The Bay Avenue Ramp Closed in August. Holiday Corners Didn't.

"We are open, we are accessible, and we need your support now more than ever." Arvind and Oanh Ramakrishnan, who co-own Carpo's Restaurant, sent that line to the Santa Cruz Sentinel in August. The southbound Highway 1 off-ramp at Bay Avenue had closed a few days earlier. In the same statement they asked locals to "take those surface streets, bypass the freeway entirely, and continue supporting us through the fall."

Fall is here, and the ramp is still closed. Lookout Santa Cruz's road roundup on Sept. 28 listed the southbound Bay Avenue off-ramp in the second month of a four-month closure that began Aug. 2. That closure took away one way into the corner where South Main Street meets Bay Avenue, and it is the shortest closure the Highway 1 project could manage.

One ramp is closed. The rest of the corner is open.

The Sentinel reported that one company, Holiday Corners LLC, owns the properties under Beer Thirty, Carpo's, Buzzo Pizza and Sunnyside Produce. Erik Barbic manages it. Beer Thirty, at 2504 S. Main St., sits only a couple hundred feet from the highway exit.

Here is what is closed around the interchange right now, according to the agencies running the work.

Counting four months from Aug. 2 lands around the start of December. That is just a count. Neither the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission nor Caltrans has published a reopening date. As of mid-September, the commission's construction-updates page still said "approximately four months."

The Park Avenue on-ramp matters if you head south out of the area. It has been closed since April for what the commission calls "a full roadway structural replacement."

Why it's four months and not a year

The first plan was much bigger. Kevin Drabinski, Caltrans' public information chief, told the Sentinel that the original construction contract called for all four ramps at the Bay Avenue/Porter Street interchange to close at the same time for about a year. After further talks with the transportation commission and other partners, that plan was judged unacceptable.

"Our teams were able to revise the staging sequence and stagger the ramp closures to the greatest extent practicable," Drabinski wrote. He said the new approach "maintains access through portions of the interchange during construction." Crews also found an existing retaining wall they could use instead of building a new one. That lowered costs and shortened this ramp's closure.

The August start had its own reason. Sarah Christensen, the commission's executive director, said dry weather makes it easier to do heavy work like installing large retaining walls. Drabinski said waiting until after Labor Day would likely bring weather complications and delays. The ramp is being rebuilt for the bus-on-shoulder lanes, part of a $78 million project between the Bay Avenue/Porter Street and State Park Drive interchanges. Granite Construction of Watsonville is the contractor.

Getting off the highway until the ramp reopens

If you're coming south on Highway 1, Caltrans lists two ways in.

1. Primary detour. Stay on southbound Highway 1 to the Park Avenue exit. Turn left onto Park Avenue, continue on Soquel Drive, and follow the detour signs back to the Porter Street/Bay Avenue area.
2. Secondary detour. Take the same Park Avenue exit and turn left onto Park Avenue. Then take the northbound on-ramp at Park Avenue and get off at the northbound Bay Avenue/Porter Street exit.

Caltrans added the second route in its Aug. 20 update, after the closure had started. Either way, Caltrans asks drivers to allow extra time.

What's open at the corner, by posted hours

None of the four Holiday Corners businesses has posted a dated October or November event online, so their standing hours are the best guide.

• Carpo's Restaurant is open daily, 11:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Its site lists produce from local farms, a homemade soup every day, and daily pies including apple, cherry and olallieberry.
• Buzzo Pizza serves dinner, dine-in and takeout, from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 5 to 8:30 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday. It's closed Monday and offers takeout pizza at lunch Friday through Sunday.
• Beer Thirty Bottle Shop and Pour House has 30 rotating taps, more than 300 bottles, a beer garden and outdoor games. It's open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday.
• Sunnyside Produce lists grocery hours of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Its pumpkin patch page hasn't been updated since 2020, so call or check its social accounts before planning a patch visit around it.

Why the timing hit this corner hard

The closure started at the busiest time of the year for these businesses. Kym DeWitt, Beer Thirty's co-founder and co-owner, told the Sentinel that her revenue rises 60% in the summer season. "Bay Avenue is our direct exit and if people can't get off the exit, they're likely to go to a different establishment," she said. She backed the project itself. "We know this work needs to be done," she said, while adding that the timing and the lack of communication "really caught us off guard."

DeWitt said she learned of the closure from a Sentinel story, not from the agency running the project. Barbic said tenants mainly wanted "a little more notice." Christensen said the commission's outreach depends on press releases, social media and local officials because of budget limits. DeWitt also wrote to the commission asking for a business-impact assistance program. Christensen said the commission doesn't have the money: the project's cost overruns will use up all the highway funds from Measure D, the county's 30-year transportation sales tax.

Supervisor Manu Koenig, who represents the area, apologized to DeWitt for the communication gap and put her in touch with commission staff. No follow-up reporting since then has described a mitigation program being put in place. The corner's main support for now is the "local community" the Ramakrishnans asked to use the surface streets.

Distance from the ramp seems to matter. Gayle's Bakery & Rosticceria is also on Bay Avenue, about half a mile from the exit on the coastal side. In early August, co-owner Joe Ortiz said it was too early to tell whether the closure would affect them, but business hadn't slowed. "We just want it to be over," he said. "We're just going to make the best of it."

Up Main Street on a Thursday

Bargetto Winery's Soquel tasting room is at 3535 N. Main St. Its Thursday Night Music series runs 6 to 8 p.m. with no cover, and Taquizas Gabriel sells food. B Movie Kings play tonight, Oct. 1, followed by James Durbin on Oct. 8 and The Joint Chiefs on Oct. 15. On Sunday, Oct. 4, Bargetto hosts a winery yoga class led by Alison Trybom Lucas. It costs $25, includes a glass of wine, and requires a reservation.

The next closure is already scheduled

The northbound Bay Avenue off-ramp will also close for construction later. Commission staff told the Sentinel it won't overlap with the current southbound closure, and no date has been announced. That ramp is part of the secondary detour above, so the two closures have to be scheduled one after the other.

The first phase of the bus-on-shoulder system, from Soquel Drive to 41st Avenue, finished in 2025. This second phase, which runs south to Park Avenue, is expected to wrap up in late spring or early summer of 2027. A third phase is set to start in late 2027. Koenig wrote that the new auxiliary lanes have already improved traffic flow between Soquel Drive and 41st Avenue. "I'm looking forward to less Highway 1 traffic and more time spent in Soquel and Capitola Village for everyone," he added.

Danny Ward was born and raised in Santa Cruz County and descends from one of Soquel's founding families. He keeps track of how projects like the Bay Avenue work affect the streets around it. If you have a question about how the Highway 1 construction affects your part of Soquel, let's connect.