Kaiser Nixes Office Building

May 22, 2023

The Sentinel reports that Kaiser pulled out of its plan to build a large office building and and 730 space parking garage on the frontage road on the ocean side of Hwy 1 near Chanticleer Ave. Kaiser’s explanation is that growth of other facilities in Watsonville, Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz make the project unnecessary. Maybe there’s another reason. That’s Henry Kaiser in the above photo driving a bus that Kaiser built. Maybe Henry’s ghost was perturbed that the Kaiser facility was proposed over a mile from the nearest bus stop. Evidently Kaiser expected all its patients and workers to arrive by car. (Hence the reason for building a parking garage that would be 50% larger than the next largest garage in the County.)

     I’d like to think that the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation had something to do with Kaiser finding a different path forward. Along with the Sierra Club we wrote comments on the Draft EIR for this project, pointing out that Kaiser could locate on a large vacant lot at the corner of Soquel Dr. and Thurber Lane, in the General Plan’s Medical District, on a transit corridor. The final EIR was supposed to be published in summer of 2022. Maybe the EIR team couldn’t figure out how to spin the proposed Kaiser location as environmentally preferred. Maybe our organization’s successful lawsuit against Caltrans let Kaiser know we could hold them accountable. Or maybe Kaiser realized that promoting auto dependency doesn’t help people thrive.

     Whatever the reason, let’s celebrate that our community has another chance to follow plan new development where transit is frequent (as called for in the General Plan).