City Council - Special Meeting

Amen.

Good evening. Hello. Does everybody who needs a chair have a chair? Okay. All right. Time is now 5.39 p.m. It is Tuesday, July 14th, 2026. This is the first town hall meeting for the city of Mount Shasta to determine what we would like to do at the landing, the old mill site. On behalf of the city of Mount Shasta, thank you so very much for being here. I am so proud of all of us for filling all of the seats. There's not an empty seat here. Thank you for coming. It's great to have everybody here. There are no bad ideas, any ideas worth discussing, worth mentioning. I'm gonna turn it over shortly to our consultant team, GHD. They are here in town this week. If you haven't met them already, you will. They will be interviewing all sorts of folks so that we have a good cross-section of hearing from the community. There are cards here with contact information to city staff, so if you don't get your comments in verbally tonight, you can always email them to your city planner so cards are going to be right here we have the room for two hours if we need to stay longer we can i don't think anybody's coming in tonight after we leave um and with that i am going to turn it over to jonathan yep okay

Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for coming out, giving us your time and your trust. So we're going to start with a project introduction and ourselves as well. My name is Jonathan Linkus. I work for GHD. We are a broad service firm that includes a planning department, and I am the planning lead. And let's get right to our team here. I think we've got a schedule. But again, I'm Jonathan Linkus. I'm joined by Linda Congleton. She is our economic strategist. Do you want to speak about yourself for a second?

I'm Linda Congleton. I'm a sub-consultant to GHD. I've had my own firm for 40 years. We have a unique specialization in what we call small towns. We adore working with small towns and enhancing the vitality, the economics, making sure that everything works. Our job is to make sure that what is recommended just doesn't get into a plan that is thrown into the trash can or just filed away and never gets built. Our job is successful if whatever gets recommended actually gets built and implemented. It may take a number of years because many of these very large sites do, particularly brownfield sites or toxic or very large ones. But we're proud to say that we can point to many projects that are up, built, and the community enjoys them. So if you have any questions, we will later on highlight. We were part of the input on this presentation. I will let you know we are just starting our job, so we don't have any answers yet. We're just doing our preliminary field work to make sure that we truly understand your community. We look forward to your input. And we're looking at, this began because this is a very large site, we have a full array of product types, we call them product types, whether it's commercial, housing, entertainment, community services, we're looking at all of them. So I'll turn this back to Jonathan.

And we're also joined by Todd Tregenza. Thank you. Todd Tregenza. I'm a principal with GHD. I've been with the company 18, 19 years now, and my focus is in transportation. We want to make sure that this site, you know, working with you all to envision it, is well connected from a transportation perspective, whether that means trails. access to and from the major streets, looking at how you access the site from the interregional, the state routes, Interstate 5. There will be a process to go through with Caltrans. That's something that I've done a lot of work with over the length of my career, including in this district, the District 2, it's called, in Caltrans lingo, working in cities of Redding, Shasta County. My first project in Siskiyou County, so I'm really excited to be up here. Yeah, we'll pass it back to Jonathan to get us going. But if there's anything, questions related to infrastructure, particularly transportation, I'm here. I'm your guy for that. With that.

