news story / By Daniel Mintz

This Time For Sure

Marina Center clears traffic hurdles; Home Depot still on board

(Sept. 4, 2008)  A now-dormant lobbying battle for and against Eureka’s Marina Center project will soon reignite if a study on the project’s environmental impacts is released as expected at the end of September or sometime in October.

But Marina Center’s environmental impact report (EIR) won’t include a full analysis of a controversial aspect: potential economic effects of the project’s retail components, which include a Home Depot big box store. That factor will be an important one in the City Council’s decision-making, however, and the project’s local permit approvals will hinge on something beyond bureaucracy — public opinion.

GALLERY >

And the project’s representatives say public opinion largely favors their plans.

It’s been about four years since Rob Arkley, Jr.’s Security National Servicing Corporation entered an agreement to buy the 38-acre Balloon Track property near Eureka’s public marina and then controversially proposed “Marina Center,” an ambitious mixed-use but retail-dependent project with a big box anchor slated for Home Depot. Work on its EIR began in the spring of 2006 with public scoping sessions and the study was expected to be completed that winter.

Speculation about Marina Center’s progress has been ongoing, and intensified when its EIR hit a string of delays. Rumors — essentially true — that the project’s considerable traffic impacts were causing logistical challenges led some to believe that Marina Center was running uphill with the weight of its consequences. But the EIR’s release is now said to be 30 to 60 days away. Observers of the process are noting that the same estimate has been given several times since the scoping sessions of two years ago. Sidnie Olson, the city’s principal planner, said a draft of the voluminous document submitted by a San Francisco firm hired by Security National has had to be rewritten but is largely done.

Although chapters on important subjects such as how the project fits with its surroundings still have to be completed, the EIR has achieved a key benchmark — the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has signed off on its traffic management analysis. Traffic and other impact-heavy aspects will be well-detailed in the document, but those who are opposed to the project based on its potential economic impacts may be disappointed. State law only requires analysis of economic impacts that result in physical changes to the environment — urban decay. With Home Depot penciled in to occupy Marina Center’s 104,000 square-foot big box space, many are convinced that smaller, locally owned home improvement stores will close.

“I know people are concerned about that,” said Olson. She explained that the EIR only examines the potential for lingering vacancies and the conclusion is that Eureka has enough lease turnover to prevent them. “If one store can’t compete against another, that’s not an environmental issue,” she continued.

But it is a social issue, one that people feel strongly about. “The City has advised CUE VI (Clean Up Eureka VI, the name under which Security National is applying for the project) from the very beginning that economic impacts would be an issue that the City Council will look at in considering the project,” said Olson.

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