One of the guilty pleasures of this column is finding predictions by gurus and seeing if they turned out.
When noted architect Lewis Q. Crutcher toured San Luis Obispo in 1966, he visited a very different downtown than we know today —and he had ideas.
Mission Plaza was a street, trees were still small — only planted three years earlier and not established. Major retail of the era, Sears, J.C. Penny and Montgomery Wards and local department store Riley’s were all downtown along with hardware stores.
The architect hated neon, but I personally can’t imagine downtown without the Fremont. Unfortunately another neon movie palace was lost in 1975, the Obispo Theater.
California’s population was exploding in the ‘60s with suburban California farmland being paved and stuccoed mile after nondescript square mile.
The trend of the era was the suburban shopping mall, long the bane of downtown merchants.
Then-and-now photos: See how trees completely changed the look of downtown SLO
Some of his suggestions were already being implemented, like planting trees downtown. Mission Plaza would soon also be voted into existence. (The voters had better instincts than the parking boosters of the era.)
The horrible idea of the era, a proposal to pave over more of the creek for parking, was one he was against. That was stopped.
Parking garages on the periphery of downtown would not be built until two decades later.
Some of his suggestions, however, would arrive over six decades later after COVID, like the islands for humans in the street and the pop-up bistro seating.
This Q&A story and interview with Crutcher ran April 25, 1966.
Downtown — Can It Be Saved?
Here, in an exclusive interview, noted architect Lewis Q. Crutcher talks about the present and future of downtown San Luis Obispo.
An authority on urban ugliness and beauty, Crutcher heads a Portland architectural firm which has been instrumental in preserving and beautifying important downtown buildings.
He visited San Luis Obispo this week to lecture at Cal Poly and to give local merchants, civic leaders and property owners a helping hand.
The gist of the interview:
Q. What’s wrong, aesthetically, with downtown San Luis Obispo?
A. There’s no heart — no focal point. A lot of… buildings have been cluttered up with neon. You look down a street and nothing happens. You don’t see a pivot point. As you look out of the core area, the residential area around it is very bleak.
Q. How do you get a more aesthetic look?
A. What you need are shade trees — something to frame the man-made environment of downtown. There’s no place to sit down. Interspersed among the parked cars, every once in a while the curb could go out a little bit. Put some greenery along the street, and a bench. There could be little islands for human beings.
Q. What else?
A. I consider the core area of San Luis Obispo a deserted shopping center. The amenities that draw people to a shopping center—the popcorn stands, sidewalk cafes, flower shops — would create a focus and stimulate the environment around it. San Francisco is paying good hard cash to maintain a defunct railroad — the cable cars — because it’s fun. Because it’s fun, we come all the way down from Portland when we could buy at home.
You’ve got the most marvelous nucleus of old buildings here downtown. It’s a gold mine.
Q. What would it cost an average merchant to put a new face on his store?
A. This should be done as an evolutionary process. Anywhere from $100 to $500. In many cases nothing has to be done except to cut down the neon sign.
Q. What inexpensive things could be done to storefronts?
A. Painting — I would generally use the same colors that are being used today. Except for a couple of muffler shops, the colors aren’t bad. I’d use deep earth tones that fit into the landscape and cut the glare. On the awnings and signs, very bright and gay, down at the pedestrian levels only.
Q. And above pedestrian level?
A. I think buildings tie together much better if there’s a unity to their color. This sounds as though I’m sterilizing the idea. Really, because buildings are so different in shape and style, in order to tie them together, each should be sympathetic to the whole.
Q. What do you do to get all the merchants interested in this?
A. They have to be scared. If you get a new shopping center threatening this town, everybody starts to get conscientious about what’s been neglected.
The thing to get San Luis Obispo to realize its potential is when the individual merchants stop trying to attract people to their stores and think in terms of attracting people to their center.
Because today’s shopper drives an automobile, unless there is some delightful attraction, she’s going to go where it’s most convenient. She hates parking meters. A shopper will walk no more than two blocks downtown, but she’ll walk five blocks in a pedestrian mall.
Q. What about the proposal to cover more of San Luis Creek with a parking lot?
A. The creek has more potential as a tourist attraction than any other feature of San Luis Obispo, certainly more than a culvert or a parking lot.
Q. Does it pay the individual merchant to cooperate in a venture such as improving the downtown area, and if so, how?
A. A proper shopping center will organize its main attractions at the periphery so that the smaller shops are fed by those walking between them.
It appears that to me that the major features of San Luis Obispo are located in the center, thus incurring congestion and starving the smaller merchants or allowing them to dry up.
Q. Would it be more valuable to the merchant to open or close Monterey in front of the Mission as part of the plaza?
A. This is the sort of decision that should not be left to the voters or to visiting experts. The health of this center depends on a very carefully studied analysis of traffic circulation and offstreet parking. I’ve seen several plans, including a compromise one.
To me, it’s very important that the Mission Plaza is the logical heart for the city, mainly for the people of San Luis Obispo.
Also it would be the greatest tourist attraction that this city will have. It can’t be a parking lot.
Q. For the renewal of the city’s center, what is required, and from whom?
A. There must be a dialogue between the marketplace and City Hall. The core area merchants are going to have to make business and shopping a delightful experience, while at the same time providing the amenities that the public demands.
This necessitates the segregation of people and automobiles.
It means the respect of, the sympathetic treatment of historic buildings, imaginative planting and landscaping, sign and overhead wire control, but above all, civic pride.
Q. Compared to other smaller communities, how does San Luis Obispo rank in possibilities?
A. San Luis Obispo has the remarkable feature that the core area is clearly defined and surrounded by a potentially handsome residential area.
It has an unusually high percentage of excellent older buildings which capture the imagination, have roots in the past and can be adapted to a variety of uses.
Q. To sum up, what can be done here?
A. It’s a beautiful town now, and it’s frightening to think what’s going to happen unless strong steps are taken.
It’s not just about hanging on to what you’ve got; it would take very little effort to make San Luis Obispo (come up to) its tremendous potential as a delightful city to live in, as a wonderful city to visit.
But with the population explosion and with the refinement of earth moving equipment and wrecking balls, San Luis Obispo could look like Los Angeles in a decade. I’ve seen it happen.