www.montereycountynow.com OCTOBER 30-NOVEMBER 5, 2025 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 17 ensure the housing in America’s cities was up to modern standards, in good supply and available and at a fair price. The landmark legislation empowered cities to use federal funds for “slum clearance” to remake entire neighborhoods. In Monterey’s case, that “slum” was lower Alvarado Street, the waterfront and surrounding neighborhoods. Those were living, breathing neighborhoods with people in homes they owned and operating businesses they owned. Monterey still had a working waterfront, if in decline with the fishing industry, and the military presence in town ensured there were plenty of pool halls, bars and sex workers when soldiers had their paydays. In the fall of 1957, the City of Monterey’s urban renewal era began, as the City Council—with the endorsement of State Parks, the Monterey History and Art Association, the Downtown Merchants Association and the Monterey Peninsula Chamber of Commerce—approved a resolution declaring the need for an urban renewal agency in the city and that “opportunity is knocking on the door.” The initial champions of urban renewal in Monterey, according to a 1978 report from the city’s renewal agency, “felt that a great many of California’s most historical edifices stood in Monterey and would benefit from an urban renewal program which would protect and enhance these structures.” When the Custom House Redevelopment Project came before the Monterey Planning Commission and then City Council in the spring and summer of 1961, opponents fell into two main camps: Residents who didn’t like the size and location of the proposed buildings, streets and parking; and residents who would stand to lose their homes, businesses, or both. The City Council approved the project plans 4-1 in July. Among those standing to lose their home was Maria Garcia, a Spanish immigrant who came to Monterey in 1919. With her late fisherman husband, she had bought the First Brick House in 1924 and turned it into a popular restaurant shortly thereafter that remained open until 1951. “Mama” Garcia, as she was affectionately called, told a San Francisco New-Call Bulletin reporter in July 1961, “The house is mine. Those roses—my husband put them in 40 years ago. Where I go if they take my house? I got no place to go.” Meanwhile, the adjacent Whaling Station was the charming home of Mr. and Mrs. Wesley Dodge, a developer working to revitalize Cannery Row. The Dodges sought a temporary restraining order to stop the renewal plan but dropped it a month later. The plan was radically changed in the subsequent months when a design team was brought in led by architect John C. Warnecke, who designed the campus of UC Santa Cruz. Warnecke modified the plan to disperse parking, reduce the size of the Alvarado pedestrian mall to a single block, and to improve traffic flow with an underground tunnel beneath a plaza by the Custom House and Pacific House. Federal approval came in March 1962—just a month after the modifications were revealed—with a $6.6 million loan and $4.5 million grant, and the city and its renewal agency accepted funds in June. Just six months later, Del Monte Properties Co., on behalf of lessee Draper Co., had a hearing before the Monterey Planning Commission to allow a shopping center on 47 acres on Carmel Hill. According to a Dec. 14, 1962 story in the Monterey Peninsula Herald that would later come to be called the Del Monte Shopping Center, “no opposition was voiced at the hearing.” The political momentum was firmly behind the Custom House project, but some property owners and residents didn’t feel it was right, the government condemning people’s property for redevelopment. One couple, Mr. and Mrs. Sebastian Patania—her name is unmentioned in every news story—had been in their home at 192 Olivier St. for 42 years, and rented out the bottom floor for income. On Jan. 28, 1966, the Patanias had to be carried out of their house by sheriff’s deputies under a court order. The couple broke back into their house Feb. 1 and boarded it up. On Feb. 3 deputies carried them out again—“struggling, kicking and shouting,” according to a Herald story—and the Monterey Urban Renewal Agency ordered their house to be bulldozed that same day. It was. “Mrs. Patania, shouting from a window before her eviction,” the Herald story reads, “cried out repeatedly, ‘Is this Russia? Isn’t this America? Isn’t there any freedom any more?’” On the night of Feb. 5, Mayor Minnie Coyle was hanged in effigy from a telephone pole in front of where the Patanias’ home once stood. In the rubble, someone had also left an epitaph reading, “Here Lies the Constitution of the United States.” The Patanias, and their daughter Mayme Maciera, served 35 days in jail for violating court orders. (The Ginza restaurant, now a Benihana, was a few lots away but allowed to remain because it was a restaurant and conformed with project plans.) Mama Garcia died in 1965, and per the Herald’s obituary, she was “a gay and colorful little personage” who, along with her late husband Juan, “were universally loved and respected by the many tourists who sought out the Brick House for its Spanish cuisine, as well as by local residents.” While Del Monte Center sailed right along and had already secured a Macy’s, the Custom House project stalled in recruiting a tenant. But the City Council decided to move ahead with the tunnel anyway in 1966 by accepting a supplemental $4.3 million federal grant to construct it. After groundbreaking for the tunnel on Jan. 10, 1967, Gov. Ronald Reagan made budget cuts that threatened the State Parks Custom House Plaza project’s funding. With State Parks support, city officials and a representative from the Monterey History and Art Association met with Reagan, and he came through with $75,000 (out of $440,000 requested) and promised the rest next year. The plaza—the DANIEL DREIFUSS Though it is located right next to the Rec Trail and is open to the public, Heritage Harbor attracts scarcely a glance from passersby.
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