As part of the development of Arcata’s General Plan update, the City’s committees are meant to weigh in on what they feel is important to them, and on issues and wording that, by agreement of the Committee, they’d like to see included in the General Plan.

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See also: “Gateway Street Parking: Why it will be inadequate” and “Getting rid of parking in Arcata: A social engineering experiment” and more articles on parking here.

1. Background
2. What the documents show
3. What wound up in the General Plan recommendations
4. Video of the Economic Development Committee discussing Parking
   6 minutes. Or watch the entire two-hour video.

Background

At their August 2, 2022, meeting the Economic Development Committee discussed the issues and trade-offs of the parking situation.

The needs of new bike lanes, safer pedestrian sidewalks and crosswalks, and for increased traffic flow all may add up to a decrease in on-street parking. And coupled with the Gateway Plan’s proposal for tenant parking in the new apartments of both a minimum (zero) and a maximum — generally one parking space for every three or four units… which could be one parking space for every 4 to 8 driving-age adults — where does that leave Arcata’s requirements for on-street parking?

By and large, a business owner will say that the ability of customers to find parking is a crucial element to the success of the business. We may wish for that aspect of Arcata life were different, but that’s the way it is. See “Getting rid of parking in Arcata: A social engineering experiment” for more on this, or click here for a handful of other articles on parking issues in Arcata.

As one example, a restaurant in a 1,000 square foot space might have 35 or 40 diners and require a staff of six. In the Gateway Plan, an apartment building with a ground-floor commercial space for that restaurant could be built with no parking at all. The maximum it could have is one parking space — for 35-40 dinners and 6 staff.

If you were about to start a restaurant or small business and were looking around for a place to rent — would you want to rent in a building with no available off-street parking?

All of this makes the requirement for on-street parking all the more important.

What the documents show

Here are the Economic Development Committee’s working concerns. From the EDC packet, going into their August 8, 2022, meeting. (The images here are adjusted for size — no edits of content were made.)

Here’s the discussion with that August 8, 2022, meeting.Here’s the section on parking:

Must ensure that sufficient parking provided for both residents and visitors to and employees of local businesses, given rural nature of area and to ensure that parking doesn’t infringe on nearby/local residential neighborhoods.
Don’t presume that students, staff, or residents won’t have cars needing to be parked somewhere. 80% of current students are non-local.

And here’s what wound up in the General Plan recommendations from the Economic Development Committee

and:
How did this:

Must ensure that sufficient parking provided for both residents and visitors to and employees of local businesses, given rural nature of area and to ensure that parking doesn’t infringe on nearby/local residential neighborhoods.
Don’t presume that students, staff, or residents won’t have cars needing to be parked somewhere. 80% of current students are non-local.

Become this:

Ensure adequate parking for local businesses and employees.

The video of this section of the Economic Development Committee’s August 2, 2022, meeting

Starting at about 1 hour 9 minutes 45 seconds on the video.
The discussion on the wording on Parking runs for about 6 minutes, to about 1:16.

The entire two-hour video: