Gateway Housing is here! Following five years of Planning Commission deliberations and a dozen local developers saying it couldn’t be done, Arcata’s all-female City Council has achieved the impossible in just six days of “taking care of business.” “We made it fun,” said City Manager Karing Dreamer. Vice-Mayor Merriment Usemath chimed in. “We’re vibrant, we’re ageless, we’re fabulous. We make decisions with a smile. Why be so serious? Everything takes forever when it's a drag. Or... it's a drag when it takes forever? Well, whatever."

HUMOR: Last Tuesday’s PlanCom meeting brought direction that impacts all future-oriented Arcatans, whether they are animal, mineral, or vegetable. In a 6 to 1 vote (with Commissioner Kermit Junn dissenting as usual), the PlanCom strengthened their determination to prohibit occupancy of ants from the Gateway Area. --- “This was always the intention from the start of this process, hundreds of millions of years ago,” remarked Elated Boya, Arcata's Community Development Director. “Possibly you missed those early meetings. For Arcata to have a micro-micro-grid of bicycle lanes, ants would only get in the way.”

“I got the idea after watching ‘Being John Malkovitch’,” explained Planning Commissioner Ivegotta Nyedear. “In the movie, a developer built an office building where the 7-1/2 floor has a ceiling height of just five feet. We did a market analysis.” He continued: “With housing in such demand in Arcata, we found that 78% of renters would live in an apartment with a five-foot ceiling if the rental price was under $750 a month.” ---- Splitting existing apartments into upper and lower units was the brainstorm. “In an evolving world, the renter population must evolve as well,” said Commissioner Achingho Mowner. “This solution is perfect.”

In a stirring turn of events, Gracelessway Plan decisionmakers resolved fourteen months of stagnation in under five minutes at last Tuesday’s meeting. "We haven't even started, and we're done!" Commissioner Eyefigueroa Dittout announced with a big grin. And suddenly the Commission has nothing to do.

For Arcata's "I Drank the Kool-Aid" contest, prizes include thousands of environmentally sustainable housing units that are affordable to people in all income ranges with both rental and owner‐occupied options. Full terms are outlined in the most recent draft Gateway Plan.

Daniel Duncan is a retired contractor and present-time architectural commentator who has lived here in Arcata for over 50 years. His articles on Arcata planning, housing, and design appeared first in the Mad River Union, and now the eighteen articles from 2022 have been collected in his new book. Dan's book is available now at Northtown Books in Arcata and Booklegger in Eureka. The price is $10.

The figure of $300,000 is shown as a house that is "attainable" for a couple or small family, based on earnings and ability to pay the mortgage and expenses. And a house at $300,000 or below just is not available anymore. --- The answer? Smaller units. Higher densities -- apartment buildings, that is. And if there cannot be condominiums (see: The Housing Market Needs More Condos. Why Are So Few Being Built?), then this equates to renting and not owning. Ownership opportunities have become a part of the past.

We don’t have to go far to uncover transparency issues. We can look right here at Arcata’s Gateway Plan. Crucial letters from the public about this plan have been hidden. They aren’t seen until after the meeting the letter was written for has passed. Do Arcatans want to see L Street — right next to the Creamery, where we come for festivals and fun — turned into a truck route? I don’t think so. Nor does Arcata’s Transportation Safety Committee. But that committee’s voice likewise has been ignored. --- California’s Brown Act: “The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.”

Community Development Director David Loya provided a concise explanation of California's myriad Density Bonus housing laws in the March 2023 Planning Commission staff reports. It is included it here so it can be referred to at any time.

In recent years, windowless bedrooms have become somewhat normalized on college campuses. Students at the University of Texas, Austin and the University of Michigan are currently renting dorm bedrooms without windows. Sunlight in your bedroom could become a luxury as cities debate allowing landlords to rent windowless rooms in former office buildings to alleviate the housing crisis.

A special page for City Council and Planning Commission members -- and a great place for all readers to learn more about the Gateway Plan. This page will be updated regularly. Come back for more!

