16 Crisis For An Icon
The former Cross Roads after it became a flower boutique for the Homeless Garden Project in mid-2002.
Crisis at the Crossroads
Santa Cruz, Calif., to Raze Venerated Icon of Fifties' Teenage Culture
The article below was published in the Winter 2003 edition of "Greasy Spoon," a quarterly newsletter featuring drive-ins, diners and cafes -- past and present. Its subscribers mainly are members of the Society for Commercial Archaeology. Visit the society's web site at:
Commercial Archaeology
To the generation of teenagers growing up in Santa Cruz, Calif., in the Fifties (pop. 22,000 in 1950, 25,500 in 1960), the “in” places to rendezvous after high school games and dances or after an evening at the movies or a day at the beach were its two drive-in diners that offered “car service” -- Spivey’s 5-Spot on the east side of town and the Cross Roads on the west side.
The 5-Spot is long gone, ousted by a two-story office building. The Cross Roads building still stands, although it served as a liquor store almost 40 years after the demise of the drive-in restaurant in the 1960s.
But how much longer it will be there is anybody’s guess.
In March 2001, the City of Santa Cruz unveiled a master plan for a major new city park -- Depot Park -- on some contiguous properties in the area. The plan included replacing the once-popular teen hangout with a natural history museum, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper.
Although a city park task force had spent a year developing the master plan, the panel apparently didn’t know the building had been birthed as a drive-in until a city planner -- Suzi Aratin -- was tasked to research its origins, about three months after the master plan was revealed.
The hunt led Ms. Aratin to the author of this article, who is the son of the Cross Roads founders. I had begun developing a history piece about the two drive-ins’ roles in 1950s’ teen culture, including anecdotes from my Santa Cruz High Class of ’54 classmates, in hopes the city might place a plaque in the museum.
I gave the unfinished draft and photos to Ms. Aratin in July, yet subsequent news reports about the park’s progress failed to mention that the liquor store had started as a drive-in, including an October 2001 report that the City Council had given preliminary approval to the master plan.
On Nov. 1, 2001, eight days after the council’s approval, Susan Lehmann, a historical consultant hired by the city, ruled that the Cross Roads had no historical value.
In December, the newspaper published the history piece, although it was cut from 3,500 to 1,500 words.
Prompted by the increased number of letters as a result of the history article, the newspaper published a page 1 story about efforts to save the Cross Roads in January 2002, including remarks by city officials who for the first time acknowledged in the press that the liquor store had started as a drive-in.
Ironically, the city was first made aware that the liquor store had originated as a drive-in as early as 2000 while negotiating purchase of the site. John Filice, who owned the property, informed the City Redevelopment Agency that his liquor store had started life as a drive-in and that he had once worked there as a dishwasher.
Whether the redevelopment agency informed the City Council is a matter of debate, but one might assume it did because the council also sits as the agency’s governing board.
In May 2002, the plight of the Cross Roads gained the attention of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C. The trust’s on-line magazine, Preservation, quoted consultant Lehmann as perhaps having subsequent doubts about the building’s demolition: "It would be really lovely if the building was incorporated [into the park] and became a hot dog stand or something. We seem to recycle everything else, but we're not as diligent about recycling buildings."
Ms. Lehmann also said her original finding was based on “my contention that to really consider it historic, it should really have more integrity. The thing that made it the drive-in that it was, was the sign on it."
But Ms. Aratin, the city planner who first “discovered” the building’s origin, countered in the Preservation article that the “integrity is there," citing several characteristics that define 1950s’ drive-in architecture: windows that slant inward, the "Flintstones" stonework, and the building's octagonal shape.
On May 8, 2002, Ms. Aratin, who had since joined the planning department of the City of Watsonville, about 20 miles from Santa Cruz, filed an official comment to the draft EIR that states in part:
"It has become obvious, through letters to the Planning Director, the City Council and the Editor of the Santa Cruz Sentinel, that there is significant public interest in the preservation of the Cross Roads building … The City of Santa Cruz has been charged with stewardship over the city’s historic resources, and to discount the experiences of people who lived in Santa Cruz in the 1950s simply because research into the structures remaining on the Depot site was not conducted until late in the master planning process is ludicrous."
Nevertheless, the City Council “adopted an environmental impact report … (and) reached a consensus on the park’s design,” the local newspaper reported in July 2002.
My parents opened the first Cross Roads in 1947 in a ramshackle old building on the same site. In 1949/50, the Cross Roads temporarily moved catty-cornered across the street while a new building, the one still standing today, was built. It opened for business in early 1952. In 1960, they sold out and the new owner renamed it Danny’s Drive-In, which only lasted a couple of years. Later in the ‘60s, the building was turned into a liquor store.
The building has survived two major natural disasters -- the Christmas Flood of 1955 that devastated much of downtown Santa Cruz, but which stopped a few feet short of swamping the Cross Roads, and the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989 that destroyed a lot of downtown, but which left the Cross Roads unfazed.
But its most dangerous enemy still lurks on the horizon:
The City of Santa Cruz.
-- by Len Klempnauer
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More information about the Winter 2003 edition (#14) of Greasy Spoon can be found on-line at: Greasy Spoon.
Dirk Burhans, editor of Greasy Spoon, can be contacted by email at: Dirk Burhans. He also can be contacted by postal mail at Greasy Spoon, P.O. Box 30103, Columbia, MO 65205.
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(Dr. Burhans, who holds a doctorate in biology, has given permission for the Cross Roads article to be printed in its entirety on this web site.)
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