100% Humboldt
Humboldt County CA USA is the home of some of the most iconoclastic, genuine, and interesting folks in the world.
We are getting curious about the movers, shakers, and difference makers in Humboldt County CA-Home of the giant redwoods, 6 Rivers, and the vast Pacific Ocean.
We will discover what makes people live/evolve in the beautiful, diverse, isolated, and ever-changing Northcoast of California 100%!
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100% Humboldt
Alex Stillman's Community Chronicles: From San Francisco's Streets to Arcata's Historic Heartbeat
Prepare to be captivated by the inspiring journey of Alex Stillman as she transitions from the bustling streets of San Francisco to the serene charm of Arcata, California. In this episode, Alex recounts her early days in retail and the pivotal decision to pursue higher education, driven by her family's academic legacy. From her initial impression of the peaceful Arcata Plaza in the 1970s to her passionate entry into local politics, you'll learn how a suggestion from a professor sparked a lifelong commitment to community involvement. Discover the story behind the "Stop at Four" campaign and the community's fight against freeway expansion, which marked the beginning of Alex's influential role in shaping Arcata.
Dive into the heart of historic preservation with Alex as she shares the transformative projects that have preserved Arcata's unique charm. Hear about the adaptation of Celebration Hall, the evolution of Redwood Park, and community-driven initiatives like the Marsh Project and the Phillips House Museum restoration. Through Alex's eyes, we see the delicate balance between maintaining historical authenticity and meeting modern standards, showcasing her dedication to protecting Arcata's heritage. The contributions of individuals like Frank Klopp and the impact of programs like CETA underscore the collaborative efforts that have defined the town's development.
Finally, explore the vibrant community life in Arcata and the significant role of Cal Poly Humboldt in its evolution. Alex reflects on her extensive involvement with the Arcata City Council and various local organizations, providing insights into recent developments like the Main Street Program and the Gateway project. Imagine a perfect day in Arcata, from tranquil trail walks to city planning discussions, and gain a glimpse of the town's future growth. This episode offers a rich tapestry of stories, achievements, and visions, making it essential listening for anyone interested in small-town dynamics and community development.
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All right. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages, my new best friend, alex Stillman. Welcome to the 100% Humble Podcast. How are you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I'm fine, thank you Good.
Speaker 1:I wanted to learn a little bit about you so, as we were talking, tell us the Alex story. What did you do before you got here? How did you get here? Where did you go to school?
Speaker 2:I actually basically grew up in the Phoenix area of Arizona and I had gone to school in the East Coast, and so after that was over, I moved to San Francisco and I graduated from a junior college and started working in retailing, because that was my focus in junior college. So I worked for the White House, which was a department store. Yeah, In. Eureka. No, the White House, which was a department store and In Eureka. No, the White House was in San Francisco.
Speaker 1:That one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's on Grant, it's not there, it's gone, gone.
Speaker 1:It's gone now.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Like all retail but it was on Grant. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And many other things moved in there. I don't know, actually, what stores are there right now in there. I don't know exactly what stores are there right now. So I made a decision I would go back and finish my degree and get a BA. I'm the eldest of six and my sisters all had their degrees and one of my sisters had her master's. I thought, well, I can do it. I always said I didn't like school. So I started back at San Francisco City College and got my under well, the classes that I actually needed, so that I could go in as a junior and I was going to go to San Francisco State. Then I met my second husband, who is a professor up here, through mutual friends in the city. So I came up here and I looked and I go. Well, I probably could live here, because I grew up in high school in Scottsdale, Arizona, where all the roads were dirt except for Scottsdale Road.
Speaker 2:It's no longer like that and you tell people that, and they can't even imagine.
Speaker 1:Scottsdale's big.
Speaker 2:Now right, yes, but you can't even imagine that, but that was actually true. So when I first came up here and I walked around the Arcata Plaza one Sunday morning, I go well, you know I could do this. You know, I didn't see any people. One car, that was all, and so I thought it's a small town, basically same as where I went to high school.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 2:Was it during school year? Well, I don't know, it was in the fall.
Speaker 1:But nobody was around in the plaza on a Sunday that's kind of nice and quiet.
