Oh Leery
Seaside leads the peninsula (get used to that phrase) with PARK(ing) Day tomorrow. See you tomorrow at 600 Broadway, Seaside, CA. A handout for my parking space turned live-work-play demonstration goes something like this:
The THWACK Factory: A Love Story
Orville and Wilbur dreamed we could fly. Dr. Jonas Salk dreamed parents could put the fear of polio in the past. Craig Malin dreamed too. Not the one where the American League just forfeits the World Series rather than embarrass themselves by not scoring a single run against the Cubs. Craig Malin dreamed of a downtown Seaside, vibrant with innovation, creativity and commerce.
Craig Malin pursued that dream as a man possessed. In December 2015, he walked up and down Broadway, peering into vacant storefronts. Finding a “FOR LEASE” sign on the old furniture refinishing shop at 600 Broadway, he called the broker and got the lockbox code.
Immediately upon entering the building, he knew he found his home. Concrete floor, expansive open space, white walls, giant storefront windows, sliding door at the back, overlooking a jewel in the rough backyard. A bit of a fixer-upper, but he’d be alone for a year, and could spend that time bringing activity, light and vitality to a long vacant building on lower Broadway. It was exactly the kind of vision set forth in the City of Seaside’s Broadway Urban Village Plan, and as incoming City Manager, Craig was excited to display his commitment to Seaside by pioneering a live-work-play rehab.
It would be called The THWACK Factory, and would feature a loft-style open living floor plan, a small custom baseball bat workshop bathed in the light of the storefront windows and ... mainly because it was more space than he needed but also because every dreamer has to dream, a simple batting cage net hanging from the rafters, open for free to Seaside ballplayers who wanted to stop in with their coach or parent. Craig plunked down his $1,740 filing fee for the Planning Commission to consider a “use permit” to turn a vacant building into a building block for a thriving Broadway.
Why a use permit was needed is its own question. The THWACK Factory wasn’t adding or removing any walls, making any structural changes or adding any use intensity. Craig was just lighting up a vacant space, and opening it to community use because it was way more space than he needed. No matter the rationale for Plan Commission review; Craig drew up a plan, provided a description of use and paid his fee. All was well, and he slept soundly, dreaming his dreams of being an urban pioneer, listening to the thwack … thwack of wood bat meeting ball, as he read page after page of Monterey Downs Environmental Impact Report, by the light of streetlights on Broadway.
They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway. They say the Sportsman is the place for a brew.
Craig woke from his dream on January 8, 2016. As he was hitching up a trailer, preparing for a three day drive to Seaside, his iPhone buzzed with an e-mail. Four days before he would start work as Seaside City Manager and five days before he thought he would make his case to the Planning Commission about turning a vacant building on Broadway into a non-vacant building, he received a 91 page pdf that began with this sentence: “In accordance with Section 65943 of the California Government Code, it has been determined within the 30-day review period, the Use Permit Application which was received on December 15, 2015 is incomplete as submitted.”
It didn’t get better after that first sentence. It got worse. Apparently, all that stood between life as we know it and Armageddon was one guy, a lathe and some batting cage netting. Page after page of potential code violations were cited, to be certain this baseball-crazed maniac did not carry out his evil, ill-considered plan. His so-called “plan” did not even include a fire-rated wall separating the living space from the batting cage. We all know baseballs are highly flammable and regularly explode. But this guy, probably because he’s from Chicago where a good city-wide blaze every century or so is just another fun story about naughty cows, cared little about life and safety. Thank goodness the Resource Management Services Department stopped him before he got to the Planning Commission.
Seventeen hundred dollars poorer, but much wiser, Craig put aside his dream and got to work. Planes were still flying. Polio was still cured (until the vaxxer geniuses kill us all). The W flag flies routinely. Life is good. Except for those nights he lies awake and wonders what could have been. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
A man can lose himself in his work. A man can lose himself in service as an assistant baseball coach. A man can lose himself in cookies, beef jerky, Doritos and ice-cream. A man can lose himself in references that are impenetrable. But a man’s dreams will knaw at him still. Still haunt him. Still drive him onward. Onward to distraction. To disengagement. To ruin.
… or …
… to PARK(ing) Day. Where a parking space can be oh so much more. And where a man, at long last, can live his dream, for one glorious day (so long as he signs a liability waiver).
A dream of a downtown bursting with innovation, spurred onward by creativity, with regulation that protects life and property while supporting live / work investment.
