By Noel Smith
How to recycle developed property; that is the task of the city of Scotts Valley. According to Mayor Dene Bustichi. “We are long past the ‘cutting trees to grow’ stage in our city’s development. Now we are encouraging development though recycling the land we have as the needs of our community and our economy changes.”
Driving along Scotts Valley Drive shows this strategy is working. At the Southwest end of Scotts Valley Drive there will be a new Scotts Valley Middle School on the same site as the present one.
Further down Scotts Valley Drive, Seagate once reigned in the world of disc drives. Seagate’s former campus is now home to innovators like Bay Photo and Fox Racing Shox.
Just down the road from there was once a tourist attraction called “The Tree Circus” which then became the “The Lost World.” This property is now the home of Bustichi Construction and “The Mint” restaurant. Some of those unique trees were moved and still exist in Gilroy Gardens.
Further on was the Octagon Building originally built on the 4500 block of Scotts Valley Drive in 1929 as an exotic bird aviary on the grounds of Beverly Gardens, a 1930s tourist attraction. The building was moved in 1947 to 5032 Scotts Valley Drive to become a hardware store and the first post office in Scotts Valley serving as a substation for post office boxes. Today the property at 5030 Scotts Valley Drive, next to the Scotts Valley Car Wash, is becoming home for a new Lexington Inn. When completed the hotel will add 134 hotel rooms for visitors to Scotts Valley. Construction will take about 16 months, creating about 150 construction jobs, with current work focused on underground parking.
Across Scotts Valley Drive from the future hotel is the 18-acre Woodside residential and commercial development. The property was a former RV dealership, and home to Slawinski Auction Co., which moved to Green Hills Road. The development has three commercial buildings along Scotts Valley Drive that are finished but not yet leased, and behind these are 49 new homes already occupied or sold.
Driving northeast along Scotts Valley Drive there is Victor Square, former headquarters of Victor Technologies. For old timers, this is a bitter memory of how fleeting technological and financial success can be. However, the site is now home to the very successful BRG Sports, with famous brands such as Bell Helmets, Ridell and Giro, dedicated to providing high-performance protective gear and accessories for action sports.
Ironically, northeast across the freeway from Victor Square is the location of the Borland Campus, another cautionary tale of technological promise and failure. (Also the former home of Santa’s Village … but that’s another story.)
Still going northeast along Scotts Valley Drive, just past Vine Hill Elementary School, is Bethany Drive, the entrance to property that once was occupied by Bethany Bible College. After several false starts in redevelopment following the school’s closing, the site was approved by the City Council October 15, 2014 for the 1440 Center project, an educational learning center for individuals, groups, and corporations which will provide overnight accommodations with on-site dining facilities. In Phase 1, the 1440 Center will accommodate up to 360 guests (which includes faculty and faculty assistants), and employ approximately 150 full-time equivalent employees and is expected to open in the summer of 2016. In Phase 2, accommodations for 140 additional guests will be constructed as well as a parking garage. At project build out, the proposed project will accommodate up to 500 guests and employ approximately 225 employees.
“This is really an important project for the city,” said Mayor Bustichi, “When the property became in effect abandoned it was becoming a problem for our police and fire services. Now the 1440 Center and Foundation will bring people to Scotts Valley that are, or will be the movers and shakers in our society. It also provides taxes — property, transient occupancy and sales taxes — that will be used by the city to maintain and improve our quality of life.”
There are some other major properties in the city whose future is still not decided. Past plans for them have created both controversy and hope. At one time the property next to the Hilton Hotel on La Madrona Dr. was planned to be a Target Store. Those plans were scrapped and its future has yet to be determined.
The planned Town Center on the site of the old Skypark Airport is clouded because the current owner, Terramar Retail Properties, purchased the former owner, Property Development Centers (PDC). PDC was a subsidiary of Safeway Stores, which was to provide the anchor store for the Scotts Valley Town Center. “Terramar has continued to finalize the purchase of property for the Town Center Project,” said Bustichi, “And its ownership opens up other possibilities for the project’s anchor store.”
The future of Scotts Valley is much brighter than it was just 5-6 years ago due to a city and City Council that has embraced the concept of recycling its land and building on its vision of the future.