Speaker 2:Well, they were back in the 70s. Do you know what the plaza looked like? I, do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it came up in 78. So I noticed that we're on the right up here. I said, oh, the boot club. You had mentioned that in an interview at one point, and then other places that I was going to actually ask about, but we'll get to those.
Speaker 2:Well, it was pretty empty. The Jacoby storehouse was still functioning. The two businesses next to it was a grocery store and a hardware store. Those were closed. So as you worked your way around the plaza, a lot of things were not. It was just sort of deserted, huh. And so there were lots of opportunities that came about later on, but it was just the way it was Right. And college students downtown on a Sunday morning? I don't think so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why would they be? Yeah, sunday morning probably sleeping.
Speaker 2:Well, there was no place to eat, so there was no Brio. Really there was no. You know where would you go? What would you do downtown?
Speaker 1:There were bars, there was no co-op, but they don't serve food usually. Well, I don't serve food usually, well, I don't know if the bars were opened that early in the morning, right, but there was no co-op, no wild berries, right. You know, it's just different world. Yeah, I remember the boot club. I do remember that, that bar that walked in there as a young hippie person and going I, what am I doing here? And these guys are these guys are pretty hardcore bikers in here, just kind of just stumbling around. So I have a question. There's something that there's an issue with the freeway going in when they constructed it and it's noted here constructed through town and the stop at four campaign and more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, stop at four.
Speaker 1:Just curious what that is back in the day.
Speaker 2:Well, my husband was Ben Farrellis and he had a party at the house where he invited professors, and so there was one professor that taught political science and he was talking to me and he said you know, it's time for elections to happen really soon and you should really consider running for Arcata City Council. Wow, okay, how old were you at the time? Well, I was 32. Wow, so I thought, okay, I'll look into it, I'll check into it and make a decision and see what it entailed. He said, you're right, I think it was because I'd come from San Francisco and I had been down there. I had lived there for quite a while and, coming up here, probably a lot of the issues that I was talking about to him or whatever, were things that really needed to start happening in Arcata, and it was also the time that we had the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act.
Speaker 2:Those were all happening in the 70s and Arcata was going to have a freeway that had three lanes installed with a fourth lane for expansion. So that was stop at four was about two lanes on either side, let's stop at four. There was a whole group of people in our community that really wanted that to happen and they called me and asked me if I could be one of their candidates that they would promote and work for to get elected to the city council. So in 72, there were 13 people running for three seats and I came in third. But it was also the first time that the 18-year-olds ever had the vote and I was the first woman ever to run for city council. Wow, what year is that? 72.
Speaker 1:72. Yeah, wow, so the four lanes that we're talking about are the two main lanes, say northbound, and then the two emergency lanes.
Speaker 2:No, you have two lanes going north and two lanes going south. That's four.
Speaker 1:And they wanted to do six. Yes, it's hard to imagine why we would ever need that, but okay.
Speaker 2:And so since then this last year, through the Biden administration, they've been really interested in reconnecting communities because the freeways throughout the United States are really bisected communities and just changed lifestyles tremendously and it's really affected usually the normally, always the minorities, because those are the areas they would put the roadways through. So they, this last year Caltrans awarded three grants One went to the San Diego area, One went to South San Francisco and one went to Arcata for reconnecting Arcata and reconnecting these communities. So Arcata will have an opportunity. We got funding to do the study and so it'll be looking at how to reconnect the east side and the west side of Arcata and eventually, if it all works out, happens, it could increase about five acres of land for Arcata so that could be where the bus stations go. It could be something similar to what's happening in Eureka with the Earth Center and probably it'll be. All kinds of things could happen there.
Speaker 1:So creative minds can figure out. So I saw some drawings, I think in the Arcata Eye, where they Arcata Mad River Union.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's like a it would be.
Speaker 1:It would like hover over the highway right.
Speaker 2:Like when you go to the marina in San Francisco, you go under some caps I think that's what they call them down there caps and up above that they have walking areas, picnic areas, one thing and another. Some of them connect Crissy Field to the other side. Yeah, so it's a similar idea. The same thing will happen down on Samoa Boulevard, and then there's a section that'll be looking at it out in Valley West. Wow, good, I love it.