Thanks. So it's also important to mention that the three of us have actually worked together on California-specific plans in small towns for almost six years now, and this will be our fourth or fifth as a unified team. Stepping back on our slides one tick, we are looking at a plan process that is within this year, and we're midsummer right now, and this is workshop one where we're talking about vision. and initial ideas. After that, Linda is going to buckle down and develop a kind of economic study. And in conjunction with that, we will develop alternative layouts for the site, doing some site planning, but not committing to one. We're going to come back to you in August with a workshop to present those alternatives. And you will have a direct say in site design, site character, density, and uses with pictures depicting what those potentials are. So that's a very creative workshop. We hope all of you, at least all of you, come to that one. And then we're going to consolidate it. We're going to come up with one plan based on all of your input from that. in workshop three we'll present that finalized plan as a draft for you to provide final comments concerns anything else you want to see in the plan document then we'll revise that once more before presenting to the planning commission and that's also a public hearing and then the adoption process in autumn with city council is of course a public process as well so there's a lot of stages for you to engage this keep tabs see it develop with your voice so it's an evolution So that's our project introduction. What we're doing today in workshop one, we have three major goals. We're going to introduce the process as I just began. We're going to share our initial ideas about the overall uses on the site. This is very preliminary. We started about four or five business days ago. We have more to come, but we want to hear from you upfront. And with that, we're here to integrate your vision, what you want from the landing site, what you've felt might be missing from your community, what you'd like to see more or less of. Any input is good. To review, most of you are probably familiar with the extent of the Roseburg Mill site, and this has been a site in question for the city for a long time. There's a west portion, west of Shasta Boulevard, and this map that's to the bottom, and let's see, I have a laser pointer here. So we've got this portion, which was most of the mill, and the Superfund site concerned a significant amount of cleanup in this area. We also have an eastern portion here. It's at the top of the drawing. And overall, we're looking at about 120 acres of available land. This map is important because it is the product or the outcome of the cleanup process that involves a land use covenant with areas of restricted use. And those are due to the fact that it's safest to build in these areas for housing, habitation, water, but elsewhere, they're generally safe, but we have to limit our uses to outdoor, I think commercial. The land use covenant clarifies that, and that's a public document. So I think some of you might be wondering, haven't we been here before? We've been talking about planning the site for a long time. And indeed, in 1999, there was a planning document that laid out overall land use areas and potential phasing. So that was a first take on what could happen with that site. There was a market assessment. This was a long time ago, a quarter century ago, identifying what commercial uses primarily could fit on the site. It laid out some development standards that we might want to take a look at. And it included some high-level utility planning. More recently, just a decade ago, we had the landing area-wide plan. So this is like a light master plan. It included a lot of guidance on how to market the site to the development community, a sort of economic strategy on the outside. Business owners in town were interviewed. We also had a broad land use concept and a site plan, and it made some high-level recommendations about the environmental cleanup. So that was before the cleanup proceeded. So the question is, what's different about this plan that we're doing or starting right now? We're after COVID, so in the post-COVID era, employment and recreation trends have changed, and that changes the economic input that Lynda is going to provide to us. Also, this is post the environmental cleanup, so the land use covenant has established what we can and can't do in key areas, and it also assures us that the site has succeeded in the cleanup process. We're all facing a housing crisis, a crisis of affordability and supply and availability. This is something we're all familiar with and we all face in different ways in our families and our coworkers. So this is very important to the outcome that we put into the master plan. This project is going to have a much more detailed market forecast. through Linda Congleton's group. And it's gonna be detailed in terms of development types, possibly even discussing some of those tendencies. And I think that's a much sharper long range forecast than we've seen recently, especially in 2015. There is an interested party that was identified through a public bid process, an open process that's codified by the California Surplus Land Act. So this would be a developer that is talking to the city and will be a stakeholder in the design process. Shasta is doing very well. It's a healthy community economically, environmentally, with growing markets and tourism, a desire for conferences that want to come. Yeah, the SISCU is. Regional economy, as Linda just mentioned, is doing very well. These are things we want to capture in the city of Mount Shasta, and this site is an opportunity for that. Another difference is the last two plans did not have public community workshops like this that are open and creative in style. So we want to incorporate your vision and your voice. We're going to provide very detailed site design that leads to an entitlements package and a CEQA process. after our work is done. And I think something that's most important to me is we want to improve on the site planning we've seen to date by providing something that's very cohesive and pedestrian oriented. So all of the uses work in a synergistic way coming together so that each use benefits from its neighboring uses. And that creates economic resiliency and a better public realm for us as citizens and visitors. This is the area plan in 2015. So you can see there's a few uses suggested that sort of commingle on a mixed-use site. I think one of the initial thoughts we had as urban designers is that these uses exist together, but they don't interact. And a lot of them have their own parking. It feels very much like a corporate sort of commerce park you might see in Southern California. I think we can do a lot better than that, and we can achieve a greater synergy between these uses and possibly have a greater range of uses than what you see here. This looks very commercial, light industrial to me. And this wasn't necessarily tied to a detailed economic study. So we take it as input, but we take it with a grain of salt. So with that, we want to make a project promise from the get-go. Something that's important to us and something that will evolve with your input are our project priorities. These are a little like principles or policies we're starting out with. So we want to support and supplement downtown Mount Shasta and all of the businesses within the city. This does not need to compete with downtown. It has to be timed in a way that as the site grows and the community grows with it, the right uses come online at the right time. So it needs to supplement and bring people in, essentially. It's going to be a mixed-use site. It's not going to be one use. And it has to be cohesive. So all of those different uses need to be close to each other, surrounded by good pedestrian-focused public spaces, a little like a village, if you will. It's gonna generate jobs for the local workforce, and this has to be a range of jobs, I'll add. Affordable housing, that's important. I think that's also codified in the agreements the city has made with us and with the Interested Development Party. So affordable housing is required for this project. It may include senior housing. I'm sorry. Great, yeah. And opportunities for local entrepreneurs. So a business owner that might exist in downtown or somewhere outside of downtown, maybe they wanna grow, maybe they want more outdoor seating, maybe they wanna double in size or open an online portion. They're gonna wanna see some opportunities for themselves in the site. So it's another way of supplementing and supporting existing businesses. regionally appropriate form, style, and density. So what we want to bring in here has to be architecturally standardized or codified in a way that befits the image of Shasta. And what that is, we need your help to identify. We can take a lot of cues from what's great about the community now. But overall, we want to make sure that the density, the relationship to trees, the relationship to views is something that's healthy and something we're just glad to visit and see. We don't want to import something It has to be resilient economically. So this means that if we have a downturn or a shift, those buildings can be used in a different way. So certain buildings need to have a flexibility for different tenancies. And it has to be environmentally resilient too. So that includes ways that allow you to park once on the site and not need to park two or three times to visit different uses. People from outside the community can park once. Maybe they can catch a tram up into downtown. These kind of things can also be put into the master plan. And also stormwater control. Can we retain stormwater on the site so that it's cleaned before it leaves the site? These are things that we like to think of when we think of master planning for environmental resiliency. What this project will not include, this is just as important as our promises, data centers and telecom uses. These are big, low employment economic entities that don't belong in Mount Shasta, maybe somewhere else in the country. We don't intend to bring back large scale heavy industrial like the mill that existed before. It was a great employer at one time. The economy has shifted and so has Mt. Shasta's economy and culture. We don't intend for a single user or single employer, so it's not going to be all one site for one big resort or one big hotel. It's going to be a mixed use site with multiple parcels. In that sense, we're also ensuring that it's the granularity of the city you have today. It's not going to be in direct competition with downtown. So we're not bringing in a copy of a business you already have. And that's a part of Linda Congleton's assessment of what's suitable. And that makes economic sense. You don't want to have something that's copycatting and competing. You want to make sure that it's going to have its own advantage in its own ways. And that's how you get economic health. No major sound or light impact. There's some discussion in this presentation about an amphitheater or events. So when I come here, I've got family in Reno, Nevada. The dark sky is something I cherish. My family and I look up at night. when we're in Tahoe, it's the same thing here. When I come here, these are the things that are precious to me. So we want to make sure that there's a standard for lighting control in dark skies and any amphitheater or like music event use has to be shielded or positioned on the site that directs the sound away from the community. These are all the details in the urban design. No major utilities, so we're not talking about a big infrastructural use like water treatment or sorting disposal. Car sales are not a use we're considering here, if that was a concern. Storage, like personal storage, doesn't employ a lot of people. It's not a real economic agitator in the way we would like to see on the site. We're not considering a large truck stop, if that's a concern, proximal to the five. So, these are just thoughts we've had in the last four days of working on this. And so, with that, we're going to review some initial ideas about development types. These entail a use, an activity, how they might look, and these are just draft thoughts. These are thoughts we've had in the first four days of working on this. So, this will evolve with Linda's economic research and your input. So, Linda, please chime in on any of these.

from you, because we're looking at

Thank you. What we're really looking for you, too, is what is most important in terms of primary home uses that could be on the site. We're looking at for sale, affordable for sale. We're looking at small units, cottage units. We're looking at rentals. We're looking at a broad spectrum. So we'd love to hear your input and what is most important to you. So these are just very preliminary looks, but we would like your feedback on them.

Here you can hold that. I think this is working.

Yeah.

