6-story apartments, anywhere in Arcata.
Is this what we want?
This is a big issue, and it’s happening right now.
The discussion takes place at the City Council meeting on Wednesday, November 15th, 2023. Your voice is important. After reading this, you may want to write to our City Council, speak at the meeting, or phone or Zoom to speak at the meeting. Instructions on doing this are below.
Arcata’s Community Development Directory, David Loya, is asking the City Council whether the policies that are in process of being developed for the Gateway area should be put into the General Plan – so that the policies can be in place throughout all of Arcata.
He’s outlined 123 policies. Many of them would be good for just about everywhere. But the major ones were developed just for the Gateway area. There is no way that they would be appropriate on a city-wide basis.
The biggest of these contentious policy issues have to do with building height and density.
Imagine this:
Six-story apartment buildings allowed in every single neighborhood in Arcata. No limit on how dense these apartments might be. Existing houses permitted for coffee shops, convenience stores, and restaurants. Zero parking required for apartments of any size. For offices, stores, and restaurants — one or two spaces is the most parking they’d be allowed to have.
These would be the policies for all of Arcata.
This is what David Loya is presenting to the City Council at the November 15th meeting. He is proposing to treat the entire city of Arcata with the same the policies that are being developed for the Gateway Area Plan.
The Gateway area is now a diverse mix of homes, apartments, stores, light manufacturing, some heavy industry, offices, empty lots, and underutilized spaces. The Creamery Building and Arcata’s arts district are there, and it will be the home of the new L Street linear park. It’s a great location for dense housing to support a walkable, bikeable neighborhood.
To believe that the policies developed for Gateway are feasible for Downtown, for Bayview, Sunny Brae, Westwood, Sunset, Valley West, and Bayside is ridiculous. The policies on pedestrian and bike pathways: Yes. Policies promoting six-story buildings in residential neighborhoods: No way in the world.
Arcata’s existing Housing Element requires development be done “in a way that allows for gradual, rather than drastic, changes from surrounding development density or type” and include “design features such as gradual increases in building height.” All of this is apparently being thrown out the window.
Is this what we want? I don’t think we do.
Will the City Council go for this?
David Loya seems to believe that this is what the City Council wants, as they expressed at the October 24, 2023, joint City Council – Planning Commission study session. But like what happens with David Loya so frequently, apparently what he thinks the Councilmembers and Commissioners said is not at all what they indeed did say. (See future article, here.) In actuality, what they said is more or less the opposite of what he thinks they said.
So, no. I do not believe that the City Council will agree with his proposal. What he is asking for — quoting here from his staff report:
“Staff recommends the Council provide direction whether to retain the Gateway Area Plan as a stand-alone Element of the General Plan applicable only in the Gateway Area or distribute the new policy into the other General Plan Elements to be applicable citywide, as well as any other direction the Council wishes to provide.”
The Gateway Area Plan has to be retained as a stand-alone Element of the General Plan. Some of the policies can go into the General Plan — and this can be done now, or it can be done three or five years from now, as updates to the adopted General Plan.
But to dissolve the existing still-being-developed Gateway Plan and incorporate all of the policies to be city-wide policies — that is simply ridiculous.
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