SENIORS THREATENED
A very large group of seniors will attend and speak at the Santa Cruz County Planning Commission meeting at 9:30am on Jan. 14 in the County building at 701 Ocean Street when the fate of the highly controversial proposed development of “Sweet Homes” at 3500 Paul Sweet Road will be decided. These Seniors will be presenting their many legitimate concerns about this project’s unmitigable health and safety hazards and violations of State and Federal laws.
This 6-story, 105-unit apartment building will take up the entirety of a tiny ½ acre lot, with no setbacks, no fire access road, no fire hydrant, no room for construction equipment, construction noise exceeding 100 decibels, and is deemed by the FAA to be a hazard to aviation because of its height & close proximity to Dominican Hospital’s helipad.
If approved, it will be jammed next to Dominican Oaks, a retirement community of over 200 seniors. The developer, Workbench, is planning on using the Dominican Oaks fire access road, blocking the evacuation of disabled and mobility-compromised seniors.
Furthermore, the project has parking for only 68 cars, which will force the addition of hundreds more cars, bottlenecking narrow Paul Sweet Road, drastically reducing ambulance response times to get critical stroke and heart attack victims from Dominican Oaks to the hospital before they die. This project also violates California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) codes, violates protections in the Americans with Disabilities Act and constitutes Elder Abuse.
Seniors at Dominican Oaks are frightened and enraged that the county is considering approval of a project next door that endangers their health, safety and their lives. This project is dangerous. It jeopardizes emergency access, evacuation safety, does not meet fire safety statutes and endangers the lives of hundreds of vulnerable seniors.
Virginia Lieb | Santa Cruz
THANKS FOR THE STORY ON A STORYTELLER
Thank you for your article on Atlantis Fantasyworld and Joe Ferrara’s legacy. I grew up here and delighted in visiting the shop in the late 90s and early 2000s to pick out Sailor Moon figurines and Archie comics. Looking back, I’m sure the shop fueled my continued love of manga and anime.
I loved learning more about Joe’s life, music and advocacy. Thank you for highlighting local legends and adding dimensionality to my understanding of my hometown. I haven’t stepped inside Atlantis for a long time and I’ll be sure to stop in next time I walk by!
Bryn Morgan | Santa Cruz
DOWN WITH AI
As a local and a reader of the Good Times, I was disturbed to see the use of AI-generated art as the cover for the Atlantis story by Joshua Logan. I am shocked at your editorial team for letting this through. AI-generated art is unethically trained on thousands of artists work without their consent, it is terrible for the environment, it steals jobs from real artists, (and on a less ethics-based note, it is unpleasant to look at and depressingly soulless and anti-creativity. There are even typos in some of the text within the illustration).
The tone deafness of this decision is staggering and I really hope you guys do better in the future. We need to protect artists, especially in local media as big corporations are already screwing artists and creatives left and right with Gen AI. I’m really hoping others have sent similar concerns and that your team will take it seriously.
Molly Craft | Santa Cruz
Editor: Two human artists worked on that cover turning a photo into a cartoon-like piece with some help from AI, including Photoshop. For 50 years Good Times has supported local artists and writers and hyper-local journalism.
