Editor’s note: Some sources have been named only by their first name for privacy reasons.
The Catalyst, a historic music venue and community space that has served Santa Cruz since the 1960s, has hosted notable bands from Nirvana and Pearl Jam to Tina Turner and Iggy Pop.
The venue has seen bands come and go, and hosted concerts for thousands of audience members. But as plans for the building’s possible demolition and replacement come closer and closer to fruition, the future of The Catalyst community remains unclear.
“They want to make more housing, but they’re also removing the places where students come together,” said Fre Torres, the vocalist and guitarist of local band Carabeza. “There’s not a lot of third spaces where people can just go and connect.” 
Local Santa Cruz band Carabeza poses for a photo downtown, near The Catalyst. Photo courtesy of Carabeza.
Last month, the building The Catalyst shares with the upstairs Cat Alley Street club was sold to GSH Ventures. It is unclear whether The Catalyst will be demolished once the lease is up in 2028.
“The developer has not applied for a building or demolition permit yet, they are very early on in the process right now,” the Santa Cruz city senior planner Rina Zhou, said in an email to City on a Hill Press. “The City’s process is to not sign off on demolition of buildings prior to building permit issuance for the replacement project.”
Community members have supported a petition created by community organizer and educator Hector Marin, calling upon Santa Cruz to defend The Catalyst’s longevity by classifying the building as a historical preservation cultural landmark. The petition has nearly 10,000 signatures, and hundreds of replies recounting cherished experiences at the music venue.
There are a few ways that The Catalyst building can be deemed a historical or cultural landmark, which would prevent a possible demolition.
The first involves submitting an application through the Santa Cruz Historic Resource Commission to be decided on by the board of supervisors. The second way is through a ballot measure, which must be voted on by the people of Santa Cruz.
Another path is working with archivists at the Museum of Art and History to be granted a Blue Plaque Award. While it holds no legal standing, this honorary status would support the case for The Catalyst when applying to be a historical preservation cultural landmark through the HRC.
In addition to concerns about the impact on the local music scene, residents worry about whether this housing project will be affordable and if it may impact local businesses.
“We have a lot of housing being built, it’s just too expensive for anyone to live in,” said UC Santa Cruz alum Mars. “That’s the main issue. It’s not that we don’t have housing, it’s just too expensive.”
Taylor Posey, the lead vocalist of the band Red40, spoke to the shared frustration with development in downtown Santa Cruz.
“The [response to the] potential closure of this venue shows that the people are finally fed up with developers coming to eat up property,” Posey said. “It seems like a line in the sand for a lot of people in the community about what these state-funded giant corporations can and can’t do.”
While the new plans for this well-known venue may indicate a loss for the local music scene in Santa Cruz, community members are grounded in the importance of movement and maintaining music culture.
“The people need to move their bodies and they need to feel the baseline in their bones. That’s where we feel alive,” said Tiffany Harmon, community member and DJ at KZSC. “There are emotions screaming and pouring out of energy from the people, from the bands, and without that, you’re just kind of stuck in stone. We need a place to move and groove and feel the music inside of our soul.”
The Catalyst has acted as a platform to amplify local and UCSC student-based bands, helping them garner an audience and exposure to the greater Santa Cruz community. The opportunity to perform on such an important stage within a venue as legendary as The Catalyst is a right of passage amongst student bands. To sell out a show is an even bigger deal.
“If you want to grow as a band in Santa Cruz, having that step of playing The Catalyst is so essential, and it would just be completely impossible to further your career if you didn’t have it,” said Melody Caudill, singer and songwriter of bands Career Woman and Not Yet Old Dog. “It would feel really hopeless to move forward with music if we didn’t have that step of playing at The Catalyst.”
While development plans move forward, and the future of the original Catalyst venue is uncertain, community members hope to preserve this integral Santa Cruz historic venue.
“The music connects us, and I think that that’s what people want,” Harmon said. “The Catalyst brings us together in the same vein. It brings people together with [similar] interests, and music can carry so many emotions. That’s why I think people are so emotional about it, because the place is full of emotion.”
Various Santa Cruz community members pose for portraits after City on a Hill Press interviewed them on their thoughts and feelings regarding the possibility of The Catalyst shutting down. This slideshow includes Mars, UCSC alumn and employee at Motherlode, Jaime Ventura-Velasquez, employee and HR at Melo Melo Kava Bar, Creighton Pierson, employee at Streetlight Records and harmonica player of UCSC student band Star Power, Mark Roberts, longtime street vinyl vendor in Downtown Santa Cruz, and Alana Dorrance, a UCSC student and frequenter of The Catalyst.
