Go directly to the Planning Commission discussion about:
Talking to the Wiyot Tribe about having Wiyot names in the Gateway area
Discussion of no street-facing garages
Videos of the June 27, 2023, meeting
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Introduction
As outlined in Comments and Suggestions for the Gateway Code and its Guide, there are many topics in the Gateway Code that have not been adequately addressed by the Planning Commission — or not spoken about at all.
There are many other topics that indeed were discussed by the Planning Commission. But whether the results of those discussions ever became part of the Gateway Code is what must be looked at, on a case-by-case basis.
This article looks at just two topics — Street-facing garage doors, and re-naming one or more Gateway districts with Wiyot names — and looks at what was discussed by the Planning Commission… and the lack of change that has so far resulted.
The 3rd draft is not different from the 2nd draft
The Gateway Code is the form-based code that specifies the “look and feel” for the Gateway Area Plan. The dates of the Gateway Code drafts are:
- June 5, 2023. First draft.
- September 22, 2023. Second draft.
- January 31, 2024. Third draft, the “Public Review” draft.
I will again note that the 3rd draft is not actually different from the 2nd draft. The 3rd draft is changed in this way: It has four 3D images of a potential build-out scenario in the Gateway area, and there are two lines of text that refer to these images. (And there is a typographical error in those two lines.) Other than that, there is no change to the text, tables, and other figures — None whatsoever. The 2nd draft contains 11,638 words. The 3rd draft adds 19 words to it.
An outline of the changes between the 1st and 2nd drafts can be seen here: Gateway Code form-based code – September 22, 2023 version — What’s changed.
At the time that this article is being written (April 23, 2024), the “Public Review Draft” of the Gateway Code has been out since January 31, 2024 — about three months. At the Planning Commission’s April 23, 2024, meeting, a review of the Gateway is on the agenda.
Examples of topics that were discussed, and nothing (or not much) happened
There are many examples of changes that the Commissioners wanted not resulting in changes to the Gateway Code. In this article I’m going to discuss only two examples (and part of a third: alleys).
The June 27, 2023, Planning Commission meeting was one meeting where individual topics of the Gateway Code were discussed. This meeting took place after the release of the first draft, and prior to the 2nd draft — and by extension prior to the 3rd (current) draft, since the 3rd draft was not changed.
- Among the many matters that seem to have fallen through the cracks was the idea of discussing with the Tribes about using a Wiyot name or names for Gateway areas. Or perhaps this is an open topic, but just has not been discussed. My preference is to see a Wiyot name for what is called the Barrel district. To honor the California Barrel Company seems odd to me (in existence from 1902 or 1906 to 1952), given the heritage of the Tribes.
- As an example, one topic (of many) that seems to not have reflected in the revised code has to do with whether street-facing garage doors should be allowed. The code states “Garage doors serving individual units” may not face a public street, just an alley. Those would be townhouses, and there would not be may of them.
In the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd drafts, the code allows street-facing garage doors “serving multiple dwelling units and/or non-residential uses” is indeed allowed to be facing a street.
The Commission at that time asked for this section to be revised. They wanted no street-facing garage doors to be in the Gateway Code. But this change was not done.
This is brought up in the “Comments and Suggestions” article at this location.
Specific points to note
- In the discussion of not having driveway entrances on major streets, the Community Developer Director first said that this was a requirement around the Creamery building — but there’s nothing in the Gateway Code that this would be only for blocks around the Creamery building. He said there was at that time a provision the the blocks facing the Creamery would not have street access for a driveway on 8th or 9th Street. There does not seem to be anything in the Gateway Code about this. It seems that he was supplying incorrect information to the Planning Commission.
- On the requirement to put an alley in a full block face development. This is around 2:29 in the video, and is specified in the Gateway Code as being for “complete block face” sites. The Community Developer Director informed the Planning Commission that alleys might result in “islanding” some smaller parcels — that they would end up with no space for a driveway or for off-street parking. In actuality there are very few portions of the Gateway area that would be considered for “full block face development.” I don’t believe it would result in “islanding.” It’s possible that I don’t understand what Director Loya was referring to. This “full block face development” would only apply to a small number of locations — perhaps just four places.