All right. So development types, we've got a few to review here. And again, these are just initial thoughts. Um, main use is considered at this time, uh, a hotel type, uh, retail types, um, uh, housing type, uh, multi-use and, uh, some ideas about resorts. And, um, we're also going to discuss a broad bullet list of community facilities and outdoor uses. This is real simple stuff. So for a hotel type, we're looking at a limited service. This is something that exists in a lot of resort communities, rural communities. It looks good. It's not your standard Holiday Inn Express template building surrounded by parking. We're looking at types that abut pedestrian facilities like this. A lot of these are boutique brands. A lot of them support conference activities that benefit from these well-manicured landscapes, and this kind of thing is outside of national parks. This example, I think, is in Utah. Linda, you brought this example.

These are just some examples in Springdale, if you know the Utah area, where actually these are major chains, but they were able to get them to design them in a way that's much more sensitive to the community.

This is a retail village town center. This is a low-slung retail development. This is the way to do it in small scale while it's still pedestrian. So this is not a mall. This is not an outlet center. This is something that usually involves a green common or a plaza that hosts small events. It's privately controlled in the way that you feel safe. You can park once and let your kids walk around, and it will host a lot of boutique businesses.

We're also looking at ways how you as a city can have an entertainment green space, but maybe not necessarily spend a lot of money on managing it if it can possibly be managed by the private sector, but the community is invited. These are just creative ideas so that you have that wonderful entertainment space, but it doesn't come out of city resources. Just one creative idea.

I think what's really important about these types is imagine a common space like the one at the bottom left here. Imagine that facing the side entrance to one of the hotels we just showed you in that previous image. You can really create synergy where they benefit from each other. A visitor is going to really appreciate just being able to step out and enjoy that space. And these are very pedestrian focused and these are highly amenitized. You've got seating, landscapes, shade structures. It's a way of differing a little bit from what's offered in the downtown Main Street format. In the affordable housing area, a favorite of ours is this kind of low-cost, small lot starter home that is describable as a bungalow or cottage. These are one-story buildings. We've seen examples for two-story, but we think one-story is best here. Cost-effective, what we would call a kit of parts architecture, where a pad is purchased and you identify the different architectural features or style. And this is not a mobile home or trailer, but some of the parts can be assembled on site as like a wall or window. Again, small lots. These are trending right now as a starter home type in places like Mount Shasta. These are single family for sale units. Typically, they're not usually a rental product. And most commonly, there are the moderate affordable tiers. So there's two tiers in an affordable housing plan with a municipality. There's moderate and very low. This would be the moderate category I think.

Well, it differs from county to county, but usually there's low income, then there's moderate level, and then there's market rate. But one of the goals that we will be looking at, because it's very difficult to get federal funds, is can units be produced in the community that do not require going after government funds, but are still affordable to the community? That's one goal that we're trying to pursue. Because otherwise you might be in... to trying to get government funds for five to ten years, and it's a very long, arduous process.

Yeah, this is below the standard rate you're going to find for a privately sold home out on the market. That's what we call market rate. There are rules about what percentage of median price level you're going to see in the housing element of your community plan. So, there was a question about this? I've heard the train from my hotel room. One of the things we're looking at is the site positioning. I think a favorite for us on the housing piece of this is going to be on the east side of Shasta Boulevard. At least most of that is going to go in that direction.

That's one possibility where you don't have the noise factor. It's also extremely attractive over there.

And that's a standard you can set too, the double pane windows, that thing adds cost to homes, but that can also be a development standard.

But these are just very preliminary ideas. We need to explore it as we go along.

These look great. This is a new type. When I was in architecture school, you talk about prefab and modular homes, and they didn't look like this 15 years ago. So the interiors of these are basically a modern home. What I like about them is they tend to create these concise or compact pedestrian-focused community spaces. That's not an attached product, but creates an intimacy that I think is really suitable for Mount Shasta. these inspire me I think they're really great we understand in your community you call them tiny homes but tiny homes are a full range I mean you can be super super tiny or you can have two bedroom one bath and they can still be very small we're open to other types and it really the outcome of your research Linda is going to inform whether this is the only product or the right product on its own but this is our initial thought before we do that

Before we go on to different products, we didn't get the right pictures to incorporate this. We'd like to also look at rental units that what we call workforce housing for young people who really want to stay in the community. Typically, these kinds of units are two sets of people. Either move-down renters, people who don't want to be in the big house anymore, or it's younger people that want small, efficient units, but they They want everything modern inside. They want it to look cool. They want it to be aesthetic. From what we have seen so far, you really lack new rental housing that is attractively designed. It doesn't have to be super dense and look like it came out of You know, San Francisco, it can fit the community, but we'd like to give it a character that fits here, but they might be small. But what we'd like to see is bring them on at a size and an affordability. You seem to like a real niche of units within a certain price range for rent in your community.

And that can be a two-story?

It could be single. It could be two. It could be three. We don't see this as high number units. And that's one thing we're looking at. It's also price considerations. We want to keep the price of the units down. But we would like to bring an aesthetic to the community that fits in, that fits in with everything.

For hotel types, in addition to the conference limited service offer, we're looking at these kind of boutique camps. Sometimes they're called pod or container hotels. They are cabin style. Some of these pop up as an Airstream hotel where you're renting these very nice like appointed trailer. They're basically an amenitized summer camp setting. These are not very low cost always. They're trendy. They're mid-tier and up. emphasizing music, food, and reasons to gather outside of your cabin or container. These are usually destination weekend resorts. You'll see these in the middle of a winery in Paso Robles or on the cusp of the desert in Joshua Tree. So these are in picturesque places. And they are permanent installations, even though it's often a modular architecture. So they're permanent in layout. They're low-key in design. They fit well among trees and naturalistic landscaping. And they're just kind of a low-key way of feeling like you're in a cabin, but it's a little different. These usually have a unique quality to each one. The one on the bottom left is in the middle of a winery. I thought that was a good example of how these can be instances of high design. And they're creative. And I think there's a few of these popping up in this region that you've seen. Any one of these uses could be tied to a small event amphitheater. Don't know where there's a we're looking at the size of small to midsize of 100 to 300 attendees. This is probably outdoor limited size stage public access or it could be controlled entry. Something like this could be connected or part of a retail. or a public park facility. The example image in the background here is actually part of a modular hotel in the example I just showed.

This is actually an example in Montana that's well attended. As you can see, they have many events.

