Salinas looking to turn more old downtown buildings into housing
Salinas is running out of land to build more houses, and now the city is getting creative to meet the shortage.
On West Alisal Street stands the old building that used to house the Salinas Californian newspaper. It is empty now, but the city hopes new zoning rules will change that.
While the building is currently zoned for commercial and office use, city staff are pushing for old buildings like the Salinas Californian building in the Central City Overlay District to become residential or mixed-use.
This would be done by expanding the same adaptive reuse ordinance that now permits the Rabobank and Dick Bruhn buildings in downtown Salinas to be turned into apartments.
“We are looking to increase our housing production. And this would give us more opportunity sites to get to the 500 housing units for the downtown over the next five years,” said Megan Hunter, the director of the Salinas Community Development Department.
Some of those units could potentially be in the Salinas Californian building.
“It doesn’t have much character, to be honest with you, but I think it can be retrofitted so that it looks really nice and it’s kind of welcoming,” said Terri Baldwin, a Salinas resident who lives close by the building. “I think (new housing) would be great actually. I think more people, more things to do, more opportunities, more fun.”
These old buildings can only fit so many units at a time, however. For example, the Rabobank building might house only 50 units. Other smaller buildings, fewer than that.
“So we’re probably looking more at a couple of units here, a couple of units there. So it will take a lot of sites to (reach) 500,” said Hunter.
“I think it’s a good idea if it’s higher income types of apartments,” said Baldwin. “The reason being it’ll bring more money into downtown, and when you have more people with more money, they have a tendency to spend more.”
The city says this strategy of turning office buildings into housing has worked in other cities like Los Angeles. The city council will take up the proposal on Sept. 18.