Estimated Reading time: 6-8 minutes — or longer.

New:   Transcripts of the hand-written comments from the public. New article, here.

To skip directly to:
“Votes” on the Community Benefits   Here.
Photos of the Community Benefits posters   Click or press here.
Written Comments submitted at the meeting, here — or transcribed and typed out here
The Community Benefits Program, here

if you were at the meeting and want to add to this article, please contact me — fred @ arcata1.com.

— September 25, 2023

Last night’s Gateway Open House meeting at the D Street Neighborhood Center was a minor success. Despite being held with just 2-1/2 weeks’ notice and on a date that ignored a major religious holiday — and on a weekday late-afternoon, meaning that it was largely inaccessible to community members with regular jobs and people with a child or children — there was a good turnout. Over the 4 PM to 6 PM time of the two-hour drop-in meeting, an estimated 60 people attended.

A large “thank you” to the Community Development Department staff for putting this meeting together. I say: Let’s have more community meetings.

“Why doesn’t the City have these meetings?”

The Arcata Community Development Department has been criticized for their disregard of having a meeting where the concerns of the public might be openly heard. At one of the community-led meeting that take place once a month at the Arcata Playhouse (next meeting is Tuesday, October 3rd — see here), an Arcata citizen posed the question: “Why doesn’t the City have these meetings?”

We strongly encourage the City to hold more of these open house meetings on a regular — monthly — continuous basis. And additional open house meetings where people can engage in group-wide open discussion. Yes, it is considerable work to arrange for a meeting like this — we understand that. But the benefit to the community is enormous.

What the meeting was

• An opportunity to meet with other members of the community and discuss among ourselves a variety of concerns and issues about the Gateway Area Plan and the various housing issues we face here in Arcata, and more.
• The opportunity to personally meet with Community Development Director David Loya and other members of the Community Development staff, to ask specific questions — and, hopefully, get some realistic answers.
• To learn more about the current status and the inner workings of the Gateway Area Plan.
• To provide some feedback — in the form of written comments and green sticky-dot “voting” — on some of the current issues.

• In theory, to perhaps meet with our City Councilmembers and Planning Commissioners.

  Coming to this meeting were Councilmember Kimberley White, shown above, and Councilmember Alex Stillman (briefly at the start of the meeting to see the room and the displays, and who, of course, is by law recused from Council discussion or vote on Gateway matters). In addition, City Manager Karen Diemer was present and engaged in conversation for an early portion of the meeting.

What the meeting wasn’t

• It was not an open forum for discussion. The Community Development Director met and spoke with small groups of 1 or 2 or 3 individual community members at a time. There are big, important topics of concern to our community, such as: Anticipated rent prices of these new Gateway apartments, or on how many apartments might get built, or the State laws that may have all of our carefully-constructed plans and ideas completely upended. What was discussed within the small groups that David Loya spoke with — those discussions are lost to the rest of us. I met with community members who told me of the great discussions they’d had with David Loya — and now no one else in our community is privy to. A series of actual open form meetings –– or moderated or panel discussions — would go a long way toward a community understanding of what is going on with the Gateway Area Plan and the City’s quest for quality housing.

What the meeting was, continued

A series of posters were taped to the walls around the room. The general theme was the Gateway Code (the form-based code that governs the look and feel of the construction in the Gateway area) and the Community Benefits Program. The majority of the posters on display were meant only to be read, for our education. The Community Benefits Program posters were there for us to put our green sticky-dot “votes” onto. While it was not announced, some participants wrote their notes right on the posters.

So that an individual person wouldn’t have an unlimited number of votes, each participant was given the same number of eight green sticky-dots. A person was free to put eight dots on a single subject, or three here and five there, or spread out the dots with a single “vote” on eight different topics.

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What are the Community Benefits?

Almost all of the specific items of the Community Benefits Program sound great — on paper, at least. That is, if we don’t have to consider the cost or how they might be paid for, then, sure, great! We’ll take all of them.

Community Benefits include:

There are disputes about whether “Category 7: Building Amenities for Residents” are really a benefit for the community, or are more accurately amenities and enticements strictly for the advantage of the residents of a building. These listed benefits include free wi-fi, free exercise room, a common room or computer room, acoustical sound barrier between apartment units. Nothing is free, of course — these “free” features are essentially wrapped into the rent cost.