They'll sometimes have a limited food beverage connected to that. That's this example in Montana connected to one of these modular hotels. Some of these are civic examples. The top left and the right side are municipal facilities in community parks. Right now the city does not operate its own municipally owned amphitheater. So having the ability to control and offer that to you is important to them. This facility could also be something that's indoor, like a conference center with an event or music used to it, like a small performing arts center. I can think of a few examples like that. Moving on, multi-use flex commercial. What's important about an example like this is it's a loose fit for a lot of different tenants. And it's usually one story. It's low slung. It's popular with small businesses. Think of like a brewer or a distiller in town. that wants a workspace, but also wants a customer facing space tied to that. So that's right in the next bullet. Customer facing retail can be a part of this in surprising ways. These are low cost spaces, so they're great for entrepreneurs, startups, small businesses. They're resilient in that you can have a yoga studio, and if that's not doing so well in the next economy, it switches to a wood products fabricator and they're making you know deck chairs out of a wood product. So in that sense you can have this kind of no impact industrial that has a different kind of employment. So it offers the community a form of economic resiliency. I really like this example in Carpinteria another small town that's a resort oriented. This metery here has a customer-facing space on the right side, but they also have all of their brewing tons that you can view through a little window on the side.

We'd like to emphasize that many of these successful facilities are kind of a blend of retail slash industrial slash entrepreneur, and that's one of the elements that makes them very creative and flexible for your future.

What's great about the metery example here is out the back they've got tables, chairs, They've got a trellis with lights and it's a hangout. The empanada the food truck comes up and there's a little bit of synergy there and they're facing a beautiful meadow out the back door. So yes it's it's kind of a simple architecture but it can create these little magic moments within the community. The last example we're going to run through today is this idea of a kind of a luxury resort for motor coach living or motor coach visitation. Again, a low slung, low density site that's highly amenitized. These are usually very well manicured sites. The example image in the background is probably on the luxury end of that example. These are short-term rentals. This is not long-term or ownership usually. Small cabins. bungalows that are next to a parking space for a large RV. So this is some nice living when you're on vacation. Events, food and beverage is usually in a kind of lodge attached to these. Sometimes there's entertainment. You'll bring in a guest chef. So they have a kind of events program throughout the season. There may be a limited number of bungalows for sale, almost like a second home or cabin. And this ranges from mid-tier to luxuries. This example is clearly on the higher end of that. But we wanted to show, I'd never seen something like this before doing research on this project. So I was just fascinated by this sort of outdoor kitchen. This kind of thing is a way of coming to a rural area in a flexible manner. On the upper left here, you can see the denser version of that. You get a few more RVs per acre. On the right, the example in the Midwest here, You can see this fits really well in among trees, water features, so you get the beauty of the site while you get basically a luxury resort coexisting in that space. So I thought they were really interesting. Community facilities we've also run through in the brainstorming with the city in the last three days we've been here. A community amphitheater, we had just mentioned that, but it might be a public part of a park. A performing arts center or conference center that's indoor, small, probably no larger than this, but has a broader range of uses, would be useful to the city. Different events operators have approached the city asking, do you have a conference center? Do you have a convention space? And that's an opportunity we don't want to be missing in the future.

We wouldn't want to forget something like even weddings and events, to our knowledge. I mean, you've got the Mount Chester Resort, but that's a different kind of beast. What if you were having the ability to have a small conference center, beautiful green, people could have, you know, local weddings there. It would be a nice amenity. And when we say a conference facility, something that really is updated where you could have small little meetings. you know, 100 people at most, you know, or maybe it's 50 to 100 where they can come up. Obviously, they'd be spending time catering to local businesses, going to the local restaurants. This is the kind of amenities, but we're not talking huge conference center or a convention center. It's more like a boutique one fitting to your community.

A real common use off-season for this is training for companies. They'll have creative retreats, required training, continuing education. This is something that even our own police department can use space. So with that, Consolidated Police Station has been considered. They're in a very small facility. And an updated one that serves the community and its safety needs on site would really be a great potential public use of the site. Potentially some civic center uses either a new place for council to meet or offices for city departments may have a home in among other uses. We've talked to the city about a business incubator a community kitchen. This is something where a small business doesn't have the capital for a space doesn't want to invest in the interior but they want to start a restaurant. They need a year to get off their feet. get off the ground. And this is not just restaurants and caterers. This can also be a fabricator, something that's working in tech. You get a lot of interesting stuff coming through a municipal business incubator. I've seen some cool ones. A city visitor center. There's been talk about having a new updated one on the site, especially with that off ramp into the city. So it's still en route into downtown, connected to the community. And lastly, we generated a quick list of outdoor public spaces. So trail network is already, there's a gateway at the east end of the east side of Mount Shasta, and that's a new trail. I think that's this year. So we want to bring the trail network onto the site and ensure that pedestrian routes through the site that aren't just sidewalks, their off-street paths are threading through and connected to something greater. It's a regional weave. A community park with a pond, there's a few areas that would make a lot of sense for stormwater capture, existing water flows. A plaza or green commons, whether that's public or part of a retail space, I think would be really great. Let your kids run free. Don't have to worry about cars. Creeks and stormwater best practices. This ensures that we're not just sending it to a storm drain. The runoff created by new development on the site is part of the beauty of the site, and that It's something we love as planners. And to the extent possible, conserving groves of trees and view corridors from the freeway to the mountain, from the site to the mountain where possible, this is something that we love about the site and about the city. So I think we should open up to some discussion now.

My name is Belinda. I know that there's a problem with infrastructure down there. There isn't any, I'm pretty sure. and I don't know how we're going to manifest that. But I also am very concerned you have the housing on the east and the, is that right, east and the development, the commercial development more on the west, and getting across that highway with them coming up off the freeway, you know, so I hope, I mean, I'm assuming the person that was the traffic guy has that It's bad enough because of the weird turn towards where the old wayside was. I don't know what that is anymore.

It's just a mess.

It's a mess. Okay.

I think we're speaking to crossing safety on the road.

If you want to comment, go ahead.

Essentially, you're concerned about the ability to cross the street.

And the traffic flow off of I-5. 89 I-5, that whole mess. Yeah.

