With the Bay Avenue Exit Closed, Holiday Corners Is Asking Soquel to Come the Back Way

"We are open, we are accessible, and we need your support now more than ever." That's how Arvind and Oanh Ramakrishnan, co-owners of Carpo's Restaurant, put it in a statement to the Santa Cruz Sentinel in early August. Their request was specific. They asked the "incredible local community to take those surface streets, bypass the freeway entirely, and continue supporting us through the fall."

The southbound Highway 1 offramp at Bay Avenue closed overnight on August 2. Caltrans scheduled it to stay closed for about four months while crews rebuild it for the new bus-on-shoulder lanes. Nobody has published an exact reopening date. Four months from August 2 points to roughly early December. That leaves most of fall when the quickest freeway exit to Holiday Corners isn't available to anyone driving south.

Here's why this matters more for this corner than for most places along the construction zone: Holiday Corners was never four separate errands. It was set up to work as one stop.

Four Businesses That Share One Patio

The name on paper is Holiday Corners LLC. It owns the properties where Beer Thirty Bottle Shop and Pour House, Carpo's Restaurant, Buzzo Pizza and Sunnyside Produce sit close together. Erik Barbic manages it.

What makes it a corner and not just a cluster is a house rule at Beer Thirty. The bottle shop invites customers to bring food from Buzzo, Carpo's or Sunnyside into its beer garden. Beer Thirty opened in 2014. It has 30 rotating taps, more than 300 bottles, outdoor games, and a setting it describes as family- and dog-friendly. So you can get a burger from one door, a wood-fired pie from the next, produce from a third, and eat it all at the same table.

The neighbors have been here a long time. Sunnyside has served the Soquel area since 1980. Carpo's says it has served Soquel since 1981. It's known for burgers, seafood, a salad bar and daily pies made with fruit from local orchards. Buzzo is the newest. Lookout Santa Cruz previewed it in late 2022 as a wood-fired, Neapolitan-style pizzeria at 2510 S. Main St., next to Beer Thirty and Sunnyside.

Because the four work as a unit, the closure affects them as a unit. When Beer Thirty co-founder Kym DeWitt talked to the Sentinel, she described the exit in terms every business at the corner would recognize: "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 also said her revenue normally rises 60% in summer. The closure started at the peak of that season and runs right up to what she called "the slow months."

The Posted Hours, Side by Side

If one parking spot is going to cover the whole evening, it helps to know when everyone overlaps. These are the hours each business currently lists on its own website.

All four are open together for a short stretch. It starts at 5 p.m., when Buzzo starts dinner service, and ends at 7 p.m., when Sunnyside closes. Carpo's stays open until 8:30, and Beer Thirty keeps its garden open later than everyone else. On Mondays, Buzzo is the one that's dark.

Three Ways In While the Ramp Is Closed

Officials have laid out two detours for southbound drivers, and Carpo's owners suggested a third: skip the freeway.

1. The main detour. Stay on southbound Highway 1 and take the Park Avenue offramp. Turn left on Park Avenue, continue onto Soquel Drive, and follow the detour signs back to the Porter Street and Bay Avenue area.
2. The secondary detour, added August 20. Exit southbound at Park Avenue, turn left on Park Avenue, take the northbound Highway 1 onramp there, and get off at the northbound Bay Avenue/Porter Street offramp, which is still open.
3. Local roads the whole way. This is the route Carpo's owners asked for in their August statement to the Sentinel.

Getting home has its own issue this fall. The southbound Highway 1 onramp at Park Avenue has been closed since Sunday, April 19, for a full structural replacement of the roadway. The posted detours run south on Soquel Drive or McGregor Drive to the southbound onramp at State Park Drive. So until that ramp reopens, a southbound driver can exit at Park Avenue but can't get back on there.

It Could Have Been All Four Ramps for a Year

Four months is long. The original plan was much worse. Caltrans Public Information Chief Kevin Drabinski told the Sentinel that the original construction contract called for all four ramps at the Bay Avenue/Porter Street interchange to close at once for roughly a year. Caltrans and the Regional Transportation Commission reworked the sequence so the closures would be staggered and part of the interchange would stay open. Crews also found an existing retaining wall they could use in place of building a new one, which shortened this closure.

The timing in peak season comes from the weather. RTC Executive Director Sarah Christensen said dry months make it easier to do big pieces of work like installing large retaining walls. Both she and Drabinski said waiting until after Labor Day would risk delays from winter rain.

The business owners didn't object to the project itself. They objected to how they found out. DeWitt said she learned about the closure from a July 21 Sentinel story, not from the agency. Barbic said the Holiday Corners tenants would have liked "just a little more notice" so they could plan supplies and staff schedules. DeWitt sent the commission a letter on July 24 asking for a business-impact assistance program. Christensen said the commission doesn't have the money for one. The highway project has major cost overruns and will use up all of the highway funds from Measure D. County Supervisor Manu Koenig connected DeWitt with commission staff and apologized for the lack of communication.

Half a mile toward the coast on Bay Avenue, Joe Ortiz, co-owner of Gayle's Bakery & Rosticceria, sounded more resigned than worried. "We just want it to be over," he told the Sentinel. "We're just going to make the best of it."

The Dates That End the Detour Season

Here's what the most recent notices say, newest information first:

• Mar Vista overcrossing work. Caltrans announced overnight lane reductions starting September 27 for about three weeks while crews work on the new bicycle and pedestrian bridge at Mar Vista. That puts the end around mid-October. The notice didn't give an opening date for the bridge.
• Park Avenue southbound onramp. Lookout's Capitola/Soquel newsletter from September 30 says the closure is expected to end November 19. That's later than the original six-month estimate.
• Bay Avenue southbound offramp. About four months from August 2, so roughly early December. No firm date has been published.
• Bay Avenue northbound offramp. This one will close at some point too. Commission staff told the Sentinel it won't overlap with the southbound closure.

The corridor already has one finished piece. The new Capitola Avenue overcrossing opened to the public early this year with much better bicycle and pedestrian facilities, and a ribbon cutting followed on February 26. Sources give different finish dates for the whole $78 million phase. The commission has said 2026. Its schedule page lists construction as spring 2024 through 2027. In August, the Sentinel reported a wrap-up in late spring or early summer 2027.

Until the southbound ramp reopens, the fastest way to Holiday Corners from the north is the Park Avenue exit and Soquel Drive. Plan to get there between 5 and 7 p.m. if you want all four doors open.

Construction near Porter and Bay may also be raising questions about your own home, including what the new lanes and overcrossings could mean for value on your street once the work is done. The Portola Group follows these closures as closely as we follow sales in Soquel. Get your instant home valuation, and we'll talk through what the finished corridor could mean for your property.