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Article: Santa Cruz gets its downtown back. (Santa Cruz, California)(includes related article)
- Article from:
- Sunset
- Article date:
- October 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Sunset Publishing Corp. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In its heyday it was a patchouli-scented paradise a heaven of tie-dye, tofu, and social consciousness whose anthem was any song by the Grateful Dead. To visit Pacific Garden Mall in the 1970s or '80s was to enter a kind of permanent Mardi Gras, peopled by jugglers, surfers, retirees, tourists, and students from UC Santa Cruz.
Paradise became paradise lost on October 17, 1989, at 5:04 in the afternoon. Within seconds, the Loma Prieta earthquake reduced much of Pacific Garden Mall, the heart of downtown Santa Cruz, to rubble. Some observers paced the broken streets and predicted that downtown would never rise again.
They were wrong. Today, shops and ...