Speaker 1:We got one of three. That's great in the state. So I'm from San Diego. I guess I'll go look it up where that grant was awarded, because they did the same thing with the 805 when I was a kid probably 12, 13. They just scooped out a big chunk of this, they plowed a big thing for miles and it was this big canyon and then there was eight-lane freeway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because what they did is they awarded the grants and they were in Southern California and then they came up to the San Francisco area. So we were just there with the folks from South San Francisco.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, so you were there when. So Wes Chespros talked about this a lot in terms of the marsh Redwood Park, the freeway, Bus system. All this really cool stuff that we reap the benefit of now and don't think twice about much. And Humboldt State was growing, not Humboldt State, cal Poly Kind of a running joke here the correction of Cal Poly, but anyway, so you were there at the front end of all that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Wesleyan, chesbrough and Danuser came on in 74, 1974.
Speaker 1:So you predated them, yeah, two years.
Speaker 2:I came on two years before they did.
Speaker 2:And then I became the mayor in 74 and I served as mayor for four years and we did the general plan. We updated that. We fought the freeway to scale it down. We definitely were going to be connected into a large treatment sewage system which would have McKinley bills and ours would be a line sending it all to Eureka, be treated in Eureka and discharged into the ocean.
Speaker 2:So they had Hubba, which was an organization that they were all working on trying to pull things together, and when I became the mayor I went to the Hubla meeting and the engineers had done so many reports and there was so much available, and so it took me two trips to get to my car with all the documents they gave me and I came back in and at that time everyone was talking about tertiary treatment.
Speaker 2:Well, what's going on? Why aren't we thinking about alternatives like tertiary treatment, so forth? So the next thing you had three professors from the university came down and they were very interested in helping us deal with this, and so that was how things began on that avenue. I was very interested in historic preservation and saving older buildings in Arcata, and I worked on that for a long time and was able to get an ordinance put together in the city and also, if you had an older home, you'll see some of them have offices or medical offices or something on the brown floor and on the top floor they have residential. So we made all that available so we could protect our historic built environment.
Speaker 1:Love it. So you've been part of that restoration thing for a while. I know that Celebration Hall was part of that and before it was was it the Odd Fellows.
Speaker 2:Odd Fellows yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I bought that building from them and turned it into an event center.
Speaker 1:It's beautiful and it's still having church every Sunday. Telios, they love it there. It's still a beautiful building. They've done, I think, pretty decent stewardship of that place. So backing up. So all this schooling Arizona Bay Area came up married a professor, all this schooling Arizona Bay Area came up married a professor. And then you're at the front end, as I'm thinking this through, you're at the front end of all this evolution of really fun change for Arcata. And it's funny because as I sat with Wesley I go. I just take Redwood Park for granted. It wasn't always there right.
Speaker 2:Well, it was originally developed for the water system for Arcata, and you could see the troughs up there. I don't know if there are any left anymore, but definitely in the 70s you could see where the water was running down and would come in for use in the city of Arcata. But the Redwood Park has been drastically expanded over the years.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And also the area where Health Support is. So in 1980, 81, there was a bond that was passed in order to acquire that property and that's where the community center is, the Health Support, et cetera, the Phillips House Museum, and that was paid off by logging the park.
Speaker 1:I see.
Speaker 2:And so that drove a lot of like the forestry committee sort of crazy because they and our staff Mark Andres, because they had to meet that criteria to pay the bond off. The bond's paid off now.
Speaker 1:So that's not an issue. That's the softball fields and the soccer fields, the whole nine. Yes, yeah, paid off now, so that's not an issue. That's the softball fields and the soccer fields. The whole nine yes, yeah Lived at the Colony Inn during college, so you know it a little well, and Steve Strombeck has kind of upgraded all that, I think.
Speaker 2:He has. He's changed it from four rooms, two rooms sharing a bathroom, four rooms sharing a kitchen. Now they're all individual units.
Speaker 1:Oh, they are Okay. Yeah, that was fun. Some of the roommates were not fun, but that's a whole other story. So back to the Marsh Project, Franklin Klopp was he a city employee?
