Attention, Eurekans! Would you like to have a meaningful impact on new developments in our fair city? Now is your chance. 

Next week, the City of Eureka will host a community town hall — Designing Density with Neighborhoods in Mind — to gauge public opinion on proposed design standards for infill housing and new developments. The city is seeking public input to ensure that the new design standards protect and maintain what we love about our neighborhoods while also supporting a wider range of new housing options. 

Staff with Eureka’s Planning and Building Department have been hard at work developing both subjective and objective design standards for infill development. The proposed regulations are still in the works, but Eureka City Councilmember Kati Moulton thought it’d be a good time to get the public involved in the process. 

“We spent all of last year talking about larger developments on public land,” Moulton said, referring to the long-blighted Jacobs Campus that was at the heart of a convoluted land swap between the Eureka City Schools District and a mysterious private developer. Long story short, the deal went up in flames, and the school district opted to sell the property to the California Highway Patrol. “Now it’s time to talk about the other side of the picture, which is smaller [developments] that are going into our neighborhoods and what folks want to see there.”

In this context, “design standards” refers to a checklist of sorts that developers and architects can refer to when drawing up plans for a new build. 

“You know, what should a building look like from the road? How far should the top story be set back so there’s as much lighting on the building around them as possible?” Moulton said. “Giving developers a checklist [explaining] this thing has to be this many inches wide, and you have to have this many textures or this number of windows per square feet of wall. That kind of stuff.”

The town hall will take place on Monday, Dec. 8, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in Council Chambers at Eureka City Hall – 531 K Street. Want to attend remotely? Sign up here. 

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