This page will be updated for the new meetings — Come back for more info.
Community-Led Meetings
Next meeting:
Tuesday, December 12th
No meeting in December
See you next year!
The only day we could book the room at the Arcata Playhouse was December 12th.
There’s a Planning Commission meeting on that day. Come to the Planning Commission meeting if you want! The agenda will be posted on Friday, December 8th on Arcata’s Meetings Calendar page.
at the Arcata Playhouse 5:20 to 7:00 PM
Will your neighborhood be up-zoned to allow 4-story apartments?
Actual Affordable Housing ★ Home ownership
★ Reduce Massing on taller buildings ★
★ Parking issues ★ Parks and Open Space ★ Safer Streets for pedestrians and cyclists
… and more
There will be a question/answer period and a discussion of opportunities for you to become involved in Arcata’s future.
The meetings are generally the first Tuesday of every month but will be irregular during the holiday period. Next dates are:
Tuesday, December 12th in 2024.
To print out flyers for this meeting
Want to spread the word? Download a flyer that you can print out, post around Arcata, or give to your friends.
- The full flyer – 8-1/2 x 11 as a PDF. Community-Meeting-11-09-2023 PDF Download
The PDF version will be a little more sharp than the JPG image version. - The full flyer – 8-1/2 x 11 as a JPG. Community Meeting 11-09-2023 JPG Download
- The “micro” version to hand out. 4-1/2″ x 3-1/4″, pocket size Put on a counter for people to pick up, or stable 20 of them to a flyer that you’re posting and readers can tear one off and take it home. Community flyer-Nov-12-6-up-MICRO Download
Background: The Gateway Plan, The L Street Linear Park
- What is the Gateway Area Plan? A brief introduction
- The L Street Pathway and the L Street Linear Park
A selection of articles, maps, aerial images, and opinions on the L Street Corridor Linear Park and the proposal for and against the K-L Street couplet. - ArcataLinearPark.org A walking “woonerf” linear park for the L Street pathway
Learn more about the Petition to eliminate the K-L Street couplet and to establish a walking, cycling, strolling linear park on the L Street corridor. Over 780 signatures so far. - The Gateway plan: Getting Started
Videos and articles to help you get started. Includes a 4-minute intro video, Andrea Tuttle’s excellent letter from February 2022, aerial views, maps, and other sources of information. - Facebook: Arcata Gateway District Community
517 members. Learn more about the Gateway Area Plan. Comments, feedback, and information from members of our community.
- To learn more about the Gateway Area Plan
Arcata1 home page Arcata1.com: Newest Articles
For your comments, questions, and concerns about the Gateway Area Plan, you contact or call Fred Weis fred @ arcata1.com 707 – 822 – 4400.
★ New: Implementation Measures in the draft General Plan allow apartments, restaurants, and stores in Arcata’s existing residential neighborhoods — 4-stories tall, possibly 6-stories.
★ Creating a people-friendly L Street linear Park.
★ Actual Affordable Housing ★ Home ownership opportunities?
★ Reduce Massing on taller buildings ★ Parking issues
★ Safer Streets for pedestrians and cyclists
… and more — keep reading!
There will be a discussion of the issues and ways for you to become involved in Arcata’s future. Next meeting after this one: Tuesday, December 12th.
The Gateway Area Plan affects EVERYONE in Arcata. Please come to learn more how the Gateway Plan will affect you – and how you can help make this plan better.
1. General Plan draft includes “Implementation Measures” for upzoning Bayview, Northtown (including upper I and J Streets) and Sunset neighborhoods to Residential High Density.
Residential High Density zoning allows 4-story buildings and “local-serving commercial uses such as corner grocery stores and coffee shops.” Arcata is removing minimum parking requirements, so these new apartments, restaurants, and stores would be allowed to have zero parking. Could an existing home be converted to a store, hair salon, or restaurant? Yes.
Implementation Measures are not set by the passage of the new General Plan, but are directions that the City wants to pursue, in this case within two years after the new General Plan is adopted. It would be discussed before being enacted, but my feeling is that it shouldn’t be there as an Implementation Measure at all. The implications are far-reaching and the citizens of Arcata are not adequately informed.
