McKinleyville! 

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What is it? 

Great question. It’s a growing town with a lot of college graduates, significant “human capital,” in analyst parlance. There’s a lot of beautiful nature near it. A lot of people drive through it. The weather is a lot cooler than lots of other places in California. It’s got an airport! What else could it possibly need?

A lot, it turns out. A group of Cal Poly Humboldt professors and researchers (plus some community partners) made a pretty damn big list of suggestions to brighten McKinleyville’s economic outlook, and they’re looking for the public’s opinions on their research. 

The McKinleyville Economic Strategic Study is a behemoth. The concluding section — only one out of eight other sections — runs to almost 13,000 words and recommends 30 different strategies the government, local businesses, and developers should focus on to improve McKinleyville. 

It really does have a lot going for it, they say, going over in detail all of the previously mentioned pros plus a bunch of others. But it’s also up against some tough challenges. Around 40% of McKinleyville residents spend more than 30% of their income on housing, and developers said they feel hamstrung by the overlapping webs of environmental, local and state regulations that make constructing more housing difficult. Many of the dozens of residents researchers interviewed said getting around without a car was difficult and dangerous; they dislike the lack of a central gathering space for McKinleyvillains and the dearth of good jobs, the limited retail and dining options — and that there’s not an extended-hours urgent care or emergency room. People perceive McKinleyville to be a bedroom community, most of the research boils down to, bereft of services and amenities that forces most of them to work and shop elsewhere.

It’s the status quo, but it doesn’t have to remain that way. Residents want “practical, visible, locally grounded change that improves daily life without eroding small-town identity, environmental quality, or community character,” as the researchers put it, and the ideas they’re pitching aim to address many of their discontents. 

Within the next two years, the network of governmental and business organizations in charge of McKinleyville should focus on improving housing, its transportation infrastructure, growing its health care and workforce networks, and construct some of the McKinleyville Town Center. Public support for these goals is strong and clearly needed, and nicely sets up bigger goals for later. 

A lot of the specifics mirror other local economic development schemes: focus on making the abundant outdoor opportunities more accessible, make the town feel livelier, fill vacant storefronts, et cetera. But the detail included is thorough.

It’s a work in progress, CPH accounting professor Joshua Zender emphasized to the Outpost. Though much of the plan is finalized, they’re still working through the kinks, and people should keep that in mind when reading them and providing feedback.

“The central strategic lesson is straightforward,” the plan reads. “McKinleyville’s problem is not lack of assets. It is fragmentation. The community has strong natural capital, strong human capital, a stable residential base, notable public institutions, and identifiable sector strengths. What it does not yet have is a sufficiently integrated system of housing, mobility, health care, local commerce, business support, and civic life…The purpose of these recommendations is to build a more integrated, sustainable system carefully, locally, and in a way that makes the town more functional without making it less itself.”