If Ukiah isn’t careful, and in recent years Ukiah has not been careful, her housing future will be bland boxes of anonymous buildings in big complexes where you’d never want to live.
All over town big housing projects have erupted, to the point that as many citizens now live in crackerbox “affordable housing” units as live in the kind of traditional single-family houses Ukiahans have previously called home: Modest homes, ample yard space and assorted neighbors.
These houses carpet the town, from the trendy west side to the more affordable but still quite appealing homes that run many blocks in lots of neighborhoods down north and south sides of the city.
Across the freeway are fine houses on well-kept blocks and streets, plus a smattering of apartments.
Being installed now are massive projects that dwarf all others. Go north on State Street and look to the west behind the Jensen Truck Stop at an alarming development none of us remember approving or even knowing about.
Turn back and go east onto Brush Street (west is Low Gap Road) and gaze in amazement, if that’s the right word, at another new pile squatting on the north side of the road. The old familiar ag land separating North State Street and Highway 101 is gone, and this new vista will startle those who’ve not travelled Brush Street in a while.
Today the city is overseeing another overwhelming housing addition, this one on East Gobbi, already home to big projects wedged among similar cramped buildings. These are massive Ukiah-backed developments no city administrator would ever stoop to inhabit.
The first question: Why East Gobbi? If East Gobbi isn’t the most heavily trafficked artery into Ukiah then I must have counted my cars wrong. It’s a two lane strip more than sufficiently choked with vehicles, traffic lights, pedestrians and shops. This being Ukiah, of course, a lot of those shops are dark and empty. At least they aren’t contributing to the nonstop flow limping west until breaking free and dispersing north and south on State Streets.
Will the new project have a positive or negative impact on traffic flow?
I drove through State Street’s cone maze last week to take a look, parked nearby and walked around the partially completed “Village Circle” complex. What occurred to me is how little these three-story container ships nesting among each other reminded me of a “village,” never mind the circle part.
A southbound street leads in, goes around then comes back. Where does Village Circle end? It doesn’t, exactly. It just metastasizes until it merges with another Legoland development called “Summer Creek Village.” In less than a quarter-mile you can turn around and head back out. Bring a lunch.
Summer Creek Village is an already completed series of two-story gray units, numerous carports, a swimming pool a bit bigger than a pool table, and a single sad, droopy basketball hoop standing on a small graveled patch. All is surrounded by sturdy cyclone fencing alongside dead railroad tracks, and just beyond, the Homeless Highway.
Village Circle and Summer Creek will eventually absorb one another, creating a housing entity that will dwarf those puny units down on Laws Avenue.
Where will we get water for these big new projects (Brush Street, Jensen’s Truck Stop, East Gobbi Street)? Think we’ll need more cops? Will increased traffic be noticeable?
Remember, all this wild, semi-controlled big building binge has been going on (and on) at the same time Ukiah and everywhere else in California has been prevented from building single family homes. Partly it’s a result of Not-in-My-Backyardism, and mostly due to state clampdowns on new housing, no matter that most Californians would rather live in their own homes than in dormitories.
It’s also, I believe, a major part of the state planned housing shortage/homeless explosion that have run side-by-side the last 30 years. It isn’t as if Mendocino County, with a steady population of about 95,000 through the past decades, doesn’t have room to grow.
Wouldn’t most of us prefer well-designed neighborhoods of a hundred homes each, up north of Mendo College or east of Redwood Valley, than thousands of rabbit hutches in dozens of boxes, each the size of Walmart?
Too late.
All of these ‘rabbit hutch’ apartment complexes house the people that work minimum wage jobs so the elite of Ukiah don’t have to. As to more single family home neighborhoods, don’t fret, they are coming. 170 homes in a neighborhood near South State Street and Boonville Road will be breaking ground soon. But since that is outside of your walking zone, it should not causeyou ( TWK) too much indignation.