This is the February 2022 draft of the Local Coastal Plan, also called the Local Coastal Element.

From the Agenda Packet for the March 28, 2023, Joint Study Session on Sea Level Rise. Includes "balancing future climate risk with current and future social and community needs" and discussion to "develop a better understanding about sea level rise risk and the factors to consider when balancing policy options for future growth and development." -- More information is good, and making appropriate decisions is even better. But why is the City still allowing -- even promoting -- development on South G Street?

The long-anticipated panel presentation on Sea Level Rise took place on March 28, 2023, as a joint City Council / Planning Commission Study Session. This article contains a list of pertinent questions, a listing of the contents of the video, and the full 2-1/2 hour video.

This article from the March 18, 2023, issue of The Economist tells a cautionary tale of how both large and small projects have initial cost and time underestimates and deliberate inaccuracies, then followed by cost overruns and time delays.  And, far too often, there is the "sunk-cost" fallacy -- whereby people hesitate to halt projects because money spent will seem to have been wasted. -- Does this apply to Arcata's Gateway Plan? -- 5 minutes to read.

This is the link to the video for the March 16, 2023, OLLI presentation on Sea Level Rise & Humboldt Bay. Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) of Cal Poly Humboldt has been offering a monthly special interest group Zoom meeting on Sea Level Rise & Humboldt Bay. The presentations are facilitated by environmental planning consultant Aldaron Laird and Humboldt County history (and general knowledge) specialist Jerry Rhode.

Based on what we've seen, our Community Development Department has an aversion to providing Executive Summaries and actually presenting fact-based conclusions for Arcata's decision-makers. Staff also seems to have an aversion to completing or finalizing ANYTHING. Both the "Strategic Infill Redevelopment Program:  Community Engagement Report (Draft)" -- submitted to the public on June 17, 2022 -- and the "City of Arcata Sea Level Rise Risk Assessment" report from April, 2018, are MISSING entirely their Executive Summaries -- even though those summaries are promoted as being part of the documents.

In the Gateway Plan, if a developer does not want to supply any parking whatsoever for the residents of newly-constructed apartments, that's an option. But if the developer wants to include enough parking spaces to make those apartments be competitive with other apartments in Arcata? Can't do that. The number of parking spaces that can be provided AT A MAXIMUM amounts to one parking space for every 4 to 8 residents.

The Gateway Area Plan's stated intent is to have "home- ownership opportunities" -- that is, condominiums -- in the Gateway Area. The share of condo units built for sale in 2021 was less than 5.4 percent, nationally. The rest were rental units. The shortage of condos adds to the lack of affordability in the homebuying market.

Paul Simon's timeless song. Eight versions plus lyrics and notes. ----- Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken -- And many times confused -- Yes, and I’ve often felt forsaken -- And certainly misused -- Oh, but I’m all right, I’m all right -- I’m just weary to my bones -- Still, you don’t expect to be -- Bright and bon vivant -- So far away from home, so far away from home.

The Draft Gateway Plan pretends that there will be an increase in on-street parking in the Gateway area. In actuality, there will be 50% or so of current parking spaces. In some blocks, there will be less than 25% of what is there now.

The Gateway code includes a MAXIMUM number of parking spaces at 1 per every 4 units -- which works out to one per every 4 to 8 tenants. A restaurant with a staff of six and hosting 35 or 40 diners would have a MAXIMUM of ONE space. How will this work out for Arcata?

This map provides an orientation for some of the buildings and business locations in the Creamery area. The background is taken from the Draft Gateway Plan, and shows the proposed street parking situation. However, this parking plan is very inaccurate -- it is "high level" and does not incorporate driveway cutouts, business frontages, and other aspects of reality.

"In the nineteen-fifties, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I lived for some years among the Juwa and Gikme Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. I went there with my parents, Laurence and Lorna Marshall, and my brother, John, to record the Bushmen's way of life. My own interest was in the lions (leopology, I liked to say), but I had little time to pursue that interest in those busy days. Under any circumstances, though, lions are hard to ignore, so I was able to glean some data on them."