, and they’re still there. That’s what Santa Clara should have done.”

Even before the first building fell, a National Real Estate Board group suggested “re-study” because the project was not geographically suited for a major regional business center. “Blight is at a minimum,” said Edward Hustace in a Feb. 26, 1964 Santa Clara Journal story. “Bootstrap operations of self rehabilitations [could] cure most.”

DGS Needs to Stop Acting Like It's Running a REIT

I went to elementary school in the 1950s, when fears of "creeping communism" colored everything. Yet, despite worries about communists insinuating Marxist ideas in My Weekly Readit was an uncontroversial proposition that communities should spend money to do and build things that were in the public interest. And part of that public interest was schools. If you look at city plans from the post-WWII era, you'll see land designated for things like schools, parks, libraries and even churches.

Yeah, I know: Land was worth less and there was more of it available. But the very point of such planning was that the future was unknown. Planning and zoning were ways communities could ensure that long term hopes and needs didn't fall victim to short-term problems and short-sighted officials.

Today this has become a radical idea, where public programs are castigated as "creeping socialism" and cities are always on the lookout for handouts from private developers to fund public infrastructure.

So perhaps its no surprise that many of the very people that we -- voters -- hire to do the detail work of planning and managing our physical and social civic infrastructure, act like their responsibility begins and ends not with public welfare, but with delivering the biggest cash returns. This is the job of a hedge fund manager, but not, I think, of a public official.

The Northside library debacle is one example, where Santa Clara County officials are, in effect, holding the library hostage for a $19 million ransom.

But an even richer example is the Agnews East property, the perfect site for schools to serve Silicon Valley's fast-growing Golden Triangle. In this case, the state Department of General Services seems hell-bent on taking advantage of the recent real estate boomlet to milk those 81 acres for every penny it can get, and the devil (in this case school children) take the hindmost. (Perhaps the state figures some private school operator will come in to pick up the slack.)

However, the Agnews land question has brought together Santa Clara and San Jose residents and officials to support new schools on that land. And today Invest in Santa Clara Schools launched an online petition drive to make sure that state officials know that voters don't think that public land should be managed like a real estate investment trust.

Remember BAREC? Whether or not you agree that with the final development agreement on the land, the deal was made, as the Metro reported at the time, by then Governor Gray Davis and the UC Board of Regents without public discussion. It was a backroom deal that State Senator John Vasconcellos castigated in a 2000 letter.

"As you may recall," he wrote to Davis in 2000 concerning the UC's decision to revert the agriculatural research station property to the State, "this decision was made singularly between your administration and the University of California, and slipped into the budget without any advance notification to either the public or us. This is an abominable process. We hope that you, your administration and the UC, will pledge never again to undertake such a surreptitious action."

Remember Gray Davis? There's a guy who learned about blowback the hard way. 

Wednesday Santa Clara Study Session on Citizen Participation in Sports Complex Visioning

At a recent Santa Clara City Council meeting, City Manager Julio Fuentes spoke about the need  connecting citizens to the city's long-term planning at an early stage. It's a challenge as many know. The minute that city officials say "maybe we should" or "what if," the rumor mill goes into overdrive and by day's end slogan-bearing tee shirts are being printed. 

However, in the hope that more early discussion will help build public trust, this Wednesday at 4:30 the City Council's goal-setting sub-committee is holding a study session about the ways residents can participate in the research and  recommendations for a new Santa Clara sports park complex. Find the agenda here. The meeting is at the Council conference room, adjacent to the Council Chamber. 

The discussion was triggered by the brouhaha created when the Council began talking, at a September study session, about moving the 10 year-old Santa Clara Youth Soccer Park from its present location side-by-side with Santa Clara's new Levi's Stadium. The Council has said that no decisions have been made. You an watch the Council meeting here and selecting agenda item 5.c. 

Judge Rules: Dissolution Law Did Not Invalidate The Stadium Agreements

"Before redevelopment agencies were dissolved, the Forty Niners contracted with the City of Santa Clara's Stadium Authority and redevelopment agency to finance construction of a new stadium to be owned by the City and used by the Forty Niners. Do those contracts survive dissolution of the redevelopment agencies? The court concludes they do."

Read Judge Alan Sumner's ruling at https://services.saccourt.ca.gov/publicdms/Search.aspx and search for case # 34-2012-80001192. 