Speaker 2:He was an assistant city engineer and he was pivotal in this right, along with the professors.
Speaker 1:Yes, he became the city engineer.
Speaker 2:Okay, we had a city engineer, and everybody has different thoughts about what they believe should be happening, and I believe our city engineer at that time he had been working for a long time on the project, as was, and then we come in sort of really disrupted the system and so he retired from us, but he went to work for an engineering firm and Frank Klopp was elevated to the city engineer and then he was on board with this project.
Speaker 1:You know the professors. I'm trying to think of the names offhand. I should know.
Speaker 2:Well, you have—.
Speaker 1:Because they're all recognized, right you?
Speaker 2:have Allen. You can look at the Marshes. You have Alan and you have Gearheart and Dan Hauser went on to Hubble aboard because it seemed like the most appropriate thing for him. He wore a suit every day, he was an assurance adjuster and you know, I just felt like he took a lot of abuse and we thank him all the time for having to go to these meetings and have people all over his case.
Speaker 1:Is Dan still in and around Arcata? He still lives there.
Speaker 2:Yes, he still lives in the Nixon house.
Speaker 1:Yeah, beautiful house. Now Phillip's house back to on the hill there. Were you part of that restoration of that house too?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2:When the city allowed us to take it over as a museum. And then we had a CETA program, then, early on, a job training program.
Speaker 1:I'm laughing because I was part of CETA. I was a big part of CETA.
Speaker 2:So all these things they've changed, Everything's changed.
Speaker 1:I'm a product of a SETA program. Yeah, so the youth would get employed and come and work in different things. I loved it. We were part of the summer program with Pete Shepard, a humble recreation program, and they had rec programs from all over the county. That was funded in great deal by CETA kids that were camp counselors, or what do they call them, peer counselors, and that was great. For, you know, manila had no recreation. White Thorn has no rec program, you know, probably still doesn't, but in the day because of CETA, shout out to all you CETA guys.
Speaker 2:I thought that was a great program. We had two contractors and they were working with the youth on that project, the Phillips House. You know, we made a lot of changes and so we had to meet some of the codes, like the stairs, we had to take out the chimney. You know just different things, and so when you're doing that kind of work you always want to make sure that it's noticeable that the railings wouldn't be the typical railings. Of course there weren't any, so we used the craftsman and that would never have had craftsman details on it, so that you know that that couldn't have been original. That's really important when you add an addition on to a historic house, that you don't duplicate it exactly in kind to a historic house that you don't duplicate it exactly in kind.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you see buildings that say 1872, and then above it they'll add a floor or something and they'll have 1981 or something and it looks exactly the same. But the only way you'd know that they were different is because of the dates. The dates, that's a really big no-no.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they don't do that. Yeah, was there. Who was the chief contractor on that? Was there one builder? That was the general.
Speaker 2:Oh, there were. There were two fellows that were hired by CETA.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, who knows?
Speaker 2:I don't know their names.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I liked this, this write-up, when you talked about Arcata spirit of innovation working toward environmental solutions, so I loved I was reading this with Joni create economic viability. We'll talk about Halei Ashi and those guys in a minute and some of those folks who have made it well Forward thinking citizenry who support innovation and a university brimming with ideas and expertise they're willing to share. I think that's the hope and a prayer going forward that Cal Poly can partner and be amazing outside of CAHOM or outside of the Lumberjack football team, which are sadly all gone. But my hope is that y'all cause I live in McKinleyville that they would find that synergy with the university once again, and maybe you would tell me it's already there.
Speaker 2:Well, everybody has different opinions on everything. Sure, it's Arcata, wait, it's America. I have opinions, of course, and I feel like if we didn't have Cal Poly, or if we didn't have Humboldt State, arcata wouldn't be what it is, eureka wouldn't be what it is, our county wouldn't be what it is, amen. And we have a lot of people that complain about it, and they don't like this and they don't like that, and I'm thinking well, there are many places to live, and if you really don't like the university and it interferes with your life, you should go somewhere there isn't a university. Go to Coos Bay, oregon.
Speaker 1:It's great.
Speaker 2:There's so many places.
