Cal Poly Humboldt Receives the Go Ahead to Begin Construction on New Housing Project in February
Press release from Cal Poly Humboldt:
A new Cal Poly Humboldt housing project has been approved by the California State University Board of Trustees, with construction slated to begin in February. The facility will house 964 students and Phase I will be ready for occupancy in Fall 2025.
The project, which will be built at the former Craftsman Mall site about a mile north of Cal Poly Humboldt’s main campus, comes as the University is adding new academic programs and increasing enrollment as part of its polytechnic transformation.
The project was made possible by the historic $458 million state investment in the polytechnic effort approved by the Governor and Legislature in 2021. It represents a vital investment to fuel a truly modern polytechnic education in Northern California, and will help to address much-needed housing in Humboldt County.
The housing complex will include two buildings providing a total of 964 beds in apartment-style spaces, increasing University-owned student housing by nearly 50%. Shared community areas include study rooms, student lounge and multipurpose rooms, fitness space, café/retail space, indoor bicycle parking, and residential laundry. The project also includes administrative offices and apartments for housing staff. By incorporating the Higher Education Student Housing Grant programs, the project enables Humboldt to further demonstrate its commitment to affordable and high-quality student housing.
Exterior site features include green space, recreational facilities, and outdoor barbecue area. The project will also include 340 surface parking spaces, including electric vehicle-ready parking spaces and covered bicycle parking. To minimize the impact of the building height on the surrounding neighborhoods, the buildings will be taller at the center and step down in height along the perimeter of the site. Neither building will exceed 75 feet in height.
The project is designed to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification, and will be construction type 1A, which is the highest level of fire protection under the California Building Code. Planned sustainability features include high-efficiency irrigation, water-efficient plumbing, energy-efficient and CalGreen-compliant lighting and appliances, and durable exterior building materials. Energy Star appliances and LED lighting and controls will be used throughout the project, and on-site solar energy production will be provided.
The project site has been designated by the City of Arcata as an infill opportunity zone for high-density residential development in the City’s 2019 Housing Element and in updates to the City’s General Plan that are currently in preparation. By building at that location, Cal Poly Humboldt will be able to provide significant new student housing within about a mile of the main campus.
Cal Poly Humboldt was designated the state’s third polytechnic institution on January 26, 2022. The University is adding an anticipated 27 new academic and experiential programs by 2029, with 12 launching this fall. The University is also building a number of important new facilities, including the newly approved housing project at Craftsman Mall, a new engineering and technology building, and a sustainability and microgrid center.
More information is available on the student housing project website.
More information about the broader polytechnic transformation is on the polytechnic website.
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The only classes calpoly humboldt will need to be teaching in the coming climate apocalypse are how to grow food and how to shoot straight.
they are on the line to lose some funding because of not meeting ‘enrollment goals’. do they expect some big upturn in enrollment that warrants new housing. asking for a friend
I miss the craftsman’s mall already.
Oh goodie! Now we can have a whole bunch more lazy, ignorant, entitlement crazed punks in Humboldt!
Lazy and ignorant usually aren’t the first two adjectives that come to mind when thinking of university students.
Have you met any these days? “They” are more motivated and “educated themselves” about pronouns than they are about actual facts and reality.
This will cause more traffic will be coming out if that area.
I guess the blue haired gender fluids need to live somewhere.
I think they all go to Santa Cruz already…
I don’t believe the housing will be exclusionary.
But it’s nice of you to be so considerate of this particular population.
There should be single sex housing for young women in college. HSU had a bad sexual assault problem and Poly has inherited it. There is no single sex services for rape victims in Humboldt. If a woman who has been raped wants to go to peer support counseling it is, by including males who say they are women, co-ed.
Women are female. Women should have a right to safe housing.
I agree, women should have their own state with no boys allowed…
BTW, not all men are rapists, and I would not send a young woman to college in Arcata due to the presence of dangerous drugs, crazy homeless guys, and extremely poor choices all the way around.
I sent my daughters to private schools, and they both attended private colleges on scholarships.
The idea of “single-sex housing, or single-sex services is anachronistic, illegal, discriminatory, and simply not possible.
There are “all woman” colleges, but those young women want some men around, trust me…
Boys and Girls need to communicate effectively, act like adults, and everyone, everywhere needs to learn to get along better and make sensible choices.
This is great!
1000 more students in a tiny school with no parking and lousy egress is always a good idea.
Maybe they could build a new campus to go with that!
Arcata will look like Sacramento in a few years…
There are plans for parking structures.
https://www.humboldt.edu/polytechnic/infrastructure-projects
And it’s an easy walk from there to both the campus or to downtown Arcata.
I think some people just like to complain.
Are there plans for massive “Senior Housing buildings”? Are there plans for giant “homeless buildings?”
California is steamrolling protest, and forcing Arcata into a corner, and nobody is opposing it…
Arcata is a backwards small town with a strung-out population, and hardly a site to pack in students so that the State College System can make a little more money…
CSU is as bad as Providence, and, just as poorly planned…
Re: “Arcata will look like Sacramento in a few years…”
In the context of our 13 billion year old universe, you are probably correct.
In terms of “Universal Time”, the “time of the humans” may be nearly over…
America is funding an illegal undeclared war in the Ukraine, with Billions of dollars better spent on domestic projects… Will the war go nuclear? Hmmmmm looks like a chance we shouldn’t take!
I think Arcata is a terrible place to build all this, but in 20 years I will be gone anyway…
How does a small town deal with self imposed carbon limits by increasing development? The whole carbon footprint focal point is imposing unrealistic expectations on the human mind. It’s a two tiered system.
Government and Corporations can exempt themselves from their own goals and objectives as imposed on the general population.
They could build high-density houing like the project this article is about.
But the fire district says they are over stretched. Are they going to fund another station?