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The long-awaited McKinleyville Town Center Ordinance cleared yet another hurdle Thursday night, securing unanimous approval from the Humboldt County Planning Commission. The ambitious rezoning plan will head to the Board of Supervisors for final review in mid-October.

The ordinance aims to rezone a 134-acre swath of land in the heart of town to make way for the McKinleyville Town Center Project — a mixed-use development that would allow more than 2,600 housing units and 900,000 square feet of retail and office space, along with pedestrian- and cyclist-focused infrastructure and other outdoor amenities. The vision for the project was first conceived in the mid-1960s as a way to create a viable town center and foster community development.

Speaking during last night’s meeting, Humboldt County Planning and Building Director John Ford acknowledged the public’s concern about the four-story building height limit and the number of housing units slated for the site. “The EIR [environmental impact report] may have evaluated that number of units, but that’s not the number of units that are guaranteed in the zone,” he said. “The development ability is dictated by the form-based code contained within the ordinance itself.”

The two-and-a-half-hour discussion largely focused on the proposed “road diet” for Central Avenue, which would reduce traffic on the thoroughfare from five to three lanes to improve pedestrian safety. Commissioner Peggy O’Neill, a resident of McKinleyville, asked if staff would be willing to amend the ordinance to require a thorough transportation study before moving ahead with any changes. 

“I’d like to see a study — and I realize there is no money to do any of this right now — at the time or prior to making changes,” she said. “[Staff] could even do a test period where they shut down lanes [to] see what the impacts are going to be. … When I drive down that road, I try to envision [the changes and] sometimes it seems like three lanes is going to be sufficient, but other times, when people are going to school or going to work in the morning, it’s pretty crowded and that’s without the additional units.”

Ford said he was all for additional traffic analysis, but emphasized that the ordinance and the McKinleyville Town Center Project are focused on defining a communal area in the unincorporated city.

“It’s unusual to have a five-lane arterial ripping through an area that you want to be your area of coming together of the community joining,” Ford said. “The idea there is modifying Central also establishes a sense of place. It’s not a road to get from point A to point B; it becomes more of a destination. I think those are important considerations. Yes, safety is an absolute consideration, and the engineers who would work on the road diet — no matter what it looks like — are going to take safety into account. This is not something that will be done haphazardly.”

Several residents spoke about current traffic issues on Central Ave. during public comment. McKinleyville resident and former state assemblymember Wesley Chesbro shared a harrowing story in which two teenagers were almost hit by a speeding vehicle while crossing the street at a crosswalk.

Chesbro| Screenshot

“It was truly terrifying,” Chesbro said. “There’s no reason why the main street through McKinleyville has to be as wide as South Broadway carrying 101’s traffic through south Eureka, and that’s what we have. Think about it: The five lanes that you drive on South Broadway to carry that heavy traffic is the same width through the community of McKinleyville.”

The vast majority of commenters spoke in favor of the ordinance, with many thanking the McKinleyville Municipal Advisory Committee (MMAC) for its work in refining the document. 

“To me, the whole thing’s really heroic,” said Peter Pennekamp, a board member of the Anne S. Pierson Foundation, which owns most of the 134-acre town center site. “No one’s ever going to be happy about all the details, but what started out with the bureaucracy … has now grown into this thing that everyone’s involved with. … This ordinance is the product of many years of public input and careful deliberation, and it reflects the community’s vision for a town center that balances housing, services, open space, and ecological stewardship.”

Patrick Kaspari, general manager of the McKinleyville Community Services District, also expressed his gratitude to county staff and the MMAC, noting that the ordinance crafting process was “the most focused and extensive public process that I’ve ever been part of in my 45 years of working in the public sector.”

However, the few residents who spoke against the ordinance said they were disappointed in the lack of public process.

After a two-and-a-half-hour discussion on traffic and various other aspects of the ordinance, the commission ultimately agreed that the county should pursue additional analysis before finalizing plans for Central Ave. 

O’Neill made a motion to approve staff’s recommendation to certify the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the project, adopt a Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program (MMRP) and approve “all required findings of approval” for a zoning ordinance amendment that would change the town center zoning designation to mixed use with a qualified combining zone (Q-Zone) overlay. 

The motion was seconded by Commissioner Jerome Qiriazi and passed in a unanimous 5-0 vote, with at-large commissioners Sarah West and Lorna McFarlane absent.