California State density bonus law allows taller and more dense construction if a portion (10% or 20%, say) of the apartments are devoted to low-income rents — and also if those apartments are designated for seniors or for college students. Where Arcata’s zoning allows 4-stories, this can result in 5-story and possibly 6-story buildings. For more on the density bonus law and what density looks like, see here on Arcata1.com.
How to accomodate the needs of a growing population in a university setting is a problem faced by other communities — often with not-so-pleasant results. Opening the zoning to putting tall apartments within established neighborhoods typically has bad consequences. There are alternatives to wholesale widespread upzoning.
To read more on this, click here for to Will Arcata’s Neighborhoods Be Re-Zoned?
2. The Council committed to a Full-width Linear Park in the L Street Corridor
In accordance with the wishes of Arcata’s own Transportation Safety Committee, plus many, many people in Arcata (a petition has over 1,000 signatures), the Council agreed that this is in the best interests of our future. The Gateway draft’s proposal of putting in a new road in the L Street corridor has been eliminated. The existing L Street pathway will be improved and 10-blocks of an almost car-free linear park will be created. There will be a 3-1/2 or 4-block length of a pedestrian-priority “woonerf” (click for more info) to provide driveway access for existing business, apartments and homes. K Street will see improvements for pedestrians, cyclists, and overall safety.
This is a big win for common sense, good design, and better planning for Arcata.
3. The City Council held two joint study sessions with the Planning Commission on the Gateway Area Plan
The August 22nd pre-meeting statements and meeting resulted in the decision on Arcata creating a full-width linear park on L Street. The takeaways from the September 26th meeting were more subtle but still quite clear.
- Four-story to six-story buildings (maximum) in the Hub, Corridor, and Neighborhood districts of the Gateway area. Seven-story buildings (maximum) in the Barrel district, based on approval of a master plan for the Barrel district. The conversation among the councilmembers and commissioners involved a new larger appreciation of “not just building height or dwelling unit density alone, but must address design standards to promote livability.”
- The Community Benefits Program needs a big revision, to make it more attractive to developers while still giving us the community benefits that are crucial to the success of the Plan.
- Very importantly, recognition that the Gateway’s approach to inclusionary zoning — designed to promote affordable housing — needs to be discussed and reviewed. In its current form, the Gateway Area Plan does not provide affordable housing for regular working people. In essence, the Council and the Planning Commission agreed that considerable more thought needs to take place in order to make the Gateway Area Plan achieve the stated goal: “To make housing in the Gateway Area affordable to the full range of Arcatan household incomes.”
4. The City held a small Gateway open house on September 25th.
See the photos and a synopsis here. Despite being held with short 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 to 6 p.m. drop-in meeting, an estimated 50-60 people attended. It 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. And an opportunity to meet with City staff, and add written comments and “voting” as part of the public input.
We strongly encourage the City to hold more of these open house meetings on a regular — monthly — continuous basis. If there are other open-house meetings, you are encouraged to come. We will continue to request an event similar to the January, 2022, open house meeting from 20 months ago.
What’s ahead:
- Community-Led Meeting
Thursday, November 9th. - Subsequent Community-Led Meeting
Tuesday, December 12th. - City Council / Planning Commission joint study sessions
The joint study sessions have been effective.
With continued requests from the public, there will be more joint study sessions in the first months of 2024. - Planning Commission meetings
2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month
November 14, 28, December 12
I believe we can have new dense housing and still preserve what is great about Arcata. The decision to create the linear park in the L Street Corridor — in the heart of the Gateway area — reinforces that. Let’s work together and keep our jewel alive as our town grows into the future.
Cheers to all —
— Fred Weis
If you want to discuss your ideas, please write or call me. [email protected] or 707-822-4400
What is the Gateway Area Plan?
The Gateway Area Plan is a long-range plan that’s being developed by the City of Arcata with the expressed purpose of adding housing to areas near downtown.
The original proposal was for buildings with height limits of five to eight stories, based on the “district” or area. The June 2023 current proposal is for seven stories maximum.
