Arcata’s Annual State of the City Event Unveiled Billion-Dollar Land Bridge Project and Other Ambitious Developments Plans for the Future

FUTURE VISION City Manager Karen Diemer with a slide depicting the concept behind Reconnecting Arcata. [KLH | Union]

Article courtesy of the Mad River Union:

Arcata’s annual State of the City event at the Minor Theatre is part performance review and part progress report, but principally a pageant for the powers-that-be to put a positive spin and to some extent, their personal imprimatur on the city’s forward progress in turbulent times. 

And it was not without surprises – a new, Cal Poly-operated store and café for Craftsman-area residents and students, a $25 million pair of roundabouts for the odious Sunset/L.K. Wood/101 interchange, closure of the Plaza to vehicular traffic during the Farmers’ Market and most audaciously, a billion-plus dollar, multi-acre land bridge – essentially a whole new neighborhood – created on a massive platform installed over the freeway between the university and Arcata Heights.

Subtler excitations were to be had in more routine but nonetheless positive initiatives.

SHAPELY SOLUTION A conceptual overview of the double roundabouts now in planning for the problematic, deeply unloved intersection of U.S. Highway 101, Sunset Avenue and L.K. Wood Boulevard. GHD engineering image via City of Arcata

Put on by the Chamber of Commerce and sponsored by the Minor Theatre and Redwood Capital Bank (RCB), the event featured Meredith Matthews, chamber executive director; Michael Fisher, associate vice president of Facilities Management at Cal Poly Humboldt; and Karen Diemer, Arcata city manager.

Chamber Executive Director Meredith Matthews.

Chamber check-in

As attendees gorged on a stunning array of Los Bagels pastries provided by RCB, eight-month ED Matthews kicked off the presentation with a review of the Arcata Chamber’s status, services and initiatives.

“There’s never a dull moment in Chamberland,” Matthews said, and she brought receipts in the form of slides listing the dizzying whirl of social and business-promotion events the organization has mounted over the last year. These include monthly mixers, media appearances, student mentorships, field trips, near-weekly ribbon cuttings, its Business for Breakfast edu-series plus special events like Dia de los Muertos, the Fourth of July Jubilee, Arcata Bay Oysterfest, Halloween on the Plaza and the Season of Wonder and Light, all with a zero waste goal in mind. Upcoming is the Annual Chamber Awards Dinner, and still more 2024 events are in the making.

Among 2023’s events were some previously put on by the now-defunct Arcata Main Street, which was absorbed by the Chamber last October. “I think the community thought it a little duplicative to have two entities that kind of almost did the same thing,” Matthews said. “And so the stars aligned, and this was the right time.”

She said the Chamber, with its expanded staff and new board members, will bring Mainstreet’s downtown merriment to other areas of town to “capture all of Arcata.”

The Chamber has introduced new membership tiers, each with a host of benefits, and boasts dozens of new members.

City of Arcata

City Manager Karen Diemer began her segment with a heads-up on Arcata’s General Plan 2045, a 20-year blueprint for development and design. Its long-awaited Environmental Impact Report (EIR) is now available at cityofarcata.org/1067/Environ
mental-Impact-Report and at the Arcata Library, kicking off the draft plan’s final review phase. 

Driving the still-forming plan, she said, is a huge push for housing creation and home ownership opportunities by making the most of infill development about town. Key to that is the Gateway Area Plan (GAP), which targets the Gateway Area for mixed-use infill. Other “opportunity zones” around town will see similar development standards with the intent of creating habitat for the expanding population.

“Finding ways for affordable home ownership is the number one topic that has come up in this community,” Diemer said.

The Gateway Area, she said, is the only part of town where buildings taller than four stories are being considered. Infill plans for other opportunity zones will come about only after extensive community scoping in those areas, and not for years. 

Other leaps forward include the $64 million, three-year overhaul of the Wastewater Treatment Plant, with conversion to ultraviolet (UV) water disinfection. That process, developed with Cal Poly scientists, has supplanted the hazardous and residue-rich chlorine treatment previously used.

