John Gambone, project director with California’s Department of General Services, presents plans for the CHP’s proposed facility. Photos by Andrew Goff.

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For years, the California Highway Patrol has had its sights set on the former Jacobs Junior High School campus in Eureka’s Highland Park neighborhood as a potential location for its new headquarters. That vision is beginning to take shape.

Local CHP officials held an informational meeting at Fort Humboldt Historic State Park on Thursday afternoon to gauge community opinion about the proposal. There were around 20 attendees, including several representatives from the City of Eureka and a few community members, all of whom seemed to support the development.

“Honestly, I’ve lived here for 28 years, about a block away from that eyesore, and I can’t even imagine why anybody would not want this building,” said one resident of the Highland Park neighborhood, who chose not to identify herself. “It would blow my mind if somebody did not want this building because it’s just horrendous to look at right now. I support this 100 percent.”

The proposed facility would be positioned on the corner of Allard Avenue and Utah Street, in the footprint of the former school, with patrol traffic likely flowing west to Highway 101 via McCullens Avenue. Humboldt Area CHP Captain Commander Larry Depee, formerly of Del Norte County, compared the conceptual design of the building to the CHP headquarters that was built in Crescent City in 2019. 

“I was part of the planning through groundbreaking and all the way through us moving in, so I have a pretty good idea about what happens with the new facilities from inception to the point where we’re actually using it as a functional facility,” Depee said. “We had some hiccups with it but we were able to overcome those. We listened to the public. We want to be a good neighbor. And all of the issues that we had, we were able to come up with some sort of resolution, some sort of compromise that worked, and we want to do the same here.”

CHP has been looking for a spot for a new facility since 2014, Depee said. The agency has looked at properties “all the way from McKinleyville, down south to Fortuna” but the former Jacobs Campus has proven to be one of the most promising sites, being somewhat centrally located in Eureka with easy access to the highway.

Captain Commander Depee.

“Nothing has been set yet,” Depee continued. “We’ve decided on approximately how much property we need. … CHP has many facilities and they’re all about the same. The plans, they look the same with very minor differences.”

Sacramento-based CHP Lieutenant Brandon Baldwin added that all CHP facilities must be in compliance with the Emergency Services Act, which ensures that the building would “be able to withstand any type of major natural disasters. 

“One of the biggest obstacles in Humboldt – aside from limited land availability in the area – is being outside of a tsunami zone,” Baldwin said. “That way if  – heaven forbid – a tsunami does strike the area, the CHP facility would be out of the disaster zone. We they could still go out and provide assistance to this community without being affected adversely.”

New CHP facilities also include a “community room” to provide a gathering place for small meetings, Baldwin said. “As much as it is a home for us as a department, it’s also part of the community,” he said. “It really is the people’s house. So we want to be able to afford a portion of that area to be used for community purposes.”

There’s still a long road ahead. CHP is working with the Eureka City Unified School District to acquire the property, but the agency still needs to get approval from the state and the Department of Finance, Baldwin said.

The City of Eureka was in active property negotiations with the Eureka City Schools Board of Education up until last September when the school district declined “the city’s best and final offer” of $2.8 million for the entire 14.09-acre property – $1.2 million below the school district’s reported asking price of $4 million. The school district has not disclosed how much it is currently asking for the property, but it did confirm that CHP is the only entity involved in formal property negotiations. 

“Eureka City Schools is still in active negotiations with the California Department of General Services (DGS), the entity representing CHP,” district spokesperson Sierra Speer Dillon wrote in an emailed response to the Outpost.

Thursday’s meeting seems to indicate that negotiations are getting a little more serious, but Dillon stated that “There has yet to be reportable action at this time.”

Similarly, John Gambone, project director with DGS’ Real Estate Services Division, emphasized several times throughout the meeting that DGS and CHP are in the beginning stages of negotiations with the school district. 

Eureka City Councilmember Kati Moulton spoke in favor of the proposed development, noting that members of the South Eureka Neighborhood Alliance had asked nearby residents what they wanted to see happen at the former Jacobs campus “and CHP joining the neighborhood was really high on the list,” she said.

Councilmember Moulton questions Depee.

“I think it’d be welcomed,” Moulton continued. “Folks are concerned about what it’s going to look like [and] how it’s going to fit into the neighborhoods, so I’m really happy to hear you addressing that right off the bat. … I love the idea of you integrating into the neighborhood, being a bigger part of everything there and having folks feel like you’re a part of the neighborhood and not this sort of alien thing that just plopped down.”

Depee emphasized that CHP “definitely doesn’t want to be that large, anonymous agency that nobody can talk to.”

Moulton asked more about the community room Baldwin had mentioned and whether it would be a place that could offer shelter and relief during an emergency. “Sometimes folks will open up public buildings for charging a phone during a power outage or, you know, heating during extreme weather or something like that. Is that a resource that we could talk about and have access to?” 

During his time in Crescent City, Depee said CHP would work with the California Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) to offer services in their community room. “My assumption is that we will do the same thing here,” he said. “We will do everything that we can to work with all of our allied agencies and to work with the community to offer up as much as we can with this facility.”

Moulton also asked if the public would have a chance to weigh in on the appearance of the building, given that “people are going to live across the street from this thing presumably for decades.”

Baldwin said CHP would be willing to work with the community on superficial aspects of the building’s design, like the color of its roof, but said there would be other, more technical aspects that would be out of their control. 

“For example, there would be a radio tower on top of the building,” he said, noting that the tower would be approximately 140 feet tall. “It’s really up to CalOES where that tower will be located because they’ll have to bring out a large lift and see what would be the best radio connectivity to the radio towers around here. That will dictate where the tower goes on the property.”

The Outpost asked Depee how patrol traffic from the facility would impact the surrounding neighborhood. Depee said Crescent City’s new headquarters was built in a business district and the agency worked with community members to develop a local standard operating procedure (SOP).

“So we said we would not turn on the siren, we wouldn’t be responding fast, until we got to U.S. 101. This would be something very similar,” he said. “Now, obviously, there will be calls that are gonna necessitate us traveling a little bit faster, but we’ll have that SOP in place. Our supervisors and myself are ultimately responsible for it and we will manage that and ensure that our troops are driving safely through these areas. … We’ll do everything we can to mitigate or eliminate any impacts to traffic if it’s not necessary.”

Depee added that CHP would work with the Eureka Police Department to address criminal activity in the neighborhood.

“Our agencies work very well together,” he said. “If there was a call for service, we would immediately respond. We don’t even generally wait for a request. If we’re the closest unit, we’re going to respond.”

We also asked what would happen to CHP’s existing facility on Samoa Boulevard in Arcata. Depee said Caltrans took over CHP’s old facility in Crescent City and said, “That’s probably something that we would look into.”

If the deal moves forward, it would throw a big wrench in the gears for a group of Eureka residents that want to see the site turned into housing.

Just last week, two Eureka residents – Michelle Costantine-Blackwell and Michael Munson – filed a “notice of intent” to circulate a petition to put an initiative on the ballot that would require the City of Eureka to amend its General Plan to rezone the Jacobs site for housing in an attempt to stop the city from building housing on underutilized downtown parking lots.

It’s unclear whether rezoning the Jacobs Campus for housing would actually result in a new housing development on the site. As previously stated, the City of Eureka has expressed interest in building market-rate housing on the site, but it seems CHP is now the main contender.

Negotiations are still ongoing.

Looking down McCullens Avenue to Highway 101 from the Jacobs site. Images depicting the current state of the site below.


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