So we identified early on that we'll need to have a conversation with Caltrans and see what some solutions might be that frankly help both parties. Well, there's many parties, right? There's the ultimate developers, there's Citi, Caltrans, there's Federal Highways is involved because it's Interstate 5. So there's a lot of stakeholders that we need to talk to about that regional access. And in terms of getting across the street, certainly we want to make sure that when we're planning this out, these are not two separate pads, right? This is one site that has some connectivity across it, connects into that trailhead that we were just talking about. So it's early days, but those are the types of things that we definitely are thinking about. They're the types of things we brought up with the city when we were, frankly, trying to get the job. I have an answer.

It's more like, are you aware?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, understood. Yeah, from 89 to I-5 and getting off quickly, it's funky.

Imagine if you're on a bicycle trying to get across 89.

For sure. Yeah.

And Caltrans has been not helpful, by the way. They're not nice guys.

Who is that? Caltrans. Oh. Well, it's a big organization. I know some great people.

Because our city park right now, no offense, but it's very limited. I'd like to see some tent camping somewhere. for people that don't have massive RVs that cost $200,000. But if we do have an RV park, I'd like it to be electrified so that we're not listening to generators and maybe some rules in there where... I was out in May and I had to stay at an RV park and oh my God, these people have LED lights on, lit up outside all damn night long. So we don't want any of that. At least I don't. Yeah, I'd like to see the stars and I think people that come here would like to too. I'd love to see some kind of senior housing and tiny home village type of thing. If we have maybe even an elder care place that you could have a memory care or something, because people just don't have that here. And if you're single and don't have family, and you might need a place to go instead of wandering the streets.

These are great.

Great idea. So a tiny home village is kind of similar to the bungalows that you showed, except that technically they're movable, but they would tend to not be. And we have our own ordinance here that we're crafting and recrafting. So a space for that so that when people come, they go, oh, look at that. Isn't that cool? And they take those ideas home. And then a food truck space.

Yeah.

Food truck park. So that we could bring food trucks in. Yeah. Maybe close to the music area.

Those are cool, the food truck parks. Yeah.

Okay. Before you go on, John wants to point out the blue areas. We can't touch those.

I think we can put a commercial or industrial use on those. Someone correct me at the city. But you cannot put housing, essentially what planners call a habitation use. So hotel, camping, RV, or housing on the blue, they're barely blue on the screen, LUC or land use covenant areas. And they're all the same. So those are the areas where there, I think, may be just enough toxicity that you're safe if you're visiting the site or spending time on it, but you don't want plumbing into housing there. And what's interesting is those are also the least developable areas. We drove through LUC2 yesterday and almost got our Mazda stuck. There is ruins from some of the mill still there. They can be part of a visual feature that may or may not be incorporated.

or they're like shared common areas. So when my daughter lived in Eugene, they had apartments, but this could be scaled down so that it's a, you know, you could do like kind of like duplex size apartments places, and they have like four individual bedrooms with private baths, but the kitchens, living rooms, and dining rooms are a shared space. Because if you think about it, I mean, how often do people use that? And we have a lot of seasonality to our community, and people come and need a job for the summer, you know, college kids or people moving to the area who want to explore, and it's a great way to get into... It's a more affordable option. And I like the idea that the younger gentleman was talking about. I love the climbing wall idea. I love the... You know, the bike washing station. My family comes from a lot of bike riding, and my mom actually, she did a... She shut down Cañada Road in the Bay Area for bike traffic on the weekends. Anyway... I like the idea of the hostel, and one of the thoughts I had there is, I don't know if you're familiar with Costa Nova, but it's a resort on the California coast between Santa Cruz and Monterey, and they offer different services. One of them is like tent services. They're set up tents. We call it like glamping. And you can just kind of rent the place, kind of like a hostel. But it's like in a tent space, so it'd be kind of like, oh, we're in Mount Shasta, we're camping. But they're pre-set up, and they have electricity, and then you can get showers in a common area. Yeah, I mentioned the co-working spaces because I think that's important. One of the things, because we have so many artists here, and I think it's difficult for people to always set up booths, but during like spring to fall, it would be nice to have a pre-setup booth area where vendors can easily come in and sell their wares and their unique things, because it takes a lot of effort to haul everything in all the time. And I don't know if you're aware, but there's an osprey nest over on South Mount Shasta Boulevard on the old radio tower. An osprey, it's a bird. It's a bird.

It flies.

You did awesome. Yeah. And so I just want to make sure that whatever we do, that they're protected because we want to like. be respectful of our animal and bird friends. And I would be in favor of downward lighting, keeping building height to 25 feet height. I love the theater area aspect. We have, I know people in the community who do theater, and I would love to see them be able to, you know, do their Shakespeare in a local venue. So I like that garage door with the outdoor, indoor thing, because we do have to think about the snow. I heard senior services, I thought that was great. I love the natural materials for drainage. And then... This probably isn't part of your scope, but like sound is an issue here from Highway 5. And if there was any way to do a little bit of a, it's the scenic volcanic legacy byway. And I've personally been talking to like Caltrans for, I don't know, at least a decade now, to try to do a rock berm area, because a true sound wall would have graffiti, and we don't want that. That would be ugly. But because it's the natural, I'm butchering this, I always get it wrong, but it's the Volcanic Scenic Legacy Byway on Highway 5 here, and it goes down 89. And up in Oregon between Medford and Eagle Point, they did this like rock sound wall. And I just thought that would tie in really well to our natural environment here and see if that works, you know. I think there would be ways to build it that it could work just between like, you know, 89 and like Lassen Bridge kind of thing. So, and I think that's all I had. Thank you.

That was a lot.

No, that's a good thing.

Just pass it on down the line. My name is Steve Sattel.

Stand up.

My name is Steve Sattel, and I think everybody's noticed that every fall we have a couple of feet of leaves around the community. And what I see is an opportunity for someone to collect those leaves, taking them to an area where they can be composted, broken down, turned into a soil. And in the meantime, set up a worm composter where you have the waste, food waste, coming out of the supermarkets and the restaurants and the grocery stores and create a high-value soil product that could be sold. Also, since you have the soil around, you might as well have some greenhouses and put in, have... a localized food source. In the future, I think we'll probably need that more and more. Another idea that I have is to have some custom sewing and make a branded product based on Mount Shasta. And a real good example of a successful business like that is Cotopaxi. And I think that would do really well.