Other improvements include Carlson Park, the new boat launch at the Marsh and the new Redwood Park playset. 

Cal Poly – a construction zone

Our friendly neighborhood polytechnic university is 16 months into a two-year process of deeply evaluating the CPH campus and how well it meshes with the City of Arcata on multiple levels. An open forum to reveal the effort’s findings and engage the community is set for this month, details TBA.

CPH’s Mike Fisher. Arcata Chamber photo

CPH’s Michael Fisher described what’s being done with the whopping $433 million provided by the state for capital improvement projects. “We’ve been developing those at breakneck speed,” he said. 

Fisher described a slew of new buildings popping up to house, educate and support students. Most prominent is the $200 million, 960-bed Student Housing Project at the Craftsman Mall site. The development, to open in late 2025 and early 2026, will include an indoor, secure bike shelter to house up to 1,000 bicycles. A new  convenience store and café, both open to the community, will serve the Eye Street area. 

A new Housing, Dining and Health building is to rise on campus; Jenkins Hall is getting a $12 million renovation; a new $100 million Engineering and Technology Building will open in fall of 2026; a new $24 million Energy Research and Sustainability Building will include 2.5 megawatts of solar energy and a 750 kilowatt battery backup. 

“The next two years on campus is going to be busy,” Fisher said, warning of detours and disruption.

Enrollment, which hasn’t met projections, is nonetheless rising, if modestly for now, Fisher said. But several key indicators are headed in the right direction, with enrollment now outperforming state and national trends. CPH is rolling out a host of new programs and majors, and still expects significant growth.

Reconnecting Arcata

Diemer capped the presentation with several announcements. Homeless strategies continue to evolve, and the city is looking for ways to continue funding for Arcata House Partnership, Safe Parking, Extreme Weather Shelters and more. 

The equity arcata effort has “done a 180 shift,” she said, from creating its own programs to supporting BIPOC-led initiatives in the community.

Sales tax revenue, while flat, is “holding steady,” she said.

With the Humboldt Bay Trail North complete, the Annie & Mary Trail will now get a lot of attention.

A new Sunset Interchange is in the planning stages for the confusing, hazardous intersection of Sunset Avenue, L.K. Wood Boulevard and U.S. Highway 101. The project, estimated at $25 million, will eventually replace the current maze of traffic lanes with a pair of roundabouts.

ULTIMATE INFILL A slide from the Reconnecting Arcata presentation appears to show U.S. Highway 101 covered from 14th Street to 17th Street. The new surface space is populated with mixed-use facilities, including residences, businesses, parks and even water features. City of Arcata image

But the most striking of Diemer’s announcements was the “Reconnecting Arcata” project, now only a concept.

“When the highway came through and divided Arcata, it really created a barrier between the east and west sides,” she said. To bridge the divide, a “land bridge” would be constructed over the freeway between 14th and 17th Street to physically reconnect the town. Inspiration is being drawn from a similar, smaller-scale project in Austin, Texas. austin.culturemap.com/news/travel/12-11-20-san-antonio-land-bridge-largest-in-nation/

Many unknowns have yet to be resolved, such as ownership of the new areas, the configuration of the structure’s surface and how it would be paid for.

“It will be billions of dollars,” Diemer noted. “But what we learned from the pandemic is that there are billions of dollars out there, and we are going to go for them!” This brought howls of approval and roaring applause.

Fhyre Phoenix speaking at a previous State of the City event.

Reconnecting Arcata echoes a project proposed in 2004 by activist and current Community Ambassador Fhyre Phoenix. His freeway-covering vision foresaw creation of an additional 50 acres for “healing the physical rift,” with a second Plaza, hundreds of units of low-cost housing of diverse styles located in new neighborhoods with bicycle and walking paths, community orchards, recreation areas – and no roads.

Phoenix, who attended the event, was happy to see his audacious dream finally endorsed. “I fully support the City’s plan to re-connect the city’s university and forest-side of the town with the larger residential neighborhoods and business districts,” he said.