Community

Eric Loudenslager, Board of Directors member of the Arcata Fire Protection District, weighs in on some of the challenges of the Gateway Plan, and some requests for information and involvement.

Videos and discussion of the City Council's process of selecting two new Planning Commissioners. Choosing a new Planning Commissioner for Arcata is an important task. The ideas and opinions and visions that are promoted (or withheld) by the two new Planning Commissioners in the discussions on the Gateway Area Plan will have the potential to change the look and feel of Arcata for the next 50 or 100 years. 

The L Street pathway could be a community jewel in the heart of the Gateway area. The City wants it to be a high-traffic road, taking all the southbound car and truck volume from Alliance Road to Samoa Boulevard.

Dr. Tom Jackson has been the President of Cal Poly Humboldt since May, 2019. He writes a twice-a-month letter published in the Eureka Times-Standard. Dr. Jackson may be "thankful to be a community partner" but many people here in Arcata do not see Cal Poly Humboldt as being a community "partner" at all.

August 16th Survey shows "Home Ownership" of supreme importance to the 50-or-so participants during the two minutes of voting. What's the possibility of Home Ownership Opportunities to be written into the Gateway Plan? Very likely to be Zero.

New proposed bike lanes for K & L Streets and for 8th & 9th Streets. Could we do without a K Street bike lane and instead keep L Street bikeable, walkable, and protected from vehicle traffic?

The "couplet" created by making K Street and L Street be one-way, one-lane streets seems unlikely to happen. And if it were to take place, the joyful humanity of the current L Street Pathway would be destroyed. Why does it seem that the City is not being forthcoming on this? Why aren't we presented with alternatives?

The City wants to destroy a quiet strolling pathway so that car and truck traffic will be split between L Street and K Street. Meanwhile, cities all over the world are attempting to get rid of car traffic in favor of walkable public spaces. A "Plan B" has been promised since January. So far, nothing.

8th & 9th Streets are proposed as one-way streets with bike lanes. That sounds good. But it comes with a 30% reduction of parking on those streets. That sounds bad.

Here's a 6-story building that could work in Arcata, with some modifications. Originally proposed for Santa Cruz, it incorporates many of the design elements and features people here have said are important.

This article is a re-print of the article of the same name in the July 25/August 1, 2022, issue of The Nation. It is...

At the site of the Craftman's Mall, Cal Poly Humboldt plans to put in dorms for 1,050 students. Is that good? Well, 5,500 dorm beds are needed.

Did UC Berkeley bring in more students than they'd promised? How much should the University contribute to infrastructure costs? And -- is any of this applicable to Cal Poly Humboldt and Arcata ?

The "plan" for human-access parks in the Arcata Gateway area is woefully inadequate. To make the Gateway area livable for thousands of people, we need real parks.

Ry Cooder from his second album "Into the Purple Valley," 1972. The song is a Depression Era late-1930s song, in protest to California's "No More Migration" laws. Also here is the Sis Cunningham version from 1976,

Woody Guthrie's song "Pretty Boy Floyd" contains the famous verse: "Yes, as through this world I've wandered, I've seen lots of funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen."

Global warming, from a frog's point of view, perhaps.