Speaker 1:It's real nice up there North Bend.
Speaker 2:We would never have. I think a lot of people, whether they complain or don't complain, if they complain about it, they wouldn't actually even be here if it wasn't for the university. Good point.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't be.
Speaker 2:And they love certain aspects. I think it's really. I really appreciate the fact that President Jackson made that effort to make us a Cal Poly, because we have all these natural resources, et cetera, programs, and so it's a natural that we would become one.
Speaker 1:Was that his brainchild?
Speaker 2:It was his idea, was he?
Speaker 1:the onus of that.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm he pushed it forward. Yeah, okay, came up with it, as far as I understand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is he going to teach Cal Poly now?
Speaker 2:Did I hear that, yes, he wants to teach in international studies. Okay, he has a program going on in the Philippines and they've been working this last year on Darwin University in Australia. Wow, and he said he would like to come up with another place, somewhere that would be possible to have exchange students and students going back and forth, and I understand that Darwin is, even though it's a massive university, is very similar to Humboldt in many different ways, where is it in Australia?
Speaker 1:do you know? It's on the oh my gosh, like I know Australia. Hey Nick, do you know Australia? Can you get us a map real quick? Where's Darwin man?
Speaker 2:It's going to be. If you were to look at it this way, it's on that side.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:It's not on the Perth side.
Speaker 1:It's on the east side. Okay, nick will find it. We'll wait on Nick for a few minutes here while we no, I'm kidding. So five decades you've seen Arcata, this arc of change. I love that. I love the fact that you've experienced and been an onus in that, and you're still serving on the council. Are you mayor this year? No, or you're not, no. Do you feel like folks defer to you extra because of your experience and your wisdom?
Speaker 2:No. I mean they aren't critical of me? Yeah, and I think they're aren't critical of me. Yeah, and I think it's. They're surprised at how much knowledge I have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know why that would be a surprise, but okay.
Speaker 2:Well, one of our council members, sarah Schaefer. She's a history teacher. Taught her kids, yeah, and she just loves history and she oh my gosh, that's what happened, or whatever, huh, but you know I only have current history right from, you know, 1971, that's pretty big though but I don't have the history before and a lot happened before sarah love you, but sarah wasn't born in 71 or maybe even 81 or 91.
Speaker 1:So she taught her kids. So, hi, sarah, sarah. So you bring that experience, which I think is everything. I think it's a lot to go. Hey, here's how it worked and here's how I see it. So good on you. What else are you still involved with? So you're a council person for Arcata.
Speaker 2:And what else do I do?
Speaker 1:You're up for reelection?
Speaker 2:Yes, I am. I decided to run for reelection for an additional four years, nice. So what else do I do? Well, I'm still involved with the Historical Science Society that runs the Phillips House Museum. I'm chair of the Humboldt County Aviation Committee.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, You're talking about the air show a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'm not going to be able to tell you too much. Cody Rogitz did that air show, okay, and we knew about it happening, but we were going to have a full report on it and that's going to be happening next Tuesday.
Speaker 1:Sounds like he did it kind of unilaterally, separate from the committee.
Speaker 2:Well, the committee volunteered, but we definitely weren't instrumental in developing it.
Speaker 1:Okay, is he on the committee?
Speaker 2:No, he's the director of aviation.
Speaker 1:Okay for the county.
Speaker 2:Yes, okay.
Speaker 1:Which means he runs the airport.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, gotcha.
Speaker 2:And so also we have you know, we have Justin Zabel, who's on our committee and he goes to a lot of air shows, and so I'm sure he was totally involved in many aspects of it.
Speaker 1:Did you have fun at the air show?
Speaker 2:I did. I got sort of you know sort of come there at 730 in the morning, finished at four worked at one of the gates. That's a long day.
Speaker 1:That's what I did. Yeah's a long day. That's what I did, yeah.
Speaker 2:But then they had 104 volunteers. Wow, about 10,000 people came.
Speaker 1:We were amazed. We were watching it from our yard in Dow's Prairie and just going, and then they're blowing the ordinance off and I'm going. Man, that's a lot of smoke. So I guess they must have started a little grass fire out in the field.
