Hot or cold is a classic guessing game, but rarely is both the answer. But an increasing number of Americans want it to be, alternating roasting in saunas and then dunking themselves in frigid water — sometimes for health benefits (some backed by data, some more nebulous), sometimes because it can feel incredible. Tonight, the Arcata Planning Commission will decide if it’ll grant a permit to a business that wants to offer the service and also build saunas in the back. 

Located at 40 South G Street opposite the Arcata Marsh, the facility will offer two saunas and cold plunges for public use every day of the week. In the back, around five employees will work at constructing saunas to-order during the weekdays. Applicant Zachary Vondrak told the Outpost he expected to be up and running by the end of the year. He declined to share the business’s name or who else is partnering on the project with him; they’re also still figuring out how much they’ll charge.

The saunas they’re constructing will be the same type open for public use, made out of 8x20 foot Conex shipping containers, lined with cedar on the inside. Vondrak said he thought it would take about a month for one to be “fully operational,” start to finish.  

Vondrak, 47, said he’s lived in Humboldt for several years and has lived in Arcata since January. He works with Solstice Agriculture, a fertilizer distributor aimed mainly at cannabis growers. He said he’s seen the need for a service like his, even going so far as to say that the “health of our community is at stake” in an application document, mentioning to the Outpost how saunas can “detoxify through our skin” and benefit cardiovascular health and sleep quality. 

“Taking a sauna is extremely beneficial for our health,” Vondrak said. “When I actually moved into Arcata, I felt like it was the right timing. It’s the right kind of people [here] that would embrace this level of health that they want in their life.”

Founding a business in a floundering area of Arcata is also important to him, he said. It’d be good for the town to have an employer on that end of the street, and the increasing popularity of sauna-ing leads him to believe that manufacturing them would be a profitable business.

One factor elevates it beyond a cut-and-dry agenda item: Vondrak said he wants the roughly 300 square feet of saunas in his facility to be wood-fired (by lumber from recent forest fires or fallen trees), something explicitly banned by Arcata’s General Plan. Vondrak said he wants an exception to be made for his facility, which will use a “gasification” stove to heat the saunas that turns most of the smoke into vapor. Vondrak points to the “softer feel” and higher temperature of burning wood, compared to an electrical or gas heating system. He said wood-burning saunas were more enjoyable, offering a nicer ambiance inside. 

It seems unlikely that the commission will go for it. One of the listed conditions for the permit’s approval is that Vondrak demonstrates that all of the saunas aren’t wood-fired before the business opens. In the interest of public health, the commission is generally against wood-burning, but Vondrak said he’s hopeful they’ll give him the OK. If they don’t, he said he’ll likely use a gas-heated apparatus, or even host the business in McKinleyville, Bayside, or Eureka. 

“If you go back, it’s one of the most primal things that people have done to connect to one another,” Vondrak said, referring to burning wood. “It’s important for the sauna to have that, because when you’re in there and the wood is burning, you see it, and the feeling around it makes people so, like, at ease and comfortable, and the level of communication is undeniable.”