The wording “On a development site that occupies a complete block face, a new alley must be established to provide vehicle access. In such a case no other curb cuts are permitted.” has been in first draft of the Gateway Code, and has not been altered in the 2nd or 3rd draft.
- The wording on shared garages and parking structures “serving multiple dwelling units and/or non-residential uses” has been in first draft of the Gateway Code, and has not been altered in the 2nd or 3rd draft.
Transcriptions and a video of the June 27, 2023, meeting
The Commissioners’ discussion on the Gateway Code was about 1 hour and 20 minutes. The video, cued up, is below.
To listen to the video while reading the transcription, go the video and start it, and then return to the transcription to read it. The video can be set to play at 1.5 times or double speed — use the “Gear” icon and adjust the play speed.
I am supplying transcriptions here of two segments of this video.
- A discussion regarding speaking with Wiyot Tribe about using a Wiyot name or names for Gateway areas.
- A discussion about garages for non-residential buildings — whether the Commission wants to see garage doors that face the street.
Talking to the Wiyot Tribe about having Wiyot names in the Gateway area
Note: The time shown is from the City video. For the YouTube, add about 30 seconds to this time.
Matt Simmons 2:40:44
The next one, we’ve gotten a lot of requests from the public to rename the sub-districts in consultation with the Wiyot Tribe. And I am in favor of that, if other Commissioners are.
Scott Davies (Chair) 2:41:06
What was staff’s response?
David Loya – Community Development Director 2:41:09
We’ve spoken with the Wiyot Tribe, and they are interested in and supportive of us renaming, or naming, things based on Wiyot place names or Wiyot names. I would say that, you know, we should be open to whatever participation that they want to, you know, engage in and to the extent that they want to. So I don’t know if, you know, renaming the districts themselves are what they’ll be interested in renaming, or if they’ll want street names, or what. So I guess I would offer that, yes. Let’s be open to to it. I think it’s a good call overall
Scott Davies (Chair) 2:42:03
And when we say “be open,” does that mean invite them to a conversation? What does “be open” actually mean?
David Loya – Community Development Director 2:42:07
Yeah, I mean, we’ve, we’ve already initiated the conversation. And I would say that, you know, if they have a desire to, you know, name things in Arcata, their ancestral territory, while we’re, you know, going around naming things, and we should, you know, be open and all and, you know, let them have first dibs on what that thing would be called.
Scott Davies (Chair) 2:42:30
Any of the Commissioners?
Dan Tangney (Commissioner) 2:42:33
A great conversation to have.
Scott Davies (Chair) 2:42:36
Everyone’s in support of that.
Dan Tangney (Commissioner) 2:42:41
But not specifically that because it could be something else.
Scott Davies (Chair) 2:42:46
Because we don’t know which way that conversation with Tribe will go.
Discussion of no street-facing garages
Note: The time shown is from the City video. For the YouTube, add about 30 seconds to this time.
Matt Simmons 2:26:49
I don’t think I don’t think we should have garage doors opening up onto main public streets, as it’s currently allowed. I think they should open up into alleys.
Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner 2:27:00
I thought it wasn’t allowed. I read….
Matt Simmons 2:27:05
It’s limited how wide they can be and how frequently, but….
Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner 2:27:10
Well, I totally agree with Matt.
Dan Tangney (Commissioner) 2:27:15
Do you have a packet page there?
Matt Simmons 2:27:18
That’s not the packet page. That’s the page of the code as it was given to us originally. It is packet page 48.
David Loya – Community Development Director 2:27:53
So right now, so on packet page 48, under I-2-a, it reads that “Garage doors serving individual units may not face a public street. Such garage doors must be oriented toward an alley or private street driveway that is internal to the project.”
