On a mission to get animal crackers when he was 4 years old, Rod Dunham walked with his great-grandmother, Rose Guirich, down Lafayette Street past the vast deserted area that used to be Santa Clara’s downtown.
“I have an image in my mind of dirt flying up,’’ he says of that memory from more than 45 years ago. “My great-grandmother would be very sad. She’d say, ‘I remember when this used to be a beautiful downtown.’’’
Dunham and another man with Santa Clara roots, Dan Ondrasek, would like to restore Rose’s vision. As the organizers behind a Facebook group called “Reclaiming Our Downtown,’’ they’ve attracted more than 1,080 followers.
In what they say is strictly a labor of love, they have drafted a document that calls for restoring the original grid of the eight-block downtown, with the backbone of Franklin Street running west from Santa Clara University.
Can this be done? There are huge impediments, including fragmented land ownership, existing buildings and the ever-present question of financing.
But successful projects start with a vision — and if we’ve learned anything from the successes of downtown Campbell and Mountain View, it’s that people yearn for a safe urban experience.
Several weeks ago, I wrote a pair of pieces about the best and worst decisions of local governments over the last half-century.
Among the worst — maybe the worst — was Santa Clara’s decision to demolish its downtown in the 1960s with federal urban renewal money, a move that still rankles residents today.
After my pieces ran, I got an email from Ondrasek and Dunham, and we agreed to sit down to talk about their volunteer effort at the City Lights coffee shop, as close to downtown as remains. (The 1933 Post Office, the oldest remaining building downtown, is across the street.)
The two men have very different styles. Ondrasek, who met his partner through his “Reclaiming Our Downtown” site, is a blunt-spoken high-tech sales director who knows his way around architecture and development. Dunham is a chemical tester for a memory chip company, a man immersed in downtown’s history.
While Ondrasek can talk at length about the civic meaning of the former Santa Clara Theater — “a there there,’’ he says — Dunham can tell you precisely what building was on what corner.
Wade’s Mission Pharmacy? That was on the corner of Washington and Franklin streets. The original Wilson’s Bakery? On Franklin near Jackson Street. The old City Hall? At Franklin and Washington streets.
You can’t talk very long to the two of them without concluding that the destruction of Santa Clara’s downtown, done in the name of economic revival for the city’s center, wasn’t just a bad call: It was close to a crime.
(With Councilman Austin Warburton dissenting, the key 6-1 vote to approve the downtown “urban renewal plan’’ came in a stormy meeting on Sept. 29, 1960. But most downtown buildings stood until mid-decade or a bit after.)
After the demolition, the city built the two-block Franklin Mall, where a few of the displaced merchants landed. The bulk of the old downtown remained empty for two decades, the time that Dunham remembers the dirt.
And that takes us to the curious array that we find today — a hodgepodge that includes an office building, a courthouse, an apartment complex and acres of parking.
Ondrasek and Dunham see opportunity in the empty spaces: “This whole thing is just open and ready for development,’’ Ondrasek told me. “It’s been bits and starts.’’
Of course, there are complications: One of the thorniest is that the Park Central apartments, now home to many Santa Clara University students, intrude on the original Franklin Street roadway. Another is the question of where the money comes from. Then there’s the big private development project by Related that aims to create a new center north of Bayshore.
“I like a lot of their ideas,’’ says Councilwoman Teresa O’Neill, who remembers the old downtown. “But we all have to be very realistic in looking at what is financially viable. I think we have to look at the realities of what it takes to support retail these days.’’
Ondrasek and Dunham have proposed four core principles: 1) that the original street grid be restored, 2) that key architectural features of the old downtown be restored, 3) that current retailers be protected, and 4) that the city add residences atop the shops.
Will it work? It’s impossible not to have doubts. But in attracting nearly 1,100 Facebook followers, Dunham and Ondrasek reflect a yearning for a past senselessly ripped away. It’s worth visiting their Facebook page.
“What’s cool about this time is that you have a whole generation that remembers old downtown,’’ Dunham told me. His great-grandmother would have nodded.