Don Arambula, an urban designer with Crandall Arambula PC, floated some ideas for a revitalized Downtown Crescent City on Monday. | Screenshot
Don Arambula showed a new City Council how his firm could help revitalize its downtown area by comparing Crescent City to Whitefish, Montana.
Arambula, project manager, principal planner and urban designer for the Portland-based Crandall Arambula, PC, said Monday when his firm began working on a master plan for Whitefish’s downtown business district, the city wanted to “lean into its visitor potential.” Though it’s a bit larger than Crescent City, Arambula drew a comparison, saying it, too, is on a national park’s doorstep.
“They’ve found that people want to come to Whitefish and experience a unique condition. If they’re from Georgia, they don’t want to see the same things they left in Georgia,” he said. “They wanted to have a sense of the culture and the place, and that’s really one of the founding principles we had for this project. And we suspect something like this would be appropriate also for Crescent City.”
Councilors unanimously approved a professional service agreement between the city and Crandall Arambula to create a “downtown specific plan.” According to City Manager Eric Wier, this PSA is contingent upon the city receiving $186,000 in Economic Development Administration grant money.
Councilors also approved using $64,000 in defederalized Community Development Block Grant dollars to pay for the project, the first phase of which is estimated to cost $280,000.
Another $30,000 in unspent California Endowment grant dollars set aside for economic development will also be used to pay for the first phase of the project, according to the city’s staff report.
The defederalized CDBG dollars come from unspent income a CDBG-funded program generated, according to Wier. If it’s less than $35,000 the city can use the money as it wishes. If it’s greater than $35,000, it carries “all the constraints with CDBG funding,” which makes it more difficult for the city to use, Wier said.
Crescent City is also pursuing an additional CDBG grant for $300,000, Wier said.
“We can take that money and expand this further into downtown,” he said. “We can look further at facade programs and get us to the next step where we’re shovel ready.”
The CDBG application must be submitted to the California Department of Housing and Community Development by Dec. 30, according to Wier.
Crescent City will contribute about $15,000 to the project in staff-time and $1,000 in facility space for meetings.
According to Wier, Crandall Arambula was selected out of five firms as the potential contractor for the Downtown Specific Plan through a competitive process. Each firm was interviewed by a committee that included Wier, Grants Manager Bridget Lacey, City Attorney Martha Rice, Billie Kaye Gavin Tygart, of the Downtown Divas, local realtor Ana Potter, Cindy Vosburg, executive director of the Crescent City-Del Norte County Chamber of Commerce and Alec Dompka, rural community and economic development advisor for the UC Cooperative Extension.
Wier compared the downtown specific plan to the process the city went through to make improvements to Beachfront Park, noting that the “recipes” are in the city’s Economic Development Strategic Action Plan, or EDSAP.
“We need the vision with drawings and implementation and we can get that to shovel ready and then we’ll be able to go after competitive grants to fund the implementation of it,” he said. “I’m looking at this particular plan to have those five priority projects that we can complete in the next five years.”
Crandall Arambula was founded in 1988 and focuses on urban planning and “revitalizing America’s towns and cities.” They’ve worked on projects across the country including in Grants Pass and Medford.
According to Arambula, his firm has also worked with Greenworks PC, the landscape architect spearheading Crescent City’s Beachfront Park improvements as well as its Cultural Gateway project at Front Street and U.S. 101. Arambula said the firm is also collaborating with PlanWest Partners, of Arcata, which helped Crescent City develop its Economic Development Strategic Action Plan.
If Crescent City’s Economic Development Administration grant application is successful, Arambula estimated that it would take about 12 months for his firm to complete the plan.
The plan would incorporate community engagement, including workshops, stakeholder meetings and one-on-one engagement.
There would also be drawings, fundamental concepts of what the downtown could look like. Arambula said this would include identifying the area’s hub with shops, city hall or a library that’s a five minute walk or bicycle ride from surrounding residential areas.
“Also something you shouldn’t underestimate are things like Safeway or Wild Rivers Market or Grocery Outlet,” Arambula said. “If I’m living downtown with high-density housing, I want to have a grocery store in my downtown and not have to drive miles away or even over to Walmart. This is something that would be great if you could walk to it.”
Great downtowns have a strong retail framework with anchors, which are often a grocery store, according to Arambula. This historic layout of downtowns has about 100,000 to 150,000 square feet of commercial space tied with two anchors, he said.
“If you go to a shopping mall today, they took that Main Street model and they’ve used it, and so we’re turning it on its head,” he said.
Arambula said the downtown specific plan wouldn’t just focus on 3rd and H streets and other core downtown avenues, but it would also look at how the Redwood Highway is constructed. He compared the intersection of L and M streets to an intersection in Lake Oswego, Oregon that his firm and Greenworks Design collaborated on about 25 years ago.
“This has about the same amount of traffic as L and M streets through Crescent City and it has landscaping,” he said, referring to the trees that flanked the street, stretching their branches overhead. “The landscaping calms it.”
Crescent City could also use a “downtown living room,” a plaza where people come together, Arambula said. When visiting the community for the interview, Arambula said he noticed the Christmas tree at 3rd and K streets in what he called “hexagon plaza” and said that there might be a better place for the parking lot.
The new City Council approved the agreement with Crandall Arambula without comment.