Speaker 2:Well, they had their fire engine. It was constantly being filled up and they were constantly out there spraying water on it, and that fire engine had total priority. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there's not a lot of the tree. I'm sure it wasn't a huge fire danger. But famous last words right.
Speaker 2:Well, it was probably one of the most interesting things is here's United. They land and then they come up right down the runway right there into the terminal.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:And it was just amazing to see. And then they took off and they're on that main runway and everybody has their, the tents are all facing and everyone's facing. Mike Wilson said he came in on a flight and everyone's waving to the passengers on the plane. Welcome home, mike. Hey Mike. So I don't know if anyone knew who was on what flight, but he said it was quite something and that's what I was thinking Individuals landing and taking off. It had to be an experience.
Speaker 1:What's going on at the airport? Yeah, it's a welcoming committee. Who's on this plane with me?
Speaker 2:Well, also that section of the airport you can't go on to under normal circumstances ever. Yeah, it's off limits, and so it was fun to be able to actually see that much of the airport land, even though it's off limits.
Speaker 1:We could see a lot of it from our home, so it was fun to watch that. We just put out lawn chairs and had a great time. So what other committees do you serve on besides your?
Speaker 2:I'm on the American Association of University Women. I do programs with Connie Stewart. I'm a docent at the Friends of the Arcata Marsh oh.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I'm chair of the.
Speaker 1:Fire Arts Center. Where's that Is?
Speaker 2:that on South G Street.
Speaker 2:That's South G Street we started that about 25 years ago for clay and glass, and so a lot of these things have been going on for a long time. So I was very fortunate to be able to be in the beginning of many things, yeah, and to stay, you know, I guess you'd say, stick with them and support them, see them grow, become economic engines for our community, and that's one of the things we did in the 70s. We also developed Alder Grove Industrial Park, wow. So you were going to ask about some of the businesses, innovation, yeah, and we did that because industrial parks there weren't any and we had businesses that were looking to establish themselves and to grow, and we have a couple of lots out there that are for sale if anyone is interested and we would love to sell them.
Speaker 1:Sure, how many acres was that when it started?
Speaker 2:Oh boy, you're asking me. My son always says to me I don't know how you make things work, because you can't ask you numbers like that. How big is this? You can just make it up it's 150. How tall is that?
Speaker 1:It's 150 acres, scott, it's huge. I don't know for sure, no, but a lot of amazing people have come from, and are still there, casa Linda and Danco is still out there. And who's the Lacey's guy, the dessert guy?
Speaker 2:Yes, amron, amron, amron.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He's there and he's really built quite a big space. They're huge yeah, and well, we have some people that are out there that don't have signs, so you wouldn't even know they were there.
Speaker 1:Cocotat's still out there right.
Speaker 2:Yes, they are Wow, and Bubbles was out there using manufacturing but they sold and they aren't there anymore.
Speaker 1:Did Victoria retire? Did she sell it?
Speaker 2:Yes, she sold it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's amazing, hi, victoria. So, yeah, all the history with these people. I used to sell advertising.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:Arcada was my beat for 20 years plus and I'd get that. Look, you know you go. Oh, you sell in Arcata and I'd get the Arcata dim eye and I'd go. It's great man. I love Arcata, everybody, and I'm loved in Arcata. I feel great going to Arcata Is that a problem for you, eureka, or whoever I was talking to? And they'd go no, so I loved it. I owned that ground and those relationships and I think of Jofra at the Camel, jofa at the Camel, yeah, I was the owner of the Camel too.
Speaker 1:Oh, really Okay. And then Ann Russell that owned the Rocking Horse, and gosh Keith, newcomer, at Arcade Exchange.
Speaker 2:And Christine Long. They both owned that Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wonder how she's doing.
Speaker 2:She's fine.
Speaker 1:Is she around somewhere?
Speaker 2:She lives down in the Bay Area.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that's going back. Yeah, so all those people that were part of retail and early Lost Bagels, and Dennis and Peter and their crew A lot of them became property owners.
