Not sure the Mystery Spot still exists … great hoot 30 years ago on my only visit … two old guys in high waisted pleated pants they’d kept from the ‘40s … very serious about their hoax … chiding folks at the back to stop talking. “We’re trying to have a tour here!”

(Ed. note: The Mystery Spot, first opened in 1939, is still there, at 465 Mystery Spot Road, Santa Cruz.)

We could now call our downtown the Mystery Spot with its contradictions and many opinions it generates.

A retired downtown bank executive told me recently that she was so sad to see what is happening to our downtown.

What does this mean?

Some folks bemoan the rise of tall apartment buildings (where else would you put them?).

Do they love the parking lots and the run-down buildings they replaced?

And regarding the loss of the parking lot and non-native trees for the new library? It’s a project I long opposed but now see as a good step forward and best use of space.

And there is always the street folks … I’m seeing lots fewer thanks to the great work at the shelter with Housing Matters.

But … there are the empty stores. There is new enterprise … and there’s always interest in the small venues … but the big ones persist.

I remain convinced that the only hope for these huge spaces is for the building owners to donate them to nonprofits: UCSC for galleries, studios, classrooms, even housing; Second Harvest for a soup kitchen and market place; Housing Matters for day space even housing; United Way for workshops; Encompass for housing.

The owners would have a tax write off instead of a loss of revenue.

Lots more folks are talking about closing Pacific Avenue to traffic. I recently visited the often cited example of Santa Monica Mall — lots less vacancies, but spaces are smaller than our big ones with lots of activity in a street closed to cars: Music, theater, food carts, furniture.

Closing my street to traffic for the farmers market last month was great — much more walkable, visible and accessible to parking. No discernible boost to my business, but no hindrance.

I recently attended a Zoom conference with another consultant the city hired to help rent these stores. He showed a lot of data about how prosperous our community is and how attractive it should be to business operators.

What he didn’t talk about was why no one rents our large spaces. Four thousand dollars a foot for 10,000-square-foot spaces plus many thousands to install fixtures and many thousands in labor per month is a lot of T-shirts.

I thought about doing sandwiches in the old Peets’ space; it penciled out to over $10,000 a month in overhead. That’s a lot of sandwiches.

Lot of folks complain about parking downtown. Santa Cruz is one of the few cities I know of where the meters don’t take credit cards … seven minutes for a quarter is a lot of quarters for a lunch.

I see signs in front of stores here that say “No Quarters for Parking.” Not too welcoming. Zone parking as in San Francisco is a lot cheaper than replacing all these meters — and we seem to have more meter readers per capita than even the notorious city of Capitola.

The garages on Locust Street and River Street rarely fill up but I see lots of folks struggling with our meters and the often problematic ParkMobile app.

Paul Cocking is the owner of Gabriella Cafe in downtown Santa Cruz.