Something Rick Steves said in one of his books has been running through my head the past few weeks. He said that he looks for the towns in Europe which were once very prosperous and then went through a period of decline. During that decline, the people in those towns were not able to replace old buildings or remodel them significantly so those towns are the most unchanged from the way they were centuries ago.
Applying that idea to California, that is why so many Gold Country towns are so charming. They were incredibly wealthy a hundred years ago but that wealth went away and many of them have been without new sources of wealth since then so they are relatively unchanged compared to most towns in California.
It is important to watch out for the opposite of this. When a town starts becoming prosperous again, it is all to easy to quickly lose the best of what remains from the past.
Unfortunately this is what started to happen to Santa Cruz beginning in the sixties. The town started becoming more prosperous than it had in the past. Not very quickly, but consistently over the course of a few decades. Although I have not investigated it, I believe part of this new wealth came with the increased use of cars and the ease of travel this gave to day trippers who come to Santa Cruz from the Bay Area.
Part of it came from the University.
As that wealth came into town, some buildings were replaced with other buildings which allowed more profitable commerce. The galleria and the riverfront plaza probably allow for more efficient concentration of wealth than the chinatown area that used to be there.
As more people filled the town, the charming Carnegie library had to make room for the larger modern monolith that now serves us. The Hihn mansion had to make way for the now city hall that replaced it.
While the silicon boom was happening, the anticipation of millions to be made from courting lots of electronics companies downtown prompted the replacement of buildings like the Cooperhouse with the top-heavy monstrosities that now dominate downtown, full of probably underutilized office space.
Other small towns should be alert to this possibility when the start to become prosperous. It may be inevitable that some changes will happen to these towns, but if they are aware of it, perhaps they can mold it so they can keep as much of the good that exists from their town's past and meld it with the good of their future.
But where does this leave Santa Cruz?
Much of what was good from our past is gone but there are isolated fragments that still hang on. We need to cherish those fragments and find ways to incorporate them into the fabric of our evolving economy. We need to find ways to keep them profitable, for things which are profitable are more likely to survive.
How much different would our town be today if the Hihn mansion still existed with a civic center built up around it? Or if the McHugh and Bianchi building were still in place (although I am skeptical it could have survived the quake) ?
What places do we need to preserve and how can we preserve them?
