See also:
The 3D images in the draft Environmental Impact Report
3D images of Gateway Area build-out, from the Gateway Code

The Gateway Barrel District “Illustrative Plan” 

The above plan was modified from the original — colors were changed. The roofs are made to be the same hue, so we can more easily view the sizes and shapes of the buildings. Here’s the original, from the draft EIR, below:

This image of “Gateway-Barrel District Illustrative Plan” has no date. There is no explanation of what it is in the text of the draft EIR document other than “See Image 2-2 for the Gateway-Barrel District illustrative plan.”

The “illustrative plan” is not so easy to view and understand, as the chosen colors do not provide easy demarcations of rooftops, building sizes, etc. In the original image, everything that is tan or dark brown or reddish-brown is the roof of a building.

Here again is the modified illustration that shows the building sizes, walkways, etc. in more clear colorations. In this way, it’s easier to see the sizes and shapes of the buildings.

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When you look at this illustration, one thing that pops out is:  There is no parking shown.

As shown, it portrays the Barrel District as having 1,500 dwelling units. The information in the inset (upper left) calls for 1.25 parking spaces per dwelling unit. That would be 1,875 parking spaces. The 150,000 square feet of commercial space calls for 5 parking spaces per 1,000 square feet, for an additional 750 spaces. Total parking spaces required, per this illustration, is 2,625 parking spaces.

This amounts to approximately 18 to 20 acres of parking.  To put this in perspective, the entire Barrel District is said to be about 35 acres. The number of parking spaces at the Bayshore Mall is in the vicinity of 1,200 spaces. Uniontown Shopping Center, with Safeway and CVS, has about 250 parking spaces.

And yet this “illustrative plan” shows what looks to be zero parking spaces. It’s hard to say, as the drawing isn’t clear. Possibly the parking could be in the lower levels of the buildings — but it would require about two floors of parking in each building to amount to that 2,625 number.

In other words, this “illustrative plan” is bogus is 100% bogus.

The Gateway Code has a parking figure for apartments in the Barrel District as being 0.5 per dwelling unit — that is, one parking space for every two units. In the Corridor and Hub Districts, it is 0.25 —  one  parking space for every four apartments.

We can acknowledge that this plan is, as it states in small print, “for illustrative purposes only.” Regardless, this plan breaks perhaps dozens of policies and guidelines that have been developed during this over-two-year Gateway Area Plan discussion.

Other obvious errors on this “illustrative plan”:

• The Gateway Plan calls for a park with a minimum size of 1.0 acres, located in the Barrel District. There’s no park in this drawing.
• From the roundabout in the center, the curved road that goes to the left (west) looks to be about 3-1/2 blocks long, or over 1,000 feet with no intersecting streets or woonerfs. This is not proper for a walkable or bikeable neighborhood. In Arcata, we want the maximum block length to be 300 feet.
• “L Street” is depicted as a road — not as a Linear Park. It’s been declared as a full-width linear park since August, 2023.
• As brought up above:  There’s no parking shown.
• The building design are L-shaped, U-shaped, and completely enclosed rough “D” shapes. This makes for a private open space in the center of the compound. That might be good for the immediate residents, but it’s bad for everyone else.
• It’s pretty close to just solid buildings. Imagine, if you can, walking or riding a bike from the 5th Street entrance (right side) along that road to the roundabout, and then continuing all the way to Q Street and Samoa Boulevard. With just a couple of breaks, you’d be going past solid walls of apartment buildings — Solid, six or seven story  buildings.

  Similarly, imagine driving or biking along Samoa Boulevard. You’d be going past block-long lengths of apartment buildings, with only small interruptions. Keep in mind that these are six and seven story buildings.

• This design is not conducive to walking or biking. Imagine being at 6th and “L Street” and wanting to go to an apartment near where it says “N St” on the image — center, top. What should be a two-block trip if there were bike paths or woonerfs is depicted here as a four-block trip — because of the solid buildings.

It appears that whoever designed this “illustrative plan” had one thing in mind:  Put as many apartments as is possible into the space that’s available. 

It’s an illustrative plan, so I won’t go into the details that are missing, such as pull-outs for public transit, bulb-outs for traffic control and street crossings, and the like.

In my view, this “illustrative plan” was created by someone without a bit of sense as to urban planning, basic architectural design, or an understanding of human needs. I invite the person who made this plan to get in touch with me — Fred at Arcata1.com. 

When it comes time to design a master plan for the Barrel District, I sincerely hope that what will be proposed is far, far different from what is shown here.