For a introduction to the Gateway Plan and more on this and other meetings, go to:  arcata1.com/meetings
For the Petition for the L Street Linear Park, go to:  ArcataLinearPark.org

Community Meeting
The Gateway Area Plan
The L Street Pathway & Linear Park

Bring your questions ★ Everyone is welcome
Discussion – Strategies – Involvement

Monday  July 10th
5:30 to 7:00 PM

Doors open at 5:20 – Come early!

Arcata Playhouse
The Creamery Building ★ 1251 9th Street

The Gateway Area Plan affects EVERYONE in Arcata. Please come to learn more how the Gateway Plan will affect you – and how you can help.

Please pass this announcement on to everyone you know who might be interested.
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★★★★★★★

The Gateway Area Plan is a long-range plan being developed by the City of Arcata. The expressed purpose is to help create housing in a near-downtown area and to promote a walkable, bikeable, vibrant high-density residential region in Arcata.

The Gateway area is 138 acres, about 70 city blocks. From K Street to O Street and past, from Samoa Boulevard to Alliance Road. It includes: The Creamery building and the entire Creamery District; Redwood Raks and the Pub; the L Street Pathway; the 11th & K intersection and the prior Patriot gas station; the Clothing Dock; German Motors; the car wash; the Montessori school and gardens; Holly Yashi; Tomas; Greenway; Bug Press; Portuguese Hall; Arcata Trailer Court on 7th Street; all of the low-lying industrial acreage along Samoa where Wing Inflatables is located, and more. The area includes over 100 existing houses.

The Plan is good in concept — but in actuality, it needs lots of improvements.

• The Plan shows a truck route that’s six feet away from the quiet pathway that runs alongside the Creamery, where there are now children and street fairs and we meet our friends and walk. Who wants heavy truck traffic running in the heart of the Creamery District?
  
• Arcata doesn’t need L Street to become a major road. K Street can become safer and more comfortable for pedestrians and cyclists right now, as the Planning Commission has already pointed out. And a petition already signed by over 750 community members agrees.
• The Plan places the tallest buildings (seven stories) in the area that has the softest soil, is most susceptible to sea level rise and emerging groundwater, and would be most affected by an earthquake.
• The Plan disregards basic solar shading requirements. It allows the creation of canyon-like streetscapes with a row of five, six, or seven story buildings. A developer could make a sheer vertical wall that’s five or six stories tall, directly on the property line. Even if that wall is right next to a one-story home or to Portuguese Hall. The current draft Form-Based Code does NOT reflect the years of community visioning and input and will NOT produce the outcomes that have been promised to the public.
• The Plan promotes building 3,500 apartments — though acknowledges that a number around 500 is more likely to happen — and yet has minimal or no provisions for actual parks, actual playgrounds, schools, police and fire protection costs, traffic and parking impacts, and other very real aspects of running a city. Financial impacts on Arcata have yet to be discussed. And it promotes moving forward with the assumption that sea level rise won’t affect Arcata’s wastewater treatment plant.
• And most important of all: If the Gateway Plan is not going to provide truly affordable housing for the people who need it, then what’s the point? If working people can’t afford the rents, and school teachers, police officers, and even our doctors can’t buy a home, then we need to think this through more.

Yes, we want housing.
No, we do not want to lose Arcata to development.

Why in the world would we want Arcata to look like so many cities in California south of us? The answer is: We don’t!

It’s up to us to make a positive difference. Arcata is at a crossroads. The expansion of Cal Poly Humboldt brings opportunities and challenges to Arcata. Here in Arcata, we can join in to create our future, for us and for the generations that follow us. We can all contribute to keep Arcata wonderful.

Arcata, we can do better! Arcata needs an infill and redevelopment plan and we need to provide more housing. The draft Gateway Plan is filled with aspirations and empty promises. The promises of affordable housing, of home-ownership, of an equitable, environmental, walkable, bikeable, vibrant and alive community. But we don’t want promises. We need it to be real.

Future Gateway Community Meetings at the Arcata Playhouse. We’re scheduled for the first Tuesday of every month: August 1st, September 5th, October 3rd, with dates to be determined for November and December. Same location, same time. Arcata Playhouse in the Creamery, doors open at 5:20 PM.  Please come, and please tell your friends and spread the word.