Speaker 2:They bought their buildings and rent them out now and maintain them and take care of them. And I think it's really important when you own property to make sure you take good care of it, because it makes a big difference about how your town looks, and we know that if somebody decides to paint their house in a neighborhood, the next thing is someone else may spiff it up. Or if you do some lawn gardening and change your lawn around or add trees or flowers, then other people decide, oh, maybe I should do that too.
Speaker 1:Let's go back to food. Works just real quick.
Speaker 2:So tell me more.
Speaker 1:Tell me more about who else is still there. I know part of that's become a cannabis zone too right To the north.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, there was this effort when cannabis was becoming really popular. Well, when it was becoming popular, Economically popular. Popular from a different point of view than being grown and being popular at that time. So they made that into a cannabis zone. It also created some issues. So some people that were businesses out there couldn't afford what was now going to be considered the new rent and so they moved to McKinleyville. So you had the awning people North Coast Awning. They're in McKinleyville but they used to be at the Aldergrove Industrial Park.
Speaker 1:Right for a long time.
Speaker 2:Fire and Light was out there for a very long time. The cannabis zone didn't affect them, but I think it was 2008, when we had the recession, that really affected their business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they were a really big deal for years, right.
Speaker 2:And that was started by a collective of individuals.
Speaker 1:Were they over in the building that's by Celebration Hall there by Arcata High?
Speaker 2:No, that's George Bouquet.
Speaker 1:That was something else.
Speaker 2:And he has Mad River Glass.
Speaker 1:Okay, but what?
Speaker 2:he did was he started making plates and bowls and when I had Celebration Hall one time he came up with a wheelbarrow full of that because they were doing a arts kind of sale and he brought that up because he decided he didn't want to be in that kind of business, because he likes art glass, and he's right now he's in the Arcata Artisans.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So if you want to see what he's been doing, Okay. Or the smaller pieces that he does, and so he began that whole process.
Speaker 1:So I started thinking of the long list of innovative success business stories of Yakima Racks and I lived with Steve and Janet Cole for a year during college, when he would do 27-hour days six days a week and he and Don Banducci were building that. Think of Marimba One now, which Steve is part of. Still I think of, of course, haleashi, and you must have some stories about all these guys. And now Brio who has better bread than Brio?
Speaker 2:And Brio location was a muffler shop. That was the first ribbon I cut in Arcata. I remember that location was a muffler shop. That was the first ribbon I cut in Arcata. I remember that so you have a really good memory about all the businesses because you were in sales for advertising. Therefore, you knew what was going on in a lot of the businesses and what happened to them, and what was going on in this building and when that business changed. So, you have a lot of history in that whole area.
Speaker 2:It would be maybe really interesting sometime to be able to write that up over the changes you've seen in the various buildings.
Speaker 1:Well, and physical buildings and locations and people, but Arcata Main Street, which is on my list to talk to you about. You were part of getting Arcata Main Street up and running right.
Speaker 2:Well, I was part of actually bringing Main Street to California.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, and I had gone to a meeting, so yes, I'd gone to a meeting in Oregon and on economic restructuring and it really sort of fascinated me. I had been at a historic preservation conference on building trades in Washington and then I heard about the Main Street program. I heard about the economic restructuring. That was going to be holding a meeting and that was in the Oregon area, in Portland. So I went to that. And then later I went to one other meeting and there was one fellow there and he worked for the city in Southern California and his council was really close to Duke Majan who was the governor at the time, and so I was connected to Dan Hauser because he was our assemblyman and we just decided this is a good program so if we could figure out what to do we would make it happen. So he was from the city of Vista so I was able to get the legislation written.
Speaker 2:And we went to so many meetings in Sacramento and did so much lobbying and I really lobbied around the Historic Preservation California Preservation Foundation. There was the Business Improvement District. There were all these different organizations and they were really worried that Main Street would take business away. Some of them would take business away from them instead of giving them more business as consultants in downtown revitalization. So it was one of the. Well, I was also one day, you know, I had a list of who supported it and who didn't, and so I was offered an office where I could just make phone calls and, having the name Alex, people always assumed I was calling for Alex, who was a man, and so I was able to always get through pretty fast. But when I was talking to city managers in various parts of California, they were pretty devastated about what malls had done to their downtowns and they just had left them where dogs could sleep there all day and maybe a car would come by and maybe it wouldn't or whatever.
