What's Really Wrong With Eureka?

Patrick Geddes, a city planner from Scotland who wrote Cities in Evolution between 1910 and 1915, said, "It is no easy matter to change the habits of a people, and above all as regards their homes." He went on to say that our cities do need to be maintained and rebuilt as they grow and crumble and that there is no better way to find out how to renew them than to "see what is being done in other cities and countries."

I say this because, although I love Eureka, there are many things we could be doing better and when I suggest doing something that I feel would make Eureka a better place, I am usually told I should go back to where I came from. Believe it or not, things were not so great where I came from and Eureka has a lot more potential than most places I’ve lived. However, I have visited a lot of cities where the locals recognize what is hurting the livability of their own place and are taking big steps to make it a better place.

In Clearwater, Florida, the main downtown street is being made into a pedestrian street and traffic is being diverted a few blocks south to hook up to a new bridge to Clearwater Beach. An old neighborhood being revitalized sought to protect its residents from raging through traffic and was granted a street vacation permit to create a cul de sac to replace the busy intersection that allowed traffic to travel through the neighborhood. In Portland, Oregon, parking lots and a freeway have been ripped up to make urban and shoreline parks, and intersections are being used for neighborhood gathering places.

In Alameda, California, residents convinced the public works department to not remove mature trees on their street but to repair the sidewalks instead. One person wrote a letter that convinced the Bureau of Electricity to trim street trees more carefully so that the trees on the side of the utility poles did not look dwarfed. San Francisco adopted two waterfront plans in the 1970s to ensure that development along the SF Bay is not a cut-throat competition for views and access. A Berkeley developer goes to Europe every year and brings the city planners a binder full of photos showing new ideas from the developments he has seen. Together, new ideas and accepted practices from other places contribute to what we can learn to make Eureka a livable city.

Not all of what I propose is major work, but it needs to happen before we can invite people to come and be impressed enough that they will want to come again or will tell their friends about us. The first thing that we have to do is make this city a livable place for its residents. When we achieve that the tourists will come. We will not have to court them.

For Eureka to be a livable city, there are several major flaws that need to be corrected before we can be considered a livable city. Here are the problems, and they are not insurmountable. All of them have been talked about before but unfortunately proposed solutions have not been implemented. The proposed "cures" follow each stated problem:

1) A three-mile-long strip commercial highway, with no landscaping is the gateway or entrance to our fair city (from the south). This gives a very negative visual introduction to Eureka.

Cure: Landscape both sides of 101, make the suicide lane a landscaped divider, and allow left turns only at intersection.

2) Heavy traffic is the daily ritual on the entire 101 corridor through Eureka, including downtown. Speeding traffic is a daily occurrence on residential streets.

Cure: Time the signals on 101 at 25 miles/hour and allow left turns only at signaled intersections. Add stop signs on residential streets where there are none for four or more blocks. Close off streets so that cars cannot go through and insert little neighborhood parks at the intersections. (Oakland has long used boulders and landscaping at former intersections to prevent traffic from passing through residential neighborhoods.)

3) No crosswalks exist at many intersections and signal changes to allow pedestrians to cross are very slow, even when manually prompted.

Cure: Designate and stripe all signaled intersections along 101 with crosswalks and where walk-and-wait pedestrian crossing signals exist make them respond quickly to pedestrian prompts. (Petaluma is a good example of how well this works to make busy streets more pedestrian friendly.)

4) Homeless shelters are located in hotels and motels all over downtown and along the 101 corridor. Homeless people hang around downtown and on the boardwalk.

Cure: Make the asphalt lot next to the Mission a community garden and put the benches back in Old Town so the homeless have a place to sit. Save some of the shoreline for public use i.e., parks. It will cost less to maintain the parks than to repair the damage from forcing people to hang out on the streets. (Berkeley is a good example of a place that treats the homeless and poor with compassion.) Keep hotels and motels in the hotel and motel business.

5) Eureka’s treasure trove of residential Victorian and craftsman architecture is treated as a run-down low-income "ghetto."

Cure: Designate the Clark District a City of Eureka landmark district and start recognizing the immaculate restorations that are bringing back some incredibly beautiful and historic houses to urban Eureka.

6) Funky (and I mean FUNKY) old historic houses for sale for $300,000+ because (the owners tell you) they can be torn down and rebuilt as four-unit apartment buildings.

Cure: Re-zone the RM-1000 district (the flatlands historic area) to single-family residential (RS-6000). This will keep the selling price of neglected historic houses low so that people can afford to buy one and use their money and sweat equity to create an affordable home for themselves. Currently, owners of these embarrassingly neglected houses are selling them for outrageous prices telling prospective buyers that they can tear them down and build fourplexes in their place.

7) Hardscape everywhere – asphalt and concrete dominate as the favored ground cover. Newer buildings are landscaped with crushed rocks and wood chips. It is a very harsh environment to have to live with.

Cure: Remove and recycle asphalt and concrete where it is no longer needed. Stop and think before pouring more concrete. Do not allow crushed rocks and wood chips to be approved on new developments. The landscaping at the parking lot curiously named the Fifth Street Plaza looks terrible!!! The new Co-op has no street trees. Too much concrete and flat hard surfaces to be inviting!!!

8) New buildings are going up or are planned all along the waterfront to obliterate the view where scenic vistas should be protected or at least shared.

Cure: Impose a moratorium on development between the waterfront and 101 until a waterfront plan can be adopted that eliminates project-by-project review of proposals. Access to and views of the bay are too beautiful and valuable to be squandered and, with reasonable controls, can be enjoyed by all, resulting in better success for the developers and users of this area.

9) Trees blow down or are senselessly removed leaving huge emptiness and bleakness. Are they ever replaced? e.g. Halvorsen Park, Carson Mansion.

Cure: Establish a tree-trimming crew for the city. Trim City trees to thin out heavy canopies that are subject to losing branches in storms. Keep this crew employed by hiring them out to homeowners and business owners who want their trees similarly maintained.

10) Sidewalks continue to be replaced without planter strips or holes for trees even though the City Council voted five years ago to make Eureka a street-tree-lined city.

Cure: Change the ordinance to require planter strips (boulevard strips) for all new sidewalk being poured This will not only save the builder and owner material (concrete) costs but also will save him or her money cutting out the holes at a later date to plant trees or shrubs.

11) Then there is the pulp mill toilet paper remake, already approved by the Air Quality Management District, asking the Water Board permission to reopen without meeting water discharge standards till 2013. Didn't we just get rid of the toxic fumes a couple of years ago when they said they were going to shut down forever?? Spewing fumes on a cloudy day and it gets pretty toxic in Old Town and the flatlands of Eureka.

The City Council has previously refused to get involved in the air quality concerns of Eureka residents. They stated that the pulp mill was out of the City's jurisdiction. I believe that the impact on the residents is definitely a matter the City can take up and complain to the State Resources Board for starters. Patty Berg and Wes Chesbro have made inquiries on behalf of the community that live here. Where is the City Council?

Yes, I know, Eureka has always been like this and we like it this way. No, I am not going to go back to where I came from. People like Angelina Schwab and the artists are doing great things for Humboldt. Let’s support them and make the setting for their work and place to live for all of us more sustainable and beautiful. Talk of tourism? If we make the city more livable for ourselves, who live here, people will come to see what we have here.