Arcata isn’t the same as it used to be, David Loya told me. He’s seated in front of a sign with a bullseye labeled BANG HEAD HERE. On the floor to his left is a two-by-three foot map of Arcata, spackled with blotches of purples and greens. Loya, one of Arcata’s planners since the late 2000s, and the community development department’s director since 2016, is retiring at the end of this month. He is moving to the private sector. 

No, not the same as it used to be, he said, but not a whole lot different either. It still looks like the same town he moved to in 1996, when he was a botany student at then-Humboldt State, living in a house so damp mushrooms grew out of the walls. It’s grown, but the “physical environment” hasn’t changed much. OK, Loya said, Sorrel Place and Plaza Point oriented Arcata a little more vertically, but generally, it looks much the same. All of the changes he points out are good ones: the air is cleaner since the mills in Samoa closed, the city’s managed to get hundreds of units of affordable housing built, and it’s implemented a first-time homebuyer assistance program. Loya can take some credit for the last two, but he attributes much of it to his team, which also snagged close to $100 million in federal and state grants during his tenure. It definitely isn’t worse than it was 20 years ago, though plenty of people may disagree with him. 

His legacy, he believes, will live on through the policies he had a hand in making: the General Plan, the Gateway Plan, the Land Use Code, the constellation of regulations that govern what Arcata looks and feels like. They weren’t everything he wanted them to be — he thinks they could have gone farther on some things, gone easier on others — “but largely, I feel like my political and professional beliefs and knowledge align real well with where this community is at, and where the council ultimately landed,” he said. They’re wonkish documents, but Loya and the other authors attempted to keep them readable to the general audience, Arcata at-large. During the planning process, the people who are often most invested and loudest are usually the ones with the most time on their hands to spend on being loud and invested, he said. People with none need a way in too.

Having the title “Community Development Director” doesn’t sound like it would necessarily force you to deal with a lot of public scrutiny, but being charged with helping shape an entire community will have that effect. He knew what he was getting into when he started, he said. Community development directors joke that you’re given a couple shirts with targets on the back when you’re hired, he told me, but he tried not to let the projectiles aimed his way ruffle him. 

“I can’t tell you how many times people have said to me, like, ‘I can’t believe you,’” he said. “They’re thinking about the time when someone gets up to the podium, and, you know, rips me a new one for how unethical I am or whatever. And they’re, like, ‘You’re just unflappable,’ like, ‘I can’t believe you can take all that stuff.’” 

“This person has Arcata’s best interest in mind most of the time,” he said, referring to whoever just thrashed him. “I’ve had very few people in my career, where I feel that person is really über-negative and just has it out for me. 99.9% of the time, people are motivated by their genuine desire to make this community a better place, and how they’re expressing that is the best way they know how to.”

Loya dealt with a lot of them while he, Arcata’s city council, and other officials worked on adopting the Gateway Plan, the ambitious set of regulations implemented to transform southern Arcata into a dense, walkable area. Dan Tangney, one of the members of Arcata’s planning commission, reminisced with Loya during his last appearance as director at a planning commission meeting earlier this week. “I appreciate how consequential it’s been,” he said. Creating the Gateway Plan was “divisive, and very political, and brought a lot of people to the hall,” he said, gesturing at the council chambers, “many not in favor. It was, I felt, a difficult process. I appreciate how well you led us through it.” 

Loya tried to keep the focus on the task at hand. People tend to focus on what’s flawed rather than what’s working well, he said, but that’s often counterproductive to actually nailing down a solution. Case in point: a bit before Loya began leading the department, a few businesses operating in the Arcata Creamery were at risk of getting shut down. The area hadn’t been zoned for commercial uses, only industrial ones. Should the city bring the hammer down? It could have, Loya said, but who would have benefitted from that? Probably no one. Instead, they changed the rules. When residents of the Lazy J Ranch mobilehome community wanted a rent control ordinance, he worked with them to create one. Despite some initial misgivings, they put together something he thought works well, and, in the process, built some “genuine friendships” with them.

“When you find people doing good stuff in the community, do you look at your rulebook and say, ‘Oh, that’s illegal. You can’t do that. Shut it down?’’’ Loya asked. “Or, do you look at your rule book and say, ‘The times have changed. We need to change our rulebook so that this stuff is legal. This is what people want.’ I’ve always fallen on the latter.” 

When he became the director, he wanted to shift the planning process from a hardnosed, regulatory mindset to a “customer service,” “facilitator’s mindset,” he said, something more in the spirit of the Creamery District rezoning. The city has a “monopoly” on what it does, he said. It’s the only place people can go to get projects approved, to get their permits, and their time should be respected. They should have their projects processed quickly, whenever that’s possible. 

Has he succeeded? A lot of people would say he didn’t, he thinks, but he believes that he’s “moved the needle” at least a little. Things that used to happen one-after-the-other now happen simultaneously, when possible. It’s making a tangible difference, he said; it’s unlikely that Arcata will ever play host to a huge housing boom, but already, projects are getting approved that never would have been approved before. Developers are interested in building higher-density projects, and residents are building accessory dwelling units, many of which, Loya said, are being rented by tenants, not being turned into short-stay rentals. 

Where’s the city heading? Loya didn’t have a long-term vision when he started, a mental picture of a shining city on a hill, but hopefully towards more walkability and affordability, a vibrant, “economically viable” town, he said, goals he’s spent his career chasing. People of all means should be able to find a place to rent, and people of “appropriate means” should be able to find a spot to buy. He had trouble doing that himself; in the late 2000s, when he became the department’s deputy director, he’d been living in Eureka, but wanted to move back. It was a stretch, but he found a home and bought it. Most of the employees in the planning department live in Arcata, but plenty of other city employees can’t. 

“Nurses, firefighters, cops, you know — people who serve this city and make it function — can’t afford to live here,” he said. “It’s not just can’t find a place to live, like, there’s not a housing unit for them, but if there was a housing unit, they wouldn’t be able to afford it. I feel like that’s a shame.”

“People worried about the gentrification of Arcata, when we were going through the Gateway plan, for example, were worried that we were going to attract all this new investment, and people were going to be displaced and run out of town,” he continued. “Arcata’s already gentrified. It’s already the most expensive place you can live in Humboldt County.”

But, just as Arcata still looks much the same as it did in the late ‘90s, he expects it to look pretty much the same in the future. “I think people were concerned, when we were talking about the Gateway, that there was going to be this machine that would come through and completely pave over the city and create this whole new foreign feel about Arcata,” Loya said. “I don’t think we’re going to see anything like that.”

What won’t change much, he hopes, are the “vibe,” he said, “as the kids say today,” and the people. Even the ones that disagreed with him and his team, maybe even crossed a line when they did it, ones Loya could never get through to.

“They don’t trust the city. They don’t trust me. They don’t trust my colleagues,” Loya said. “But I think more often than not, it’s just coming from a real deep passion for what a cool place this is, and and I can’t disagree with them.”