Matt Simmons 2:28:22
So that that’s limited to individual units.
David Loya – Community Development Director 2:28:25
Yeah. So what you’re saying is — if there’s a garage entrance to a building, specify that those don’t go on to public streets also.
Matt Simmons 2:28:36
Yeah, and the reason for that is if we’re trying to create a welcoming pedestrian environment, we don’t want cars coming in out of a garage through the sidewalk like in, you know, outdoor table seating at a restaurant, all that sort of stuff.
David Loya – Community Development Director 2:28:53
Yeah, we did include a requirement around the Creamery district that — around the Creamery building, excuse me — that that be the case. And that we would require those internal drive aisles to basically create easements that create alleyways. The challenge is, without formalizing those in advance, you may have property that’s islanded. So if you’re in the middle, you don’t have access to a side street. There may be no way to develop that property if you don’t allow access to the front. I think it’s a really good idea and we got excited about this when we landed on it. And I think it’s, it’s worth thinking through how that that would actually work in practice. And, you know, maybe part of that is, you know, trying to work with property owners in advance to try and establish those easements. It’s really difficult when you have all the legacy land uses to orient everything, but I think it’s worth the work to try and arrive at that.
Matt Simmons 2:30:10
If I can just– So imagine the Plaza right now, right? We wouldn’t want a garage opening onto the main central part of the Plaza. We’d want it on one of the side, you know, sort of alley streets that go around the Plaza. And so this — all I was trying to do is sort of get that in the language before anything gets proposed.
David Loya – Community Development Director 2:30:30
Yeah. And we have, you know, fortunately, alleyways all around the Plaza. There’s actually a historic alleyway that goes right through the Jacoby Storehouse. So there used to be an alley that went all the way through there. Now, it doesn’t [word]. So I think if we can, you know, try and write some standard that — I think the way to accomplish this is to write a standard that requires access — through access — so that you’re starting to create the easements, and then we would try and work with those individual property owners. We’d have to, you know, we’d have to get pretty creative around those islanded properties. So if they wanted to come in and develop, you’d have to tell them, No, I’m sorry, you can’t develop until you can get an easement to your property through the back.
Matt Simmons 2:31:19
They could develop without parking —
David Loya – Community Development Director 2:31:22
They could develop without parking.
David Loya – Community Development Director 2:31:23
That is true.
Matt Simmons 2:31:23
And someone else could build a garage, on an alley. And someone could park at that other garage and walk to their building without having to drive their car right up to their front door.
Scott Davies (Chair) 2:31:36
So are you saying that staff is going to look at this more and bring this back to us? Is that part of what I’m hearing you articulate?
David Loya – Community Development Director 2:31:43
Yeah. So I guess one question, just to clarify — is the proposal to have — throughout the entire Gateway district — No on-street access? Or right now we currently have a provision that is around the Creamery building, those blocks facing the Creamery would not have access on the streets on 8th and 9th, etc.
Matt Simmons 2:32:05
I personally feel like it applied to the entire district. And I’m not saying there’s no garages. They would just have to find a way to not be going through main public streets.
Dan Tangney (Commissioner) 2:32:15
Matt, this is counterintuitive to your goal of developing housing, in that some islanded properties or challenging situations where a developer has to then suddenly put in a lane or something down this whole side of their buildings so that you can come in from the backside, and take away square footage to potential units. I mean, I get the sentiment of nobody wants to be walking down the street and have cars going in a garage. I get that sentiment a lot. As David is describing, as I think through, it just feels like this could create some unbuildable kind of situations or less units.
Scott Davies (Chair) 2:33:02
I mean, I like to trade off, personally for bikeability and walkability. If we can find a way to feel reasonably secure that we won’t be islanding certain portions, I would be supportive, with more information, as to how I would characterize my vote.
Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner 2:33:19
Yeah, as an avid cyclist, it’s a real danger to have a garage where a car can pull out into the street.
