GA‐3a. New Units.

 

Plan for an approximate maximum of 3,500 [revised]

 

Plan for approximately 500 new residential units in the Gateway Area in the next 20 years….

Are you looking for clarity about how much housing and what kinds of housing might come out of the Gateway Area Plan? Unfortunately, looking at the draft Gateway Area Plan is not going to help.

Will it be 500 apartments built over a 20 years period? That’s an average of just 25 apartments per year — hardly enough to alleviate Arcata’s housing issues. Or is it 3,500 apartments constructed over, perhaps, 50 years? That probably wouldn’t help much either.

The language of the draft Gateway Plan is vague, with figures over a wide range, and with aspirations mixed in with little bits of reality here and there.

Let’s look at what the draft plan actually says.

Policy Chapter 3: Housing

The current (July 11, 2023) draft of the Gateway Area Plan is 118 pages, the current Gateway Form-Based Code document is 58 pages, and there are other ancillary documents such as the “Gateway Code Available Community Benefits” that might add up to a dozen pages.

The chapter on Housing Policies is just one and a half pages long. That’s all.

It starts out:

The City aims to accommodate up to 3,500 new residential units in the Gateway Area, provided primarily through high‐density multifamily, townhouses, lofts, work‐live units, quads, small space clustered units, and mixed‐use development. New housing will feature a range of unit sizes, a mix of renter and owner‐occupied units, and housing choices available for students and lower‐income households.

And the very first policy, two paragraphs later, says:

GA‐3a. New Units. Plan for approximately 500 new residential units in the Gateway Area in the next 20 years, recognizing the full buildout potential in the Area is close to 3,500 units, as shown in Table 5.

Table 5 is on Page 45. It has the “target dwelling units” figures for each of the four Gateway districts. In sum, it adds up to 3,500 units.

As the Community Development Director puts it, as explained in the City’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page:

“To get to 3,500 new units in reality would mean that every vacant and underutilized parcel in the Area is redeveloped to the maximum capacity of units allowed under currently proposed development standards (height, setbacks, residential densities, etc.).”

“This level of redevelopment required to achieve 3,500 new residential units in the Gateway Area is highly unlikely. The buildout figure of 3,500 units represents a decision to zone each parcel in the Gateway Area for maximum housing creation opportunities, understanding that many of these opportunities will be infeasible due to various constraints such as market forces, financial considerations, and individual landowner decisions. Many of the parcels within the Area will not be able to be redeveloped at all — much less to maximum capacity.”

We are told that this 3,500 figure is “a mathematical possibility” based — perhaps — upon taking the total number of acres of the “opportunity zones” and multiplying that by an expected density of housing, as “units per acre.” This is explained to some extent on Pages 38-40. The table on those pages come up with “Total collective potential residential units” of “approximately 1,000 to 3,000+” units.

However the acres listed for those properties in that table do not take into account areas that cannot be built because of environmental considerations. The Opportunity Sites pages are in the “Vision” chapter. The “Open Space and Conservation” chapter [Page 58] shows the areas that are considered as needing to be preserved as undeveloped land for environmental reasons. For more details see 138 acres of Gateway: What is actually buildable?

When we remove the environmentally protected areas, we go from “approximately 1,000 to 3,000+” to about 750 to 2300 units. And if the Barrel District can’t be built on, we’re down to 750 to 1000 units total — over the entire life of the plan.

A full built-out on the “opportunity zones” would involve tearing down and removing:

• The entire Tomas Building / Open Door Clinic and Montessori School gardens, at 8th & L
• The industrial buildings where Wing Inflatable is — that industrial area along Samoa Boulevard within the Coastal Zone, and most susceptible to sea level rise and groundwater issues
• Bud’s Mini-storage on K Street and Arcata Mini-storage on M Street
• The car wash
• The AmeriGas site
• The Arcata Trailer Court
• and more.

The Barrel District is scheduled for up to 1,300 apartment units — in an area under Coastal Commission jurisdiction, with soft soils that may be economically infeasible to build large structures on. And, of course, subject to sea level rise considerations.

What does the draft Gateway Area Plan say?

Here are the quoted passages from the actual draft Plan:

• GA‐3a. New Units. Plan for approximately 500 new residential units in the Gateway Area in the next 20 years, recognizing the full buildout potential in the Area is close to 3,500 units, as shown in Table 5. [Policy Chapter 3: Housing, Page 52]
• The Gateway Area provides a substantial solution to the City’s unmet and future housing needs, with thousands of housing units that are environmentally sustainable and affordable to people in all income ranges. Residents live within a broad range of housing densities and types, including rental and owner‐occupied options, in a vibrant, walkable, near‐downtown neighborhood. [Gateway Area At-A-Glance, the opening page of the document]
• Plan for up to 3,500 new residential units with the Gateway Area that are available to a wide range of income levels and that include a balance of renters and owners. [Guiding Principle 1, Page 27]
• The City aims to accommodate up to 3,500 new residential units in the Gateway Area…. [Policy Chapter 3: Housing, Page 52]
• Ultimately, the new circulation system must accommodate up to 3,500 new residential units…. [Policy Chapter 7: Mobility, Page 66]
• The Plan Area’s overall infrastructure systems must be sufficient to accommodate the types and amount of planned growth, including up to 3,500 new residential units and new commercial businesses. [Policy Chapter 11: Infrastructure, Page 108]

What might happen?

In today’s economic climate, with very high costs of construction, it becomes difficult to build any kind of housing at a cost that will wind up being affordable to the resident, whether owner or renter. See: OLLI Presentation: The Affordable Housing Challenge – December 12, 2022 and other articles on affordable housing for Arcata, here.

The exceptions are subsidized 100% affordable housing, such as Sorrel Place at 7th between I and J, and dormitory buildings, paid for from the deep pockets of the university.

If it were economical to build housing, then developers would already be doing it. They wouldn’t need the Gateway Area Plan in place in order to build.

The simple explanation is that the costs of construction are so high that the future income generated by rents is not sufficient to cover the costs and include a profit. It is unlikely that this situation is going to change soon, Gateway or no Gateway.

The Gateway Area Plan has good intentions and perhaps well-meaning aspirations. But  as to building “thousands of housing units that are environmentally sustainable and affordable to people in all income ranges”? I don’t think that is in the cards. Neither the thousands of units nor the affordable to people in all income ranges parts.

And after all this work of developing the Gateway Plan, it is quite possible that very little Gateway housing will be built over the next five or ten years.