Riverbank Environmental & Demolition has been a family company since 1967, and Santa Cruz jobs sit inside our normal range. Housing here is old by California standards, with a median build year around 1970.
Close to one in five homes in the city went up before 1940. Lath and plaster walls, brick chimneys, asbestos floor tile, and hand-framed additions all turn up in them. We set the order of work before anything comes down. Permits and air district notices come first.
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Demolition inside city limits goes through Planning and Community Development. The Building and Safety Division works out of 809 Center Street, Room 101. The Planning Division reviews demolition permits, along with historic alteration and coastal permits. We carry CSLB #247684 and CAL OSHA #507 on every application.
Structures over 50 years old get a closer look. City staff check the Santa Cruz Historic Building Survey before a demolition permit moves. A listed building or one inside a historic overlay district needs a historic demolition permit. Residential demolition can also trigger replacement housing and tenant rules under the state Housing Crisis Act of 2019.
Santa Cruz County sits under the Monterey Bay Air Resources District. MBARD enforces the federal asbestos NESHAP standard and its own Rule 424. The district needs notification at least 10 working days before demolition or renovation begins. That clock runs whether the building is a Westside cottage or a downtown storefront.
A third-party California Certified Asbestos Consultant runs the survey and hands you the report. MBARD wants one regardless of the building's age. We work from that report and do the asbestos removal in older Santa Cruz homes under containment. Popcorn ceilings, floor tile, mastic, and pipe wrap are the usual finds in pre-1980 stock.
The CZU Lightning Complex started on August 16, 2020, after a heavy lightning storm. It burned 86,509 acres across Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties and destroyed 1,490 structures. Boulder Creek, Bonny Doon, Last Chance, and Swanton took the worst of it. Flames stopped about a mile from the UC Santa Cruz campus.
Burned structures in these mountains still come down years later. We handle fire damage cleanup in the Santa Cruz Mountains. That covers demolition of the damaged structure and removal of the debris. A rebuild contractor picks it up from there.
UC Santa Cruz enrolls roughly 20,000 students, and about half of them live on campus. The rest rent in the city, which keeps pressure on local housing. Owners respond with gut remodels and unit conversions. Interior demolition is the front half of most of that work.
We strip walls, ceilings, flooring, and cabinetry while the shell stays standing. Old glue-down floors and thinset come off with UHP water blasting at 40,000 psi. That leaves a clean slab for the next trade. We also do concrete demolition on driveways, patios, walkways, and foundations, plus land and site clearing on city lots.
Downtown Santa Cruz has been rebuilt once already. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake hit with a magnitude of 6.9, centered about nine miles northeast of the city. Much of the Pacific Garden Mall, built of unreinforced brick, came down with it. Those replacement blocks are the two and three story commercial buildings that fit our demolition work.
Our sweet spot runs from houses up to two and three story commercial buildings. Highway 17 covers 26 miles from Santa Cruz to San Jose over the summit. The same equipment handles demolition over the hill in San Jose. Call (209) 652-9206 to talk through a Santa Cruz building.
Communities & areas we serve around Santa Cruz: Westside, Downtown, Seabright, Beach Flats, Beach Hill, Midtown, Harvey West, Natural Bridges.
Santa Cruz ZIP codes served: 95060, 95062, 95064, 95065.
Free, no-obligation estimates throughout Santa Cruz County.
(209) 652-9206
We handle asbestos removal and abatement for homes and commercial buildings across Northern California. Work runs under sealed containment with negative air machines, and the waste goes to a landfill approved to take it.
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We handle residential demolition across Northern California. That covers whole houses, garages, sheds, and mobile homes. Work starts with an asbestos survey and permits, then the teardown and haul-off. A family company since 1967.
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Commercial demolition for retail buildings, small offices, warehouses and ag structures. We handle the asbestos abatement, the utility cuts, the teardown and the debris loads. Buildings up to two or three stories are our size range.
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Interior demolition for remodels and tenant improvements across the Central Valley and Bay Area. We gut spaces down to the studs and hand back a clean shell your builder can start in.
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We break out and haul away old concrete. Driveways, garage slabs, patios, walkways, foundations and footings all come out the same way. Broken concrete goes to a recycling yard and gets crushed into base rock.
View Details Fire damage cleanup starts once the fire is out and the building is cold. We take down burned structures and haul the debris to permitted disposal sites. The lot is left clear for your rebuild contractor.
View DetailsA few of the questions we hear most around Santa Cruz. If yours is not here, call and ask. The person who answers runs the jobs.
A building that needs to come down, a space to gut, asbestos in the survey, or a fire to clean up after? Call or send the form. We look at the property, price the job in person, and give you a number that holds. Estimates are free.
Tell us about the job and we’ll get right back to you.