We're having a hard time hearing up here.

And then I have one other comment, and it's regarding the pond. Please don't line it in blue.

No, it's a natural drainage pond.

Thank you. So my name is Jane Rothenberg. I've lived here about 40 years. And I don't know if this is even pertinent to what's going on there, because I don't have a visual of the area you're really talking about. I just know that the side area where the logging was years and years ago, there was actually a circus that came through town and was in that area, I remember. Anyway, I'm wondering... When you're developing these natural areas, how big they're gonna be, and is it gonna attract and affect the wildlife? And just like she was talking about the Osprey. And if there's gonna be more traffic coming through, are we gonna have dead animals on the street? And again, I don't know. Is it a big enough area? Are you gonna develop it so animals are gonna be attracted? Or is it gonna be developed so animals are not attracted to coming into that area? So I guess that's my main concern is the wildlife in the area. And I know, I don't know, again, I don't know if this is pertinent. I don't know if this is something that could happen. Or anyway, I've seen those overpasses for animals over the highways. And I was thinking something like that. If that's even a concern.

Introducing a wildlife overpass. Well, that's something that would involve Caltrans and the highway. But You speak to the broader issue of is there wildlife now on the site? Are they going to be affected? Are they going to be attracted or shying away from a newly developed site? This is a whole chapter within what's called an impact statement mitigated negative declaration document that typically is the CEQA format document that would follow this. So this is the environmental study. It's a little shorter form. But even in that shorter form, you still have a section on biota, you know, plants and animals that are living on the site. And it's a study that sends a biologist in boots onto the site to look for endangered species, species at risk, raptors, such as a falcon that's living on the site, and that's documented. And certain kinds of falcons, you have to build around them or accommodate them if there's a nest sometimes there's a margin of space you have to consider when you're developing that. So that year of time after our master plan when there's a CEQA process, that's actually a detailed study for that. And it's not work I do directly, but it heartens me to know that it gets into such granularity when it comes to boots on the ground.

Yeah, that sounds good to me too.

Thanks. I'll stand. Thank you. You're welcome. One of the things that I love about Mount Shasta is the people. I've only been here three years, but in a lot of other places that I lived, people just thought I was crazy, the kinds of things that I would talk about. And there's like a different frequency here. That might sound weird, but the kind of people that I talk to here, we just have really different conversations that I really appreciate, and it's just amazing how many people that I'll meet, and it's like, wow, we're thinking about the same stuff. So the people aspect and just the conversations, whether it's at grocery stores, at parks, is just out of this world compared to anywhere else that I've lived. So I really loved, you should, an outdoor kitchen for a moment, but With any different space, just really thinking about where people are gonna congregate and conversate would be really lovely, please.

That's a great compliment for your community.

Yeah, it seems that a lot of the public spaces we imagine or want to include in an urban plan are really gonna succeed here more than any other place that we've worked because People are drawn to those spaces. People activate them with their sense of self. And they're not forlorn. They're gonna be inhabited by people who are bringing their ideas, their creativity. They're gonna set up an impromptu sculpture and sit next to it or promote their sense of spirituality. And so that's something I really love about working here already in three days. So definitely hearing what you're saying there.

Am I good here?

Yes.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, so my name is Bill Meese. I've been here almost 50 years, living close by here. And I had an experience, not a great experience, just an interesting one, down at that landing property about four or five years ago. I saw a great lenticular cloud, and I like to take pictures of them. And I realized some of these clouds disappear quickly, so I went to the landing, because that's where my car was, and I just went in, and I went to the I guess it would be the southwest corner of the property, and turned around and looked up at the mountain, got a great picture, and realized, you know, I bet if they develop this place, they're going to miss the fact that the view from this corner is really exceptional. And so I would like to see some way for the community that lives there to have an open space in that corner where they can enjoy the view, because oftentimes the view is ignored, believe it or not, even though it's the thing that adds value monetarily to properties in the area. If you have a view, it's worth more. Well, that view from there is kind of priceless to that part of town. So I just recommend trying to incorporate that idea in your planning. Yeah.

Any chance you can point to where you were?

There would be if I could see better, but my eyes are really bad. Okay, I'm coming up.

I'll tell her where I was because it was where we were when we...

I think we walked this.

So when we walked this yesterday down on the bottom corner... and we were going up by the freeway and you were looking for a spot to where you could find, we could get to the freeway. And you guys all look back at the mountain and went, well, this is a great view of the mountain. That's where we were down on that Southwest corner. Cause we walked the entire property yesterday. I pointed out, we pointed out all the different things. So that was one thing that they already noticed was like, this is a great view from here. And they had a bunch of ideas come up. but, uh, Thank you for reaffirming that with us here. I got one more newbie. And then another one. And then we're getting up in our time thing, but this is great. So I'm going to move on to our new people and then I'll move back and then we'll do further comments.

My name is Casey and I know a lot of people here. Really excited for all of these ideas. I share that sentiment. I think what you guys put together looks great so far and I'm excited to see the continued progress. I ride my bike down there through the landing about four or five times a week with my dog, Larry. So I'm a little disappointed to lose our private bike riding area, but for the good of the community, I'm all for this. A couple of cool things that I think would be great is like a shared kitchen space. I know one thing that makes it really difficult both for food trucks and restaurants in different ways. For food trucks in California, it can be difficult because you need, no matter what your truck is, you still need a commercial kitchen in which to prepare a lot of your stuff. And so I think some sort of shared commercial kitchen where people could rent out, you know, whatever their needs are. Maybe they need two hours every other day, something like that to then make it easier for more food trucks in the community. Similarly to that, the model where you have a commercial restaurant set up and maybe somebody doesn't think they can run that seven days a week, but maybe they want to do like two nights a week and you have kind of a restaurant that serves a variety of different chefs or it's almost like a different restaurant each night. And then people take it upon themselves to kind of advertise and get people there, but utilizing that one commercial space. So it's not on an individual to open that. I think it was a really cool idea. And then talking about what Noah was talking about with the bike paths, I would love to see a bike path that goes all the way from here down there, but then all the way out to the lake actually. So going under I-5 where the train goes under, if you're looking from the landing through that up to the left side, there's a road that's a little, it's still under I-5. So rather than having to like drill a big hole under I-5 or put an overpass, I don't know if the train company would allow a bike path kind of as far away as possible from the railroad, but that would be awesome if it could continue out there and go all the way to the lake.

