In downtown Santa Cruz, formerly referred to as the Pacific Garden Mall, 20 buildings collapsed and 50 businesses were displaced, the Sentinel reported.
One of the structures lost in the earthquake was the Cooper House on Cooper Street in downtown Santa Cruz. A buff-brick building constructed in 1894, the Cooper House was once a courthouse and later became a community center of restaurants, shops and music, the Sentinel reported.
The building was demolished less than two weeks after the earthquake. The Federal Emergency Management Agency covered the cost of the demolition, according to Neal Coonerty, former owner of Bookshop Santa Cruz.
Today, standing in the Cooper House’s place is O’Neill Surf Shop.
The St. George Hotel was also brought down after the earthquake. It was damaged and burned in a 1990 fire, according to St. George Residences History. Barry Swenson Builder, now Swenson, rebuilt the hotel with design help from Thacher & Thompson Architects. It reopened in 1992 with residential units upstairs and retail businesses below, according to St. George Residences. Bookshop Santa Cruz is one of those businesses.
The first building the Bookshop was in, 1547 Pacific Ave., was damaged and some inventory and fixtures were lost, Coonerty said. But the business survived. Bookshop had two days to move everything out of the building and set up in a temporary tent behind its original location. Volunteers had to sign waivers knowing that their lives were at risk if another earthquake struck in the damaged building, he said.
“We’re very grateful because it saved us,” Coonerty said of the tent.
Bookshop stayed in the tent for three years. During that time, it heavily relied on its customers to sustain the business. At a celebration for the anniversary of the Bookshop, customers were asked to donate five books to resell and help pay for the tent, according to Coonerty. Thousands of customers showed their support, he said.
“We were literally saved by our customers,” Coonerty said. “The bookshop wouldn’t be here without them.”
Bookshop moved to the St. George Hotel, 1520 Pacific Ave., in the fall of 1992 and remains there today. The building was reconstructed to meet seismic standards, according to Coonerty.
An Orange Haze
While the Beach Boardwalk didn’t face the damage of downtown Santa Cruz, its rides and buildings were still subject to the quake. The infamous Giant Dipper came out of the earthquake with minor damage. It didn’t have any structural problems post-quake, according to Ted Whiting III, vice president of legacy affairs at the Santa Cruz Seaside Co. Most of the rides and buildings at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk survived, he said.
“It was a jolt like I never experienced before,” Whiting said of the earthquake. “Everything shook.”
Whiting recalled looking out of his office at the Boardwalk and seeing a large cloud of dust beyond Beach Hill and an orange haze from fire. On that Tuesday in 1989, rides weren’t open at the Boardwalk. Some cables dropped from the Sky Glider skyride, and pockets of cement burst from a pressure buildup in the basement, he said. The flume ride, Logger’s Revenge, experienced the most damage. The holding station split and flooded the basement, according to Whiting. Logger’s Revenge didn’t open again until the following summer, but the east end of the Boardwalk opened in the spring, he said.
Other areas of the Boardwalk also experienced damage. The entrance to the building that housed the miniature golf course had separated from the rest of the building. The Cocoanut Grove had “cosmetic damage, not structural,” according to Whiting. A pressurized fire line broke above the Cocoanut Grove’s ballroom, drenching the floor and waterlogging the Casino Arcade below, according to Whiting’s earthquake blog.
Casa del Ray Hotel, a retirement hotel built in 1911 across the street from the Boardwalk, suffered more consequences. As residents were waiting for dinner, they fell off their chairs and everyone was cleared out of the building, Whiting said.
The Seaside Co. owned the hotel and “worked day in, day out” to take care of all 147 residents, Whiting said. They were eventually relocated to stay with family or at other facilities. Some were housed at the Carousel Beach Inn on Riverside Avenue in Santa Cruz, which the Seaside Co. owns. Most of the residents were relocated by the beginning of the next year, he said.
The architect determined the extent of damage was at the north end of the hotel. Nobody went back to live at the hotel after that, and it was taken down the following month, Whiting said.
While some buildings on the Boardwalk have been replaced or remodeled since the earthquake, the rides aren’t subject to the same building code, according to Whiting.
“Rides are mechanical pieces,” Whiting said. “They don’t follow earthquake codes.”
Reconstructing downtown
Jesse Nickell III, senior vice president of the Santa Cruz division of Swenson, has worked on many reconstructed and new buildings on Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz. Rebuilding after the earthquake has been “a big chunk of my career,” Nickell said.
One of the last holes to be filled from the earthquake is at 1547 Pacific Ave., which Swenson has been working on for about 18 months. Bookshop Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Co. are among the businesses on that property 30 years ago, according to Nickell. Two people died in the coffee shop building, the Sentinel reported.
The property has been vacant since the earthquake. Known as Park Pacific, the development is expected to be completed in March 2020. The $35 million project is secured by columns, a concrete mattress, flexible framing and other engineering practices. It will be a multi-use complex with condos, restaurants and office space.
Since the earthquake, Swenson has constructed 14 buildings on Pacific, close to 10 being new buildings, according to Nickell.
During that time, he said building codes have evolved a lot.
The structural skeleton of buildings is “way more conservative” than it was 30 years ago, Nickell said, meaning they are built stronger to withstand an earthquake. Bricks can crack in an earthquake and because they don’t move well in a temblor, they are being replaced by wood, steel and concrete, which instead will bend and flex in an earthquake, he said.
“They (buildings) are really designed to take a bigger amplitude and longer duration,” Nickell said.
Every building has a seismic model, a smaller scale version of the property that is put through a simulation of earthquake activity, according to Nickell.
Some buildings are constructed with rods called “hold-downs” that hold the building down to the foundation, Nickell said. As far as retrofitting goes, shear walls or internal frames are added to the existing shell of a building to hold up the roof and walls. Builders can also use “shotcrete,” a process in which they shoot concrete right onto an existing wall. While these additions may not save the building from destruction, they are meant to make the building safe enough for people to get out in an event such as an earthquake, Nickell said.
Building codes control mandates and retrofitting, according to Paia Levine, assistant director of the county Planning Department.
Building codes are modified at least every three years and are determined by the International Code Council, Levine said.
“It’s kind of an ongoing process,” Levine said.
Local jurisdictions have to adopt international building codes, but can amend them within certain limits, she said.
In response to the earthquake, local jurisdictions were required to identify all unreinforced masonry buildings, or buildings not secured with stabilizing material, and create a program to retrofit them, according to the city of Santa Cruz’s Municipal Code. Another section of the code requires all residential remodel or additional permits to dedicate a certain amount of construction cost to improve the building’s resistance to seismic forces, according to John McLucas, deputy building official with the city of Santa Cruz.
McLucas said there is only one unreinforced masonry building left downtown and it is vacant. Others have been replaced with frames, better bolting, braced roof parapets and more structural changes.
Lisa Krieger of Bay Area News Group contributed to this report.
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©2019 the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Scotts Valley, Calif.)
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