New businesses and apartments in formerly decrepit buildings are bringing life to Oldtown Salinas.

A watershed moment is happening in Salinas’ downtown. With the remodeling of two iconic buildings underway, a transformation that was already in progress is coming to fruition. The Dick Bruhn building, vacant since a 2016 fire, will be 19 apartments on the second and third floors, with commercial space on the first floor. Just down the block on Main Street, the former craft store Beverly’s is being transformed into a second location for Monterey-based Heirloom Pizza, with a concept that includes a live music venue, set to open in 2023. The former Rabobank building will have 50 studio apartments upstairs, and the first floor will become a new, 5,000-square-foot outpost of Alvarado Street Brewery, which on Sept. 26-27 held a job fair in hopes of hiring up to 40 employees.

“I was looking at Oldtown Salinas for years,” says JC Hill, co-owner of Alvarado Street Brewery. Recent changes like streetscape modifications that made one-ways into two-way streets, the Salinas arch and more businesses moving in made it the right time to open a new location on Main Street.

Salinas’ Downtown Vibrancy Plan, approved by City Council in 2015, has been in the works for over a decade. In the past couple of years the city invested over $10 million in infrastructure, including sewer and water lines, roads and sidewalks.

Besides infrastructure, city officials wanted to make downtown more enticing for developers. In 2018, they passed an adaptive reuse ordinance, which allows the conversion of non-residential buildings over 50 years old into residential spaces. “We removed a lot of the barriers,” says Lisa Brinton, assistant director in the Community Development Department. Those included parking restrictions and open space requirements.

These revitalized buildings are just the beginning. The old Greyhound Bus station building, which – like the Bruhn and Beverly’s buildings, is also owned by the Taylor Group behind Taylor Farms – is expected to see a makeover into offices or housing. Taylor Farms built its headquarters downtown in 2015, kickstarting progress.

City staff are working with other developers for city-owned parking lots 1, 8 and 12 for different projects, which are early in negotiations. “We’ll see a lot of development in the next three to five years in the downtown,” City Manager Steve Carrigan says. He expects those plans to appear on City Council agendas by early November.

The city is also working with the county to build a three-story, 600-space parking structure on Church and Gabilan streets.

Carrigan says the city has seen an uptick of visitors in downtown Salinas in the past couple of years and with more offices, apartments, and businesses coming into downtown traffic is expected to increase.

Salinas also welcomes outdoor dining and will keep encouraging businesses to obtain permanent outdoor-dining permits.

Some improvements listed in the 2015 Vibrancy Plan remain just ideas, like a grocery store.