Yeah, we saw that side road.

Yeah, so right along that I think is probably one of the only spots to get a bike path where it can be off the road.

But there's precedence for it I've seen across California.

Well, I'll trust in your expertise. Let's see. Oh, and then On that same note, whatever that bike path then looks like coming up to downtown, you mentioned a trolley or a tram of some sort. So it could be off of the main driving traffic road. And maybe if that tram is slow moving enough, it could kind of like share that multi-use path and be sort of off the main road, but, but heading, but between downtown and the, but you know, the tram doesn't have to move that fast. If you're just sitting on it, as you said, it's not that far. but it would be nice for a lot of folks to have a way to sit and ride.

We also have some affordable alternatives for that. Oh, cool. It doesn't have to be an expensive, big shuttle. You know, it could be kind of a pool. Yeah. Right.

Sweet. And then the last thing was just kind of touching, it looks like Noah's taken off, but anyway. The climbing gym idea, I love that one. I've actually, in a past life, helped build and open a couple climbing gyms. And from doing that research, our community is really small to support that, but I think that there is a way with like a co-op model of a climbing gym that... and a friend actually out in Colorado has done this, where people have a membership and they can come in and swipe in to get in there so that it doesn't have to have staffing at all times, because that's kind of, once it's up and running, that's the main cost is the staffing there. And so a shared community model of a climbing gym, and then it can be up to the members to set routes, do whatever in there. But anyway, I think all that stuff sounds great.

These people are creative.

Hi, my name's Pam Newman, and I've lived here for 30 years, and I work all over the North State. And maybe I'm the only one in the room, and I know you're here for development, and I guess that is important. But I moved here because it's slow, and it's quiet, and there isn't traffic. And I work all over the North State, and I live here because of those things. So while I see that it has to grow, and you certainly want to see it grow in that way, and many others do, I want to remind you that we need to take these steps carefully because, for instance, somebody mentioned the theater. Well, the Cascade Theater in Reading, which has a lot larger population, is struggling, and so is the one up in Ashland. And retail, Reading added a bunch of retail, but it's not full. And it's been sitting there for a long time, not full. So while these are all great ideas, are they really the world that we need right now? We should just think about that. When I first moved here, you'd go out on the trails and it was beautiful. And now I go out on the trails and there's trash almost every time I go somewhere. I was out in McLeod swimming the other day. There was cases of beer bottles left behind. People enjoy the area, but they don't want to take care of it. And I care about that. And I bet you a lot of you do too. But with all of that growth and all of that retail and, you know, how much do we really need anymore? This is a world that's maybe had a few too many things. And we've been a little spoiled. And so I'd like to see us take care of the area and find out ways that we can maybe grow a little. But if it's not in a way that takes care of us, then maybe we shouldn't do it.

I don't know.

So I'd like to hear all your ideas about what kind of retail you think is important for us to have nowadays.

We're not there yet. We're just at the beginning.

First I'll say that I I'm so happy that Linda collaborates with us. It's such a privilege because she tells me, no, John, you can't have this. You can't have that because of the sensitivity of retail to itself and the risk of cannibalization among businesses. the specificity of types and differentiating between them. I mean, just Wednesday, we were workshopping on some examples, and I said, well, isn't it like this? And she said, no, it's not like the example you're showing me. It's like that. So getting that specific helps ensure that you're not duplicating and you're making sure it's economically viable by the numbers, and that's the kind of report she generates. And I would also say that when we are looking at retail, first thing is that Any retail that really comes into the site is probably a much later phase after housing has arrived and been occupied already, and probably after a hotel has come as well. So it's a much later phase that depends on additional people coming to that site to be viable rather than starting up and trying to create its own attraction, which can be cannibalistic. Did you have a comment, Linda?

Well, we have a phrase in the shopping center industry, and it goes like this. Retail follows housing, not the other way around. And it's really critical. You don't want to create something where there isn't a viable community already. There's another reason too. Think about it from the businesses standpoint. They don't want to be out there all by themselves. They want the synergy. But if you have a primary home, village, tiny homes, all of this, they need kinds of services. There may be some, if you have a hotel, that is meeting the visitor crowd. They need some services. But we're also looking at that entrepreneurial market. So it's not, again, the kind of typical retail you'd see here. Remember now, we're not talking massive shopping centers. We're not talking malls. We're not talking mega whatever is here.

Not an outlet center.

No. Not a lifestyle center. We're curating it to your community needs. And so it's not anything mammoth. And so we're very sensitive to your concerns about growth. The other thing I'm unbelievably excited about, I've been working on affordable housing issues, uh-oh, it gives away, since probably the 1980s. And I cannot tell you how excited I am to have a community that really wants to get it done. We won't go into details, but unfortunately, sometimes you get into communities, oh, I don't want that. It ruins my community kind of attitude. And this is so exciting, I can't even tell you. Thank you very much.

But I would like to add to that. That's a good point that you made. And again, I don't mean to be a naysayer, but we sat through meetings for the Crystal Geyser building and the development of that. I sat through every meeting of that, and there was a long list of things they promised us, and it didn't happen. So while you're different people and this is a different time, it's like, again, what does our community really need? What do we want? Do we want all these things? What's the other side of all that? And maybe we should just really think about this. I don't know. That's my opinion anyway. Thank you. Thank you for having such a great presentation.

Thank you. Something I also like to consider is in the phasing of a project, especially a long-range master plan that goes for 20, 25 years, if the development ceases halfway through the life of that planned document, do you still have something that in and of itself is holistic? So that you don't have to develop all parts of it to have something that at a smaller scale is still whole. So that's, I think, the finer art of master planning for a multi-parcel project or a community. So if the economy changes, if we decide we don't want to grow after the first 10 years of growth has happened, you still have something worthwhile. It's not half complete. It still stands on its own. It's something you're proud of. But if the sentiment changes in 10 years or population decline begins to affect us later in the century, which is coming, then you can still look at a plan outcome that at 50% completion is still satisfying and holistic. So these are things I think about in a master plan.

Thank you.

Used to be, yeah.

She said the landing used to be used for snow removal from the city. You know how we'd take the center snow down the street and they'd pile it up out at the landing. Yeah.