First Look at Santa Clara's Super Bowl Bid

Tuesday night Santa Clarans get their first look at what cities are expected to ante up for a Super Bowl bid. The City Council called a special meeting for Tuesday night to adopt a series of resolutions about government services – especially public safety – and tax and fee exemptions for the NFL during a Super Bowl.

Basically, the City of Santa Clara will the provide government services – including public safety, fire, emergency medical services to support the Super Bowl and related events held in Santa Clara at no cost to the NFL or to the teams playing in the Super Bowl. Instead, the San Francisco Super Bowl committee will reimburse Santa Clara for these costs – paying the city for pre-event services within 60 days of invoicing, and 50 percent of the anticipated Super Bowl event costs 30 days before the game.

Other accommodations concern city taxes and fees. One is that employees of the NFL and their affiliates will be exempt from Santa Clara hotel taxes and parking permit fees -- the estimate is this applies to around 350 people. The other is that Super Bowl tickets will be exempt from the Santa Clara's $0.35 per ticket surcharge. This is capped at $250,000 and the city estimates that most of that will be collected from regular season games.

The Council is working from estimates that a Super Bowl carries with it an economic boost for a region of $300 million. This is likely based on a Williams College study of Super Bowl economic impacts from 1970 to 2001, which posited the $300 million as the best case. The study also cautioned against confusing gross returns with net returns. 

The New Orleans Super Bowl Host Committee reported $434 million in total overall economic activity tied to the 2013 Super Bowl, according to a report in New Orleans Times Picayune. The question is, of course: How much of that activity will be in the City of Santa Clara -- or even in Santa Clara County? San Francisco clearly anticipates that it's going to get a big boost. 

All this being said, a Super Bowl would be a tremendous boost for Santa Clara both in terms of civic prestige and city visibility. These are intangibles whose effects cannot be measured in the short term, yet pay dividends for the city decade after decade in many ways. 

Here's a link to read the agenda report and the text of the resolutions.

Safe Routes to School for The Other Santa Clara School District (TOSCSD)

What's it like being part of The Other Santa Clara school districts (TOSCSD) -- i.e. Campbell and Cupertino? Well, here's an example. VTA, Santa Clara Unified School District and the City are sponsoring a "Safe Routes to School" poster contest.

For SCUSD students. I'm sure that no one meant to exclude anyone. And if you brought it up, I'm sure that someone would try to include TOSCSD. It's that it looks like nobody designing this program even thought about TOSCSD.

Children from the West Pruneridge neighborhood have to negotiate very unsafe routes to school. How many SCUSD children have to cross San Tomas Expressway, Stevens Creek Blvd, the Saratoga Ave. I-280 interchange, and I-880 all on every to school?

It's not SCUSD's fault that TOSCD isn't included. On a macro level, it's the state of California's fault for shirking the politically unpopular job of rationalizing school district boundaries.

County Board of Education Trustee Leon Beauchman is taking on this project for the county in the coming year and some of the boundaries that's going to be looked are Campbell's. (One of my readers called it "Campbell's Peculiar Institution." If you think about it, Campbell is certainly peculiar: Four-fifths of it is in other cities that have their own school districts.)

But, let's face it, we're not going to see district boundaries change in the short term.

So how about a City Council goal of pro-actively including all Santa Clara's students in city activities and programs. How? Well, how about a mailer for starters? After all, the city knows the addresses that are in those districts

What do you think?

Here's the info on the poster contest: santaclaraca.gov/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=8478.

Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors to Santa Clara County Cities: Tough Luck

Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors President Ken Yeager is a busy man. He's got too many bicycle photo opps to get to.

Judging from his response, it seems he doesn't have have a lot of time for the whiners and complainers in the Santa Clara County Cities Association who think they're getting a raw deal from the county in the unwinding of redevelopment. In fact, he's such a busy man he doesn't have time, it seems, to find the answers to questions that county cities are raising.

Yeager's answer to the Santa Clara County Cities Association's letter about the county's aggressive asset grabs is simple: Tough luck. Any more questions? Call Deputy County Executive James Williams at (408) 299-5128.

Williams was at the last meeting of the Santa Clara RDA Successor Agency Oversight Board  explaining the county's position that Santa Clara simply needed to 'un-pay' money that had already been spent. The same meeting that Jamie Matthews called "a lot of brain damage" for  "little benefit."

Here's the county's reply to Cities Association: