A new Arcata housing development got the go-ahead at last night’s planning commission meeting, though the commission did force the developers to make a small change to their plans. 

Located at the intersection of K Street and Samoa Boulevard, the lot is currently occupied by what was once an H&R Block. The developers, designer Donald Cleek and Crescent City residents Steven and Trina Park, the parcel’s owners, filed paperwork late last year with the city, seeking permission to turn it into multi-family housing. They’d add a second story to the low, squat building, then split it up into four one-bedroom apartments, all 568 square feet apiece. They’ll be “cozy” apartments, Cleek said at last night’s meeting, and “economical” and “efficient,” Trina told the Outpost on Monday. 

It took quite a long time to get the plans approved, something Cleek chalked up to “sloppy” city code, he told the Outpost earlier this week. A June letter filed by Cleek tersely references the city’s request that they include a list of the site’s every code deviance, with an explanation for why they can’t be fixed. It was a frustrating process, Cleek said, and it took far longer than the 45-60 days he thinks it should have taken. They had originally aimed to begin construction in April of this year, but got bogged down attempting to clear the designs with the city, forcing a planned April 2027 start date. “It was a huge waste of time,” he said.

Overlapping nets of regulations trapped the project for months while the developers worked out how to navigate them. They have to pay heed to the city’s General Plan, its Land Use Code, and the Gateway Code, but that last one doesn’t matter, staff wrote, because the parcel is in the coastal zone, which is regulated by California’s Coastal Commission. It hasn’t yet ratified the Gateway Code, so, ‘til then, it’s inapplicable. It’s also subject to the rules of the Arcata’s Local Coastal Program, as well as a design review process because it’s in a historic conservation area. The lot is also zoned for industrial-commercial uses, not residential ones, and the pre-existing building is rife with code deviances caused by the size of the lot, only 4,600 square feet. The zoning, Loya said, is “pretty interesting.” “We put ourselves in a situation where it’s very complex,” he said, though the city’s working on simplifying the regulations. 

The number of apartments they could cram into the parcel was limited. It wasn’t quite what Loya and other local officials had envisioned for the Gateway area, Loya said, but it’s a constrained site. He, and several of the commissioners, said they were pleased to see any kind of housing built in the area. 

“I think you’re going to keep seeing this,” Loya said. “We develop a plan that’s nice and shiny and golden, and then when we get our boots on the ground and we’re actually dealing with a real property, a real parcel, that doesn’t conform to our ideals, we’re going to have to make compromises.”

What several of them didn’t like was a dearth of covered bicycle parking spaces. Most of the meeting was spent debating if the developers should be forced to add a storage shed with enough space for four bicycles, which would take up one out of the five parking spaces in the building’s lot. California code requires enough parking space for vehicles for handicapped people be saved in every lot, so if a shed takes up one space, and a disabled person’s van takes up two, one of the residents would have to park on the street. Four out of the six commissioners present — Peter Lehman, Matthew Simmons, Abigail Strickland, and Ashton Hamm — thought the tradeoff was worth it to incentivize cycling, though Cleek said he thought the space for a car was probably more valuable. 

The commission approved the project unanimously, on the condition that the developers install a bike storage shed to the lot.