I used to live in Boston, so I'm familiar with the need for the snow piles.

That's true. We had a lot of rain last year. Okay, a couple things. One, to answer your question, we did a community... meeting where we decided or we discussed what we wanted this place to look like, Mount Shasta. And we have a plan, and I don't know where it is. And we lose kind of institutional knowledge with people leaving, but Tim might know where that might be located.

There's a design guideline document I saw, or was it a draft of one? Yeah.

Yeah, but anyway, it was an Alpine village feel, was the number one thing. But there's a plan where all the people's input came, and I don't know where that sits, but we could find out. Todd might know, I don't know. Also, use Tom Haseldance. Tom, how do you say Tom's last name? Heseldance, yeah. If Tom's involved already? Yeah, okay, great, fantastic. Because he's got it in for bike paths and green waterways, making things look beautiful. One thing that came up, maybe an artist in residence space to attract creative workshops where an artist could live, paint. Maybe that corner with the view of the mountain. And then teach other people to have classes. And then as far as the native tribes that are associated with the mountain, nobody ever stayed up here in the wintertime. Everybody went back to their areas and they traveled up here in the summers from my understanding. But maybe a museum or a space, a ceremonial space that could be shared amongst the number of tribes that call this area home and sacred and have long-term relationship with the area. That's it.

and some of that at UCSB.

Pam mentioned shops and so on, and you're right. The retail follows the homes. One of the things that Mount Shasta has long had as one of its principles is not to become a wherever town. a anywhere town. We want to remain unique to the point of saying no, we're not gonna have national chains, chain stores come in. So, that's another factor in development of the landing. That's up to current city council and the developers, but that has been a principle for a long time. Another thing that we had talked about, and I think somebody here tonight talked about it, or perhaps you did, the possibility of the living upstairs and having commercial downstairs.

Live work, yeah.

Live work. Yeah, and at least prior city councils have thought that could be a good idea.

And I will let you know that I'm not trying to make you feel like you're just part of the ordinary, but this is part of a national trend. People want to see entrepreneurial, independent retailers in their small town. I have been impressed with already what you have. I don't know how you let that Starbucks in, but that's a... No, a bad joke, a bad joke. I'm not a Starbucks fan, but my point to you is, what's the point of that? Because you can go to any mall anywhere in the USA, and even from a visitor's standpoint, I'm an international expert on visitors, tourists, you can give it to me. If you're a tourist, do you really wanna go to a unique little town where you've got friends that live there and see another chain restaurant? No, you want to see something unique. And it kind of amazes me how some towns don't get that.

Okay, good evening. I got one clarifying question, maybe premature, but a lot of good ideas about the infrastructure and planning. We are a fire-prone area. We've got a little comfortable around here not having fires burn through town. But we've also allowed a lot of growth here. There's been a tremendous amount of trees, especially on the east side. So people come to think that this is natural, but it's not. It's man altered. We're trees per acre is well above what this landscape was ever meant to have naturally. But I haven't heard anything about fire safe planning, ensuring that our streets are adequate size that our density is not too high that we have built-in green space for when that fire does come through that area.

Go ahead. Thank you very much for mentioning that. We actually spent a good deal of time talking to your fire chief about that issue because it's become a bigger and bigger concern with any new community with growth. You want to address that?

Yeah, and fires, as we all know, I'm from Southern California. I have family in Reno, Tahoe area. And holy cow, fires go through suburban areas now. So just because we're building this area out doesn't mean it's at risk itself. And there's new insurance standards or insurance set standards in the state that are likely to become code over time. The buffering zone, zone zero rules, are basically the standard of care or standard of practice for site planning. No vegetation adjacent to a building. And when you think about, well, we'd like a grove of trees or a stand of trees or a windbreak between two buildings, but you've got two buildings that are 50, 60 feet apart or 60 feet apart, you really can't have much at all vegetation in between those two buildings. So the site planning has to be- So you guys are going to incorporate green belts.

Those are going to be incorporated in the site design.

But I'll also add that of all the places to build a significant new amount of growth, in this municipality and in the county, you want it to be on a site like this adjacent to your existing development. versus starting something new further afield or in unincorporated area. This is the most fire-safe locale given the alternative to build further afield or out in the trees.

Just your location on the east side is pretty dense. You know that the whole county is classified as very high, so some of us struggle getting insurance.

When I think about that down slope, that slope down into the site, and it's thick with trees. And they're all the same age, too. They're probably all 100 years old that might have been clear cut. So their tops are the same height. And those are considerations we make when we're doing housing. the code too.

So if you make that a public safety facility for the police and fire, then they'll be there.

That's right. Thank you. That's also included.

Evacuation of a site is important too. This is something our company is really getting into in terms of traffic modeling. So you want to make sure a site can be evacuated quickly. So multiple entrances along the road to get to highway or get out of town if there's an evacuation order, that's a factor. And whether that can impede evacuation of downtown. Those are also safety factors in an urban plan now. That's not a part of our scope, but that will be a part of a CEQA scope or a traffic study that you have to do.

Okay. Well, thank you very much. It is now just a little bit past 8 o'clock. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. It was a great session. Thank you for your comments, your input, for being respectful and kind. I know that there might be a few people in the room who did not speak or say anything tonight. If you have comments and you would like to email them to city staff, we will take your emails as well. We've got a lot of homework to do. City staff has a lot of homework to do. This is only the first part of what we're doing. We're gonna do this again. The second town hall meeting is going to be on August 11th. The team's gonna come back with, a manifestation of what we all talked about tonight. And we're just going to keep tackling this a little bit at a time to make sure that we stay on task. So I think that is it for this evening. You know, I know we could probably go on for another couple of hours, but it's getting dark and I think they'd like to close this up at some point. But you have my contact information. If you don't, my card is on the dais. Thank you again for being here. And I hope to see you again at the next one. Thank you.

I think they should come to the next outreach. We're not, by the way, we weren't involved in that decision, just to clarify.

The city chose the development.

We're not.

Actually, Kim could probably answer that.

Kim, she had a question about the development. I really enjoyed your comments. Thank you. I really enjoyed your comments.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure to meet you.

Thank you.

I hope you get to spend some time here.

Oh, yes. You're here for a week.

I'm here for a week.

It is. Well, I came here for another reason. I went to the Bernie Jango Argentine Festival.