Major Development Projects

The City will host a Town Hall on Monday, January 26, 2026, at 5:30 p.m. in the Humboldt Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall at 24 Fellowship Way, Bayside. To prepare for this meeting, Danco Communities produced a video explaining the background of the Rogers Garage Affordable Housing Community, the approval and financing process, and the site contamination clean up process. While the community concerns were broader, the contamination remediation process is the most technical and least well understood by the public. The City is hosting this video to provide consistent and accurate information about the project to the public before the town hall in January. Interested community members are encouraged to watch this video prior to the meeting. 

The City of Arcata has issued a Notice of Preparation (NOP) for an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for Rogers Garage Affordable Housing Community. This notice marks the beginning of the environmental review process required under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). An NOP is the first step in preparing a detailed study of a project's potential environmental impacts. During this phase, we're asking agencies, organizations, and community members to share their input on what environmental topics should be studied in the EIR. You can submit written comments identifying specific environmental issues you'd like the EIR to address. Comments must be received by February 4^th 2026. 

On July 9 and 10, 2025, groundwater monitoring was performed at three of the existing groundwater monitoring wells (MW-5, MW-7, and MW-8) at the Site by Blaine Tech Services, Inc. Monitoring included measuring groundwater elevations and collecting three groundwater samples for chemical analysis.

The purpose of this delineation was to identify, map, and document potential jurisdictional Wetlands and Waters of the United States and of the State of California within the Study Area. The delineation identified a total of 0.05 acres of potential jurisdictional aquatic resources, consisting of perennial emergent wetlands.

AEI Consultants (AEI) was retained by Danco Communities to conduct a Phase I ESA in conformance with AEI's contract and the scope and limitations of ASTM Standard Practice E1527-21 and the EPA Standards and Practices for All Appropriate Inquiries (40 CFR Part 312), for the property located at 1622 Old Arcata Road, Bayside, Humboldt County, California (the "subject property"). Any exceptions to, or deletions from, this practice are described in Sections 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 of this report.

This report presents the results of the Limited Subsurface Investigation performed by AEI Consultants (AEI) at 1622 Old Arcata Road, Arcata, California (“the Site”). The investigation was conducted in general accordance with the scope of work presented in AEI’s proposal number 94634 dated January 30, 2024, authorized by the Client on January 30, 2024. The general purpose of this investigation was to further characterize the Site for petroleum hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The Site descriptions, background, investigation procedures, findings, summary, and conclusions are presented in the following sections.

JRP Historical Consulting, LLC (JRP) conducted a historic resources study of the buildings located at 1622 Old Arcata Road on Assessor Parcel Number (APN) 500-191-002-000 in Bayside, California. JRP recorded the subject property photographically and through written field notes, prepared a description and inventory, and evaluated whether built environment resources therein met the criteria for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), the California Register of Historical Resources (CRHR), or as a local historic landmark under City of Arcata Municipal Code 9.53.040. This study concludes that none of the buildings on the subject parcel meet the criteria for listing in the NRHP, CRHR, or as a City of Arcata historic landmark. Therefore, none of the buildings are historical resources under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) as defined in CEQA Guidelines Section 15064.5(a).

LACO ASSOCIATES (LACO) presents this workplan proposing the excavation of lead impacted soil exceeding the average natural background lead concentration of 31 ppm per our previous recommendation (LACO, 2005). The background lead concentration was determined by the average of eight soil samples collected within a 500-foot radius of the site. Background metals sampling locations are presented on Figure 2. All background lead concentrations are presented on Table 1. A copy of the laboratory report for samples JCS-NW, JCS-SW, HYLAND, and PG&E is included as Attachment 1. Previous results were presented in LACO's Metals Investigation Status Report, dated April 22, 2005 (LACO, 2005).