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Barrel-shaped apartments for Gateway’s Barrel District floats through Planning Commission

Ark-shaped hotel anchors the master plan

In what proved to be a record-setting session, at last week’s Planning Commission meeting an amazing 1,825 apartment units were approved in a bit under 45 minutes. 

On the evening’s agenda was approval of a master plan for the Barrel District, as required by Arcata’s recently passed Gateway Area Plan. (See: Gateway Area Plan approved at 11th hour; PlanCom, Council, Loya jubilant).

The master plan that was submitted is based on seven identical 7-story barrel-shaped apartment buildings, plus an ark-shaped hotel that serves as the anchor for the project, so to speak. Each barrel building is designed to accommodate 200 apartments. The 300 cubit-long ark hotel (510 feet, in contemporary terms) includes 425 guest rooms, ranging from an elephant-sized 2,000 square foot luxury setting to 120 square foot large-reptile-sized micro-studios. 

The developer, Wenoah Risingsea, is a citizen of The Maldives, the multi-island nation that’s located in the Indian Ocean, 400 miles off-shore from mainland Asia. “We know what low-lying ground looks like, and how to deal with it,” explained Risingsea. “In the Maldives, our average ground elevation is just 5 feet above current sea level, much like Arcata’s Gateway area Barrel district. The solution is to have every building capable of floating.”

The Maldives is the lowest country in the world, and its population is considered to be the most susceptible to the theoretical, media-based belief that somehow taller ocean waves will make cars parked near the beach more rusty.

“Our politicians tell us that at least 100,000 Maldivians will have to leave our beautiful coral-atoll nation within the next 25 years,” as Risingsea told the Commission. “So I thought, why not we all come to Arcata? I will build housing for everyone.”

While subjected to the Commissioners’ grueling interrogation for more than 3-1/2 minutes, Wenoah Risingsea was deluged with questions from the Commissioners on a wide-range of planning-related topics, including how he discovered Arcata, whether the history of Noah’s Ark is in the Muslim religion, and where the barrel-shaped-building concept came from.

“Why the barrel-shaped-buildings, you ask?” Risingsea responded. “You do not read your own Gateway Code? This is the Barrel District. So this is where the barrels go.” He continued with his logic. “And that is why you must approve this project — it is in your Code.”

As someone who in 1956 was not in Arcata, nor even born yet, Risingsea was not familiar with the California Barrel Company, which ended their occupation of the soggy industrial area almost 70 years ago. When this explained to him — that no Commissioner or member of staff had ever seen the old Barrel Factory in operation — Risingsea was flummoxed for perhaps the only time in the evening. “Do you live in your past or live in your future?” he asked the Commissioners.

“I do not understand America,” he hold them.  “You have your Creamery Building in what you call the Hub District,” he pointed out, “and you have your Car Wash and Trailer Court in what you call the Corridor District.”

“Neighbors live in the Neighborhood District, and barrel-buildings are built in your Barrel District. Life can be simple,” he explained.

“As to how I found Arcata — actually, Arcata found me. My daughter is enrolled at Cal Poly Humboldt University here. Your government pays us a bounty of $50,000 for every student we enroll. It is — what do you call it? A ‘side-room’ deal? Every adult in the Maldives has one or more registered corporations in the Cayman Islands, which makes the payment process very easy. Cal Poly tells us that by 2030 they may want 5,000 Maldivians to be registered as students. Your university needs to show annual enrollment increases, for some reason.”

On describing the background of the Ark Hotel, the applicant reminisced about his youth in the Muslim-majority Maldives island nation. “As a child, I studied the Qur’an,” he said. “Noah and his Ark are mentioned 28 times.”

“But it wasn’t until I saw Russel Crowe in “Noah” ten years ago that I realized how much fun it would be to actually own an ark. You think night-club bouncers are ego-driven? My Ark Hotel manager determines the fate of your entire species. It doesn’t get more fun than that.”

When one Commissioner expressed how the Ark Hotel would boost the City’s revenues through the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT), Mr. Risingsea explained that a deal with the university would fill the rooms with students, and hence no TOT revenue. “My deal with Cal Poly Humboldt will be in perpetuity, unless things change,” he told them. “We’ve heard that before,” one Commissioner was heard to mutter.

“As time goes on, we might open up space at the hotel to small furred animals, frogs and other amphibians, and honeybees and other pollinators. The Ark Hotel is a long-term investment. A single Cascadia Subduction Zone event could alter our business model very quickly,” as Wenoah Risingsea pointed out. “It could alter yours, too,” he added.

The seven barrel apartments plus the Ark Hotel will provide housing for over 1,800 singles and couples. Families are not excluded, but are put on a separate waiting list which will open up sometime after the next antediluvian era.

The gray striped area represents parking for 1,000 cars. This amount is based on 1,400 apartments at 1/2 parking space per unit = 700, plus 425 hotel rooms at 1 per guest room, total equals 1,125 spaces permissible by the Gateway Code. A multi-story parking garage structure, also shaped like a barrel, is a future option.

Overall the Commissioners were pleased with the project and happy at the prospect of providing housing for perhaps a couple of thousand Cal Poly Students students, as well as a few working non-students, with additional consideration for non-human species at a later date. “This is a very flexible, practical, future-oriented solution to a problem that has been known about since at least 2350 BC,” a Commissioner who is knowledgeable about Biblical eras opined. “I don’t know who it is that’s talking with the applicant and giving him these ideas. But whoever it is, He has my respect.” The Commissioner immediately corrected himself. “I don’t mean just ‘He’ — the Entity who is giving advice to the applicant could be a ‘She’ or a ‘Them’ too.” He turned his gaze heaven-ward. “Please, no offense meant,” the Commissioner said. 

As the project met all the Gateway Code objective standards, it was approved by a unanimous vote. With no other business on the agenda, the meeting concluded at 6:28 p.m., not even an hour after it started.

“We’re going home earlier and earlier,” the Commission Chair was heard to remark to a colleague after the meeting concluded. “We have a very efficient, successful, and productive Planning Commission here.”