Some community benefits have great apparent value to Arcata, and others are iffy. Some can be easily measured and others are more vague.

What got the most “votes” ?

In terms of the green sticky-dot “vote” count, the leaders were these. As has come up repeatedly at City-sponsored “voting” activities, Home Ownership is at the top of the list. See Arcata speaks: Home Ownership is of supreme importance from August 2022 and articles on home ownership in general on Arcata1.com here and affordability and home ownership here.

From the agenda packet, pages 204-205, for the September 26 joint study session, with just the top ten “votes.” Plus demographic information.

What wasn’t clear and what wasn’t discussed

Attendees I spoke with seemed perplexed about what they were looking at on these posters. What wasn’t clear: What exactly were we voting on?

Many of the Community Benefits sound fantastic — if you don’t have to worry about how they are going to be paid for, or what’s the feasibility that they might be achieved.

It seemed that people thought they were voting on which of the Community Benefits they wanted to see. They did not seem to understand that this was a program — an arrangement for the developers to provide benefits to the City, in exchange for being allowed to build 4, 5, 6, and 7-story buildings. It is good to see what is important to people here in Arcata. What attendees perhaps did not understand is that this is an aspirational or desired list — not a realistic, “we’ll be seeing this” list.

There’s more there if you look at the details

The Community Benefit called “Special Needs Housing” awards 3 to 6 points for the creation of “purpose-built housing to serve one or more of the following special-needs populations” and then proceeds to list: Persons experiencing homelessness; persons 55 years of age or older; artists; students; and the mobility impaired.

This was a popular item, with 15 green sticky-dot “votes.” Sounds good, doesn’t it?  “Special Needs Housing.” 

Reading the details, it awards the same points for the creation of student housing as it does for mobility-impaired housing, senior housing, and housing for the homeless. Does the creation of student housing really need to have points awarded to the developer?  Does student housing qualify as “special needs housing”? I don’t think it does.

[What qualifies as student housing is in the footnote:  “Student housing means the project provides group living accommodations (e.g., dormitories) for students who do not live together as a household. Group living accommodations provide shared living quarters without separate kitchen or bathroom facilities for each room or unit.” By this definition, four bedrooms clustered around a kitchen would qualify.]

What do the points signify?

The Community Benefits Program is a system by which developers are offered “points” for providing benefits to the community. In order to build to 4 or 5 or 6 stories, the developer has to accumulate 10, 15, or 20 points.

In my view, it is way too easy to accumulate points through Community Benefits that have a relatively low cost to the developer — while the benefits that the community wants, such as home-ownership are both difficult to achieve and are offered with very few points (just 4).

Each listed community benefit has a number of points assigned to it — in the current proposal, from 1 to 9 points. If a developer needed, say, 20 points to get the rights for a streamlined six-story building, those points would have to be assembled by adding up an assortment of individual community benefits.

For more on this, see The Gateway Community Benefits program — Details of the “points” proposal.

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The Photos

Community Benefits, Category 1: Housing Creation

Community Benefits, Category 2: Arts and Culture / Beautification

Community Benefits, Category 3: Open Space and Recreation
(Original photo from City of Arcata)

Community Benefits, Category 4: Green Building, Sustainability, and Resilience
(Original photo from City of Arcata)

Community Benefits, Category 5: Transportation & Mobility
(Original photo from City of Arcata)

Community Benefits, Category 6: Enhanced Architectural Features and Exterior Design
(Original photo from City of Arcata)
Community Benefits, Category 7: Building Amenities for Residents
(Original photo from City of Arcata)
Community Benefits, Category 8:  Economic Development and Job Creation
(Original photo from City of Arcata)

Comment says:  Set back for all sides. 20 feet front, 10 feet sides.

Gateway Area Building Massing: 3D GIS
(Original photo from City of Arcata)

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Written Comments submitted at the meeting

New article:  Transcriptions of the hand-written comments from the public.

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The Community Benefits Program

For a more complete article with further explanation of this program, see The Gateway Community Benefits program — Details of the “points” proposal

As of June 13, 2023