There is a Minimum, and there is a Maximum

Here is the current Gateway Code table that specifies parking for all new construction in the Gateway Area.

For residential uses, the minimum number of parking spaces required is Zero. That is, if a developer wants to build a 50-unit apartment building, there can be no parking spaces for those tenants. (There will be at least one ADA handicapped space required.)

So if a developer wants to provide no parking to the tenants, that is okay by this code. It may not be okay when it comes time to actually rent out those apartments, and it may not be okay with the bank that’s putting up the money, but that’s another story.

But more troublesome is that there is also a maximum number of parking spaces that is allowed by this code. And that maximum is either one parking space for every 4 apartment units in the Hub and Corridor districts or one space for every 2 apartment units in the Barrel or Neighborhood Districts.

Examples of how this would work (or not work)

Let’s look at some scenarios for the main central districts of the Gateway Area, the Gateway Hub district and the Gateway Corridor district. Let’s say a developer wants to build one of the following:

• 100 studio and one-bedroom apartments, with an average size of 400 square feet. This would be a building about the size of the recently-built Sorrel Place, on 7th Street. Potentially there’d be around 150 adult-age people living there. By this code, there could be zero parking there. Or there would be a maximum of 25 spaces for those 150 driving-age persons. That is one parking space for every 6 tenants.
• A building with 24 two-bedroom apartments — conceivably over 48 people of driving age living there. Again, there could be no parking at all — zero. There would be a maximum of just 6 parking spaces allowed by this code. That is one parking space for every eight tenants.
• A restaurant. Let’s say the size of Dead Reckoning, on J Street, or the Sushi Spot, or Campground on 9th Street, or Japhy’s in Northtown. A restaurant in a 1,000 square foot space might have seats for 35 or 40 diners and require a staff of six. That restaurant could be built with no parking at all. Or it could have a maximum of ONE space! (The code maximum is 1 space per 1,000 square feet.)

Without a place to park, will people say good-bye to their cars? Or will they try finding a place to park on the street. Well, that’s a problem too. In the effort of planning bulb-outs for safer pedestrian crossings and making bike lanes separated from traffic, the amount of on-street parking has been severely reduced. Overall in the Gateway area, the on-street parking will be an estimated 50% of what it is now. In some blocks, we’ll see on-street parking of less than 25% of current amounts.  The current proposal is to eliminate all parking on both sides of K Street — and so on those blocks there will be 0% of what’s there now. See Gateway Street Parking: Why it will be inadequate on Arcata1.com.

As a principal of one of the largest local builders wrote to Community Development Director David Loya:

“I am in favor of encouraging people to use cars less, but ‘encouraging’ in this sense means providing not enough parking, so that people are essentially blocked from owning a car. Again, top down social engineering. You may encourage away, but you need to stop using that word when you mean denying people a choice.”

Given all this, what will happen? Basically, a mess. Tenants in the Gateway area will attempt to park their cars in adjacent neighborhoods to the east and west. People with children or with jobs where public transit is impractical – and older people whose bicycling days are in the past — simply will not be able to live in the Gateway area.

And thus the Gateway zone will have become exclusionary, with practices that in effect eliminate large sectors of our population. People are essentially discriminated against, for what is considered as the greater good for Arcata as a whole.

The financial lenders and the developers themselves are unlikely to accept this

In his July 11, 2023, presentation to the Planning Commission, the Urban Field Studio architect and planner Ryan Call pointed out that the financial lender on these new apartments is going to have a vested interest in seeing that the apartments will be rented. The lender may have their own ideas about what it takes to have a project be economically secure, and that may include more parking. As Ryan Call said:

“And a part of this is speculation, but I am trying to create a somewhat more reality-based set of constraints. And so if a bank is financing the construction of an apartment building, they will want to see at least some level of parking provided to ensure that there is a very strong value in their development.”

For more on this, go to Gateway Density and Feasibility Study – Code Site Tests here on Arcata1.com. That link will take you right to the section on bank financing and parking.

For the developers themselves, they also might not want to construct a project with what they may see as a too small amount of parking. Even if the cost of the parking is unbundled from the rent, that might not be enough of an incentive to keep those apartments filled and rented. (“Unbundled” means that a tenant is not charged for a parking spot that he or she is not using. As a fictitious example, the rent of a one-bedroom apartment might be $1,500 a month with no parking, or $1,600 with a guaranteed space.)

For a parent or parent with children or an older person or a person with a disability, or just a tenant who does not want to walk in the rain — the prospect of looking for a parking space that is 3 or 4 or 5 blocks away may not be the way they choose to live.

Developers do not have to build under the terms of the Gateway code

The idea of the Gateway Form-Based Code and the Community Benefits Program is that a developer’s project would be “streamlined” if the developer met all the rules. That is, the project would be guaranteed a quick and successful passage through the approval process. But the developer’s project does have to conform to all the rules.

Or the developer could go through a more standard route, and present the project to the Planning Commission for their non-Gateway-Code approval. 

It is not necessarily the case that a non-Gateway-Code project would take longer for approval. If the project is designed to be in alignment with what an architect knows to be what we want to be seeing for housing here in Arcata, it will pass quickly.

As an example, the Valley East Loft project, designed by local architect Julian Berg, came before the Planning Commission on December 13, 2022, last year. From the time of the staff report to the time of approval was just 31 minutes.

If a developer does not care for this parking maximum of just one parking space for every four apartment units, the developer can just bypass the Gateway Code and go through a standard approval process. And it’s my guess that’s exactly what they will do.

What look like good intentions may be thwarted

And so it may be, despite what they regard as good intentions by many people, that our desires for fewer parking spaces will simply not pan out.

The designers of the Gateway Plan have a wish. They wish that cars would go away. 

In time, cars will go away. In the meantime, however, here on the Northcoast we rely on our cars. Whether they are electric cars, hybrids, or hydrocarbon-burning, our cars and trucks take us where we want to go. 

In an idealized world, or an idealized version of Arcata, we will rely on our cars less. We will walk, bike, travel by e-bike, and take buses and jitneys as part of our regular transit. And at some point in the future, there will be robotic pods that will come quickly to transport us, after being called for on our smartphone-equivalent devices.

But in the meantime, we own cars. And even if we can expand our public transit to have buses every 10 or 15 minutes, and even if a super-majority of government workers, teachers, hospital employees, and the future wind-farm crew all uses the bus to get to work, my guess is that sitting at their homes there will be a car.

There is a theory that if through the actions of government it becomes more difficult for people to drive anywhere, then people will drive less. That is, if it’s harder or more expensive to park. If the roads are more congested or the speed limits are slower. If there’s great public transportation, and it’s less expensive to travel by bus for daily errands than it would be to drive — Then people will drive less. 

To some extent (not completely), I can see the point of that belief. But even if people drive less on an annual basis, they likely will still want to own a car. And that car has to be parked somewhere.