David Loya – Community Development Director 2:33:29
Yeah, I agree. Here’s, here’s a specific example. So one of the sites that we did as a test site was this property here. [The Tomas / Open Door Clinic offices building, NE 8th & L.) It’s got a lot of vacant space. It doesn’t have any, you know, their constraints. It’s fairly readily available, developable. Here’s the Creamery building itself. And this is, you know, the Open Door offices are in here, there’s the community garden back here. So the project design does show covering the community garden. I’m not suggesting that’s what we want to do, but we’re just trying to test the code here. And so when the architect put the building on this, they put the entrance from the front here, you know, as we were talking about it. We said, you know, well, that conflicts with the code that we just put in this provision that, you know, facing onto the Creamery, there would be no penetrations. And then we started looking at it and the only way to get here you know, the only other way to get here currently, you know, readily is by extending Seventh Street — which means that there’s another crossing for the trail. [Note: And for the future linear park — which had not been established yet on 6-27-203.] And so there’s there’s a lot of problems as you start to look at this practically. I think that I would recommend that we require a joint access along joint property lines here, even though this treats a new penetration, maybe it would clean up a couple of other penetrations, egress, and it would preserve the crossing area. I mean, we’ve already got — So, you know, as we think about the future state, Eighth and Ninth streets, you know, becoming one-ways and this area developing and becoming more vibrant means that there’s going to be more traffic. Right now, you can just about roll through these, you know, as a bicyclist, you can just about roll through these. There’s almost nobody, you know, on these, you can slow down, slow down, look both ways. You don’t have to stop and wait for traffic often. And the other nice thing is that drivers, I found them typically courteous and they’ll stop for you. They don’t have to stop the stop for you on that trail. So this is a very enjoyable trail right now and way to bike. We have, you know, Eighth, Ninth, 10th, 11th — that are already crossing. Eighth and Ninth proposed for, you know, one-way egress. With more traffic on here, I just don’t know that we want to start opening up additional points of egress. You know, there’s there’s another one right here. And this is proposed currently in the circulation plan to have, you know, to merge onto L Street. So there may be some refinements as we look at this in more detail — on a parcel by parcel basis that they want to implement.
David Loya – Community Development Director 2:36:33
So I only throw that out there as food for thought when you’re thinking about, you know, how do we get these? How do we eliminate access points on one area? And what does that do if we open them up on another area?
Dan Tangney (Commissioner) 2:36:48
It’s so could the wording be something about strongly discouraging or adding or not allowing unless, you know, situational? Circumstances mandate? I don’t know.
Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner 2:37:10
Well, this is the code. So if somebody wants to do it, you say in the code, strongly discouraged to do it. So I think we need to be more specific.
Scott Davies (Chair) 2:37:22
I kind of would lean to putting this in the purple pending. [Note: Purple was the color used on that day for thinks to be looked at.] Maybe staff working through looking at how much of an issue this looks like it’s going to be to give us a better idea of how much property we might put at risk by doing something like this. That would give us a better data set to weigh this out. If everyone’s okay with that.
Dan Tangney (Commissioner) 2:37:46
Yeah, property and or, as David just pointed out more trail crossings. I don’t want that either.
Scott Davies (Chair) 2:37:52
One or the other. There are various implications.
Videos of the June 27, 2023, Planning Commission meeting
Starting at 1 hour 29 minutes, for the Gateway Code discussion.
To return to the transcripts, click or tap on:
- Talking to the Wiyot Tribe about having Wiyot names in the Gateway area
Starts at around 2 hours 41 minutes on the video - Discussion of no street-facing garages
Discussion on talking to the Wiyot Tribe about having Wiyot names in the Gateway area.
Starts at about 2 hours 41 minutes.
Discussion of no street-facing garages
Starts at about 2 hours 27 minutes on the video
The full discussion on the Gateway Code.
Starts at around 1 hour 29 minutes.
Tap / click here for more than two dozen articles about the Gateway Code.