“Somewhere, over the rainbow, skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.”

There has been no economic Analysis of Gateway construction — even though the Commissioners have requested this.

In June, 2023, Planning Commission Chair Scott Davies asked for an economic analysis about cost feasibility — what it would take to build in the Gateway area.

Community Development Directory David Loya said that an economic analysis would be ready by Fall-Winter 2023. Director Loya said “In terms of what we’re evaluating for adopting, we would have that analysis complete by that time.”

See the transcript of this and the two-minute video clip of this, below.

Chair Davis had brought up this issue of an economic analysis at a Planning Commission meeting two months earlier. “Well, another piece of information that was going to help inform this moving forward that we already have scheduled for our discussions is the economic calculator that’s going to give us an assessment of what the relative costs are for each of these individual community benefits, and therefore their impact on the viability or build ability of projects.”

The financial analysis never happened. In subsequent Planning Commission meetings, this has not  been brought up. In terms of the economic feasibility of building 5, 6, or 7-story buildings in the Gateway are, the Planning Commissioners have been flying blind.

At one point, the Planning Commission wanted experts to come in to address the Commission and have a dialogue — answer questions, provide their views. Other than the testimony from the Arcata Fire District, this never happened.

It’s been almost 2-1/2 years. What got lost? Lots!

Over the course of the past 28 months, there’ve been lots and lots of topics that the Planning Commission specifically said that they wanted to discuss, or wanted information on. The Community Development Director took notes and made promises. But somehow so many of these topics got lost in the shuffle, lost in the wilderness, or just removed from the table — without discussion, and without protest.

Here are some areas of Planning Commission interest that seem to have vanished

This is not a complete list — not at all. Just some.

1. What happened to the notion that place names in the Gateway area might have some Wiyot language names?
2. Or how the desire for a meeting between the Planning Commissioners and people from the Creamery district — businesses, artists, landowners, and the public — was hijacked by the Community Development Director — resulting in close to half of the people there simply walking out. The Planning Commission did not get the information they had requested.
3. Do the Commissioners remember the “Concerns and Solutions” exercise that took place over three full meetings? That was on October 11, October 25, and November 8, 2022. You can see the three iterations of the “Concerns and Solutions” table here. The outside experts that that the Planning Commission specifically wanted to hear from were removed from this document by Director Loya. He replaced the column of experts Planning Commission had requested with Staff names.

   For example, for “Fire services for taller buildings (equipment, staffing, street widths, Arcata versus CPH needs, etc.)” which in the first version had “Fire Chief” listed as the expert, in Version #2 it says “David” as the expert. 

   For “Affordability of residents to obtain housing for a range of incomes (rental)” and “Ability of residents to obtain equity of new housing (ownership opportunities)” — it had “Housing and developer experts.” The Planning Commissioners had requested many times that they wanted to bring in outside developers as an expert source in the actual building of housing. This was never done. Instead, on Version #2 of this “Concerns and Solutions document, we see “David / Jen” listed as the so-called experts.

4. Perhaps the Commissioners with good memories will remember the “Other Considerations Table” that got shorter and shorter, even though items weren’t actually discussed. As Director Loya put it, “And what we’ve done here at the staff level, as we had mentioned in the staff report, is that, based on conversations that you’ve had previously, we’ve inserted what we expect you’re going to say, as a Commission — that you concur with staff on this issue, for example.”
5. Oh, there’s lots and lots and lots more. There are not literally “one thousand and one” topics that got lost in the wilderness, but it sure feels that way.

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How Economic Analysis was specifically requested

From the June 13, 2023, Planning Commission meeting. This is the transcription of two minutes of the meeting. Click / tap here for the video.

Scott Davies – Planning Commission Chair
“A quick question about the economic analysis. At what point in our review of this Gateway Code will we be able to overlay the economic analysis about cost feasibility?“

David Loya – Arcata Community Development Director

“Yeah, that’s a great question. We’re doing a couple of different things to try and address that one.

As you’re aware, we’re working with the Terner Center Housing Policy to develop a probabilistic model to evaluate the various policy decisions that we’re making. And so we’ve talked about that a little bit before. I won’t go into detail on that.

And then we also discussed with the consultants today, the architects who work with a economist quite frequently on projects like this to evaluate the codes that they’re preparing, or the the buildings that they’re preparing. And so we’re talking about a conversation where we could develop contracts with them to do more specific analysis on the Gateway area, looking at these standards that we’ve established, and then also to look at the community benefits program.

So to answer your question directly, when is that going to happen? I don’t know.

But my my hope is that we’ll we’ll have more information on that in the next month, and I’ll be able to give you a more of a definite answer. We have a couple of other options for how we can go through this process.

But certainly before this Fall-Winter [2023] when we’re starting to really evaluate the Environmental Impact Report.

And a lot of the legwork is behind us in terms of what we’re evaluating for adopting, we would have that analysis complete by that time.”

The conversation continued with comments from Commissioner Dan Tangney:

“What you just stated about the architect pointing out that step backs might make some projects cost-prohibitive. And, you know, we’ve been discussing step backs for such a long time. The sooner that information comes to us, the better, obviously, but I guess that’s why we’re considering this a draft.

And we’ll we’ll come back to those issues as the reality of these architectural reviews and cost analysis come to us.”

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Video clip from the meeting

Starts out with the 2-minute section with the question from Chair Davies and the response from Director Loya. The video then continues with further comments from Commissioner Tangney and Simmons, and more input from Director Loya.