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• A Big New Parking Lot in the Bottoms? Cal Poly Humboldt Hopes to Ease its Parking Woes By Building 200+ New Spaces Across Town

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If you missed the chance last year to share your two cents on Cal Poly Humboldt’s Foster Campus Connectivity Project, I’ve got good news for you! 

The university is recirculating the Draft Initial Study/Proposed Mitigated Negative Declaration (IS/MND) for the proposed project — a 212-space student parking lot and campus shuttle station slated for a vacant 16.7-acre parcel at 2000 Foster Avenue — which has been modified to include a new trail along the old railroad that runs through the Arcata Bottoms. The public comment period ends on April 2. 

Wait, isn’t this old news? Didn’t LoCO already report on this “new” trail at the end of last year? Well, yes, but that was before the university amended the environmental documents to address some of the concerns that came about during the initial public review. The modified IS/MND can be found here.

The idea for the trail came about in response to safety concerns over increased bicycle and pedestrian traffic along Foster Avenue, which is bisected by McDaniel Slough, as seen in the aerial view below. Running a short trail through the slough would create a straight shot from the proposed parking lot to the intersection of Foster Avenue and Heather Lane and create a safer route for student to get to and from campus.

“The Foster Campus is just over a mile from campus, so a major focus of the project is making the route to and from campus easier, sustainable, and convenient,” Mike Fisher, the university’s interim vice president for administration and finance, told the Outpost. “Community feedback emphasized the need for non-vehicle options, and focusing pedestrians off of Foster Avenue to the west of McDaniel Slough. The pedestrian and bike path is a natural extension of those efforts, helping improve direct connectivity to Foster Avenue over McDaniel Slough and support sustainable mobility.”

The environmental documents were also adjusted to address neighborhood concerns around the frequency of the campus shuttle service, which was scheduled to stop at the Foster Avenue parking lot every 15 minutes. (“Would you want shuttles going down your street every 15 minutes?” Arcata resident Brittney Villigran asked at a city council meeting last year.) Now, the shuttle will run every 30 minutes, Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The IS/MND determined that the project “would have either no impact or a less than significant impact” on most of the issue areas outlined in the “environmental checklist,” which covers air quality, agriculture and forest resources, soils, hydrology and water quality, among other things. 

“Potentially significant impacts were identified for aesthetics, biological resources, cultural resources, noise, and tribal cultural resources; however, mitigation measures included in the Recirculated IS/MND would reduce all impacts to a less than significant level,” the document states. 

The Foster Campus Connectivity Project is just one component of the university’s long-term vision for the “Foster Avenue District,” as seen below. The Campus Physical Plan, which is also in the middle of a public review process, envisions the 16.7-acre site as a hub for athletics, with three “state-of-the-art” sports fields, an indoor athletics complex, “upper division” housing and a pond.

Construction on the new parking lot and trail is expected to begin this summer and wrap up in February 2027, depending on the length of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review process.

Those interested can email written comments to ceqa@humboldt.edu with the subject line “Foster Campus Connectivity Project.” More information, including links to the documents, can be found here.