David Loya at the AEP/ APA Planners workshop – November 10, 2020

45 minutes.
A presentation by David Loya at a “brown bag lunch” hosted by the  Redwood Coast Chapter of the Association of Environmental Planners / American Planning Association.  [https://norcalapa.org/]

Intro:
“Arcata Gateway Project: The K Street corridor is a de facto gateway to Arcata, its Downtown, and the Creamery District. It is also low hanging fruit on the post-RDA redevelopment tree. David Loya, Director of Community Development, will discuss how to use planning, stakeholder engagement, and multi-sector alignment to spark community revitalization.”

David Loya:
“I guess I’d say the views expressed here represent my views as well as, as far as I can tell, the community’s views at large — and we’ll go through that a little bit.”

“So we started having the conversation while — you know, it’s not that we’re not going to grow, but we need to grow on our terms. How do we do that?  This is one of the graphics that was an output from that meeting or from those series of meetings.  We held held them in both English and Spanish.  And the somewhat inspiring thing about this graphic to me is that the planning work that we had been doing — because we knew as planners that we needed to go in this direction for several years — was being verified and confirmed by our community.”

From the video  11:46   Red ellipse added.
Opinion:  What is the disconnect with this graphic, in terms of the December 2021 Gateway plan? 

1:  It looks as though there was a community input of ~14-16 people — clearly not enough
input.  There were other meetings with greater input.  Why choose this one?
2: “Encourage multi-use development” is clear.  Build Accessory Dwelling Units” is clear.
“Encourage multi-story apartments near Downtown” — not so clear.
3: It uses the phrase “multi-story apartments” — It does not say “5 to 8 story apartments” as proposed by the plan. Even as shown on this chart, “multi-story” to most people means 3 or 4 stories.
4: The positions at the arrows are phrased so as to lead the viewer to certain responses. “Build the biggest buildings possible” is vague — you mean, 50 story buildings?  Nor is “We don’t need any new tall buildings, especially not with housing units.”  As most of us agree, “Don’t” and “No” are not valid options.  We want a plan.
5: It appears that the so-called results are shown as being at the right arrows, but it looks as though most people voted pretty much in the middle. 
6: In the 2nd line (with the red ellipse) it appears that people are voting on the “Building no more than 3 stories.  If higher it needs to be with great approval from the community” — which of course is pretty much the opposite of what the December 2021 Gateway plan proposes.  People did vote for the extreme, but as mentioned above, what does “biggest” mean when the topic uses the phrase “multi-story” ?

The disconnect between what the community indicated as their wishes at these meetings — versus what became part of the December 2021 Gateway plan — will be covered in a separate article.

From the video  17:30

Opinion:  What this depiction does not illustrate is that the “90 Acres” is currently filled with vibrant, on-going businesses and homes.  It is not actually “90 acres” — there appears to be about 16 acres of available buildable land.  Putting 2,900 units on a gross area of 90 acres is about 32 units per acre — a middle ground between 18 (at the lower end) and 50 (at the higher end).  Unfortunately, to achieve a density of 2,900 units on 90 acres would involve tearing down all existing buildings on the 74 acres which is not vacant — which is unlikely to occur in a 20-year or 30-year plan, if ever.