The plan includes having K Street be changed to be one-lane one-way going north, from Samoa Boulevard to Alliance Road. And developing what is called “L Street” (which is not currently a through road) into a one-lane one-way street going south, from Alliance to Samoa. This design puts a truck route right alongside the Creamery Building, in the heart of the Creamery District. While technically the current pathway would survive, the serenity and pleasantness of the current pathway would be ruined by cars and trucks rolling by, just six feet from the pathway. For more info on the L Street “couplet” issue, see L Street – Proposed design does not fit and The Street Linear Park – Overview here on Arcata1.com.
The plan has been worked on in concept for several years, with the first draft made public in December 2021, about a year and a half ago and an updated draft in October 2022. That recent draft can be seen here.
To learn more about the Gateway Area Plan
You can poke around here on Arcata1.com, and follow your interests to explore the over 300 articles on this website. There are articles on the practicality of the plan (it’s not very feasible) and on the political headaches; on the lack of playgrounds and parks; on the complete destruction of what we now enjoy as the L Street Pathway; and — most importantly — on the lack of the ability to create housing that people of Arcata can afford to live in or purchase.
Unfortunately, so much of the Gateway Area Plan is presented as technical, obscure information that is not easy to access and understand. It’s my opinion that is done on purpose — to keep people such as yourself away from the decisions that are being made — decisions that affect you.
Please do feel free to write if you have any questions or wish to discuss any of these matters. And if you have suggestions for what you’d like to see added to Arcata1.com.
For your comments, questions, and concerns about the Gateway Area Plan, you contact or call Fred Weis fred @ arcata1.com 707 – 822 – 4400.
Do you want to see 4-story buildings – and potentially up to 6-story buildings, too — in Arcata’s established residential neighborhoods of Bayview, Northtown/upper I and J Streets, and Sunset? I don’t.
How about “local-serving commercial uses such as corner grocery stores and coffee shops” there as well? And with zero parking required for these new apartments and stores and restaurants.
Could an existing home be converted to a store, hair salon, or restaurant? Yes. Re-zoning these neighborhoods to High Density, as proposed in the current working draft of Arcata’s General Plan update, could start a free-for-all of new student-oriented commercial businesses in existing homes. If the “Implementation Measures” in this draft General Plan go through, all those neighborhoods would be susceptible. Particularly affected would be areas closest to Cal Poly: Upper G, H, and I Streets near the footbridge; Sunset to the south of the new Craftsman Mall dorms; and in Bayview adjacent to campus from Union to D Streets, from 11th to 14th. But apartments and commercial uses could take place in any part of those neighborhoods.
Arcata has been working its way through an update of the City’s “General Plan” – the guiding document that, to use the official language, “shapes how the city of Arcata will look, function, provide services, and manage resources for the next 20 years.” The development of the last General Plan, done in 2000, involved dozens of citizens assembled into task forces, who then created the first draft of the General Plan. By contrast, this current update was initiated from City staff and consultants – a “top-down” approach that doesn’t always represent what’s good for the people of Arcata.
As it is, there are only a handful of known parcels in the residential areas where this kind of concentrated housing could take place. But if a house in the Bayview neighborhood were to burn down (we hope not!), it could be replaced with a 3-story or possibly 4-story apartment building – and with no allotted parking for its residents. Two adjacent house parcels could yield a 4- or 5-story building. We like to think of Arcata as a small town, but this kind of “replace houses with apartment buildings” development occurs in growing towns all over. The results are usually pretty awful.
The Implementation Measures for upzoning large areas to Residential High Density with commercial uses was snuck into the new draft General Plan. There would be further discussion before it would be enacted. But I don’t think the potential of making Arcata’s neighborhoods into 4-story (and up to 6-story) apartments belongs there at all.
To learn more about this and Arcata Gateway matters, please come to the monthly Community-Led meetings that take place at the Arcata Playhouse in the Creamery building. The next meeting is Thursday (tomorrow), November 9th, from 5:20 to 7:00 PM.
For more information on Gateway and General Plan developments, see the Arcata1.com special portal page for Mad River Union
Fred Weis
Arcata