news story / By Ryan Burns

Marina Center Tome Arrives

Eureka Senior Planner Sidnie Olson, who acted as middle-woman between CUE VI and ESA, the environmental consulting firm that prepared the DEIR (acronym overload!), said the cleanup will at least comply with state remediation standards, though she admitted that the specifics remain vague. “How will [CUE VI] do the actual cleanup? Will they scoop it out? Cap it? Nuke it? Send it to Mars?” She said the water quality board will issue a cleanup order, but since the project has yet to be approved, an application cannot be submitted to the board. “It’s a bit of a Catch-22,” Olson said.

Eurekans have also expressed their concerns about the project’s impact on traffic, and the DEIR won’t do anything to appease them. Marina Center likely would cause more congestion at intersections, create more traffic in general and may necessitate infrastructure developments for which CUE VI is only partially responsible, the report says. One intersection in particular — Koster Street and Wabash Avenue, between Adel’s and Costco — is identified as a likely ongoing traffic-jam.

There are plenty of other concerns related to the Balloon Track/Marina Center, but Olson stressed that many of them are not within the purview of the DEIR, which is limited to environmental impacts. “We have to respond to every single written comment we get,” Olson said. “[But] some people won’t be able to separate out the merits of the project from the environmental impacts,” she added.

In other words, complaints about Home Depot’s customer service or the Arkleys’ politics will fall on deaf ears. Even the economic impacts of the project are dealt with cursorily in the DEIR because, under California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) guidelines, the report is only required to determine whether the project is likely to cause urban decay. In a five-page chapter on the issue, the report concludes that it won’t.

“At the time that the study was prepared, the site had uncontrolled plant growth, old pieces of railroad machinery, homeless encampments, and high levels of crime and drug use,” the report reads. Now that it’s fenced off, it says, the property is just ugly, so practically any development would be an improvement. And since consultants believe the shopping center won’t annihilate local businesses elsewhere in the city, they conclude that the risk of urban decay is “less than significant.”

No doubt plenty of Eurekans will beg to differ with that conclusion. With the economy officially in a recession, many, including Councilman Glass, have speculated that the project might be abandoned. But Security National Vice President of Real Estate and Development Randy Gans said all systems are go. “The project is proceeding as planned,” Gans wrote in an e-mail to the Journal. He added that the economic downturn merely “demonstrates that the project is needed now more than ever,” claiming it will “generate more than 1,000 good-paying jobs and provide millions in tax revenues for [Eureka’s] schools and public safety.” As for the environmental impacts, Gans said the risk is insignificant, and that the “limited impact is a fair trade-off for the many benefits Marina Center will bring to the community.”

A closer look at the economic repercussions will be left in the hands of the City. Councilwoman-elect Linda Atkins refused to comment “beyond what I said in my campaign, which is that I’m totally biased toward local businesses.” Councilman-elect Frank Jäger, meanwhile, seemed apprehensive about being thrown into the middle of this contentious issue. “I think we just need to take a breath and study things,” he said. “It’s just a draft report. If changes need to be made or if there are things we don’t like, there’s time and room to do that.”

Not much. The public comment period ends January 30. For more information, including the full text of the DEIR, visit the City of Eureka’s website, www.ci.eureka.ca.gov, or call Sidnie Olson at 441-4265.

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