Speaker 2:And just devastated their communities, so they were very, very anxious to find something that would actually help re-stimulate their downtowns. At the time, it was the bill that had the most support of any bill in California, and at that time we also had an Office of Trade and Commerce and we don't anymore, and so it was put under them, the California Main.
Speaker 1:Street.
Speaker 2:Program. It was put under them, the California Main Street Program. Later it went under the Office of Historic Preservation when they removed that division from the state. But it's still an effective program. It's run completely differently now.
Speaker 2:It's as a large nonprofit, but it really meets the four points. And the four points where you have to bring promotions back to get people to come. You have to look at your economic restructuring. What's your infrastructure? What are people doing? How are they investing in your community? Your design what are you doing about design? What are you doing about bringing back your historic buildings and fixing them up? And organization how can you organize your community?
Speaker 2:So those are the four basics that they have for a Main Street program to make it work. It was started by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and they had many cities that were pretty devastated by the malls and so they hired they came up with four cities and they hired four executive directors and they were all in touch with each other as they were trying to implement this program and see how it would work, and that was how it was originally established. What were the four? The cities. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Was Vista, one of those.
Speaker 2:Oh no, not California, it was all in the International, it was in the east, yeah, the southeast east. It was all back east.
Speaker 1:So these are bigger towns that were.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know how big they were, but they were towns that were definitely affected.
Speaker 1:What a mall effect.
Speaker 2:And in those days, you know, just the fax machine was just coming in and around. So you can imagine the telephone and the fax.
Speaker 1:And the malls.
Speaker 2:And so you didn't have a lot. Your communication was a little different, right. Your communication was a little different Right, but the National Main Street Program found that it made a difference, and so they have a division on Main Street.
Speaker 1:And I believe Eureka Main Street has done a great job because the Bayshore Mall really devastated that for a minute, terribly Long minute.
Speaker 2:And that was one of the things Arcata was really worried about how that would affect us too, Because you draw with major stores and one day I was coming down from, I was coming back onto Broadway and I go oh, there must be a terrible accident, Because the traffic was stopped in this lane and there was cones and well, it was the line of people going to Kentucky Fried Chicken, Right. So whenever we have something new, people just glom onto it. And with Kmart, which is not there anymore, but you know, that's a big deal.
Speaker 2:When that happened, they ran buses to the Kmart from different parts of Eureka so people could actually go there, because the parking lot couldn't handle the cars. It's so funny. So we have anything new.
Speaker 1:It's a big deal.
Speaker 2:It really is.
Speaker 1:And now, berger was big for a month.
Speaker 2:And so I think the Bayshore Mall was very exciting for people because it sort of gave them an opportunity that they didn't have up here Because, as they always talk about, we're behind the redwood curtain.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And therefore, unless you're out of here, you go and check things and go to Redding and Santa Rosa, right Wherever you might go, or visit family someplace else. You don't see that.
Speaker 1:Right. So yeah, it's funny, we got really excited about a Kmart.
Speaker 2:Woo.
Speaker 1:I mean it was a whole thing. It was Very exciting and the mall was big and it's funny how things cycle, because now the mall is the broken mall of broken tiles and empty buildings and it's just quite actually. I haven't been in in a couple of years.
Speaker 2:Well, DMV is there, so obviously you haven't.
Speaker 1:I have been in. Yeah, I have been in.
Speaker 2:I was going to say you haven't renewed your driver's license.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now, that's the exception and it's much more efficient. The exception, and it's much more efficient. But going back real quick, vista california, amazing downtown still san luis obispo oh my god, really, that's a cool downtown for a cow and they're a cal poly. Yeah, yeah, and they're cal poly, uh, arcada eureka. So I was early adopter and in support of arcada main street and had no idea that you are part of the history of the whole shooting match. That's cool.
Speaker 2:He and I, we're the mother and the father. We used to laugh. We're the mother and father of Main Street in California because we're the two that really worked hard on it.
Speaker 1:I love it and it's still very much in effect right. I mean, eureka's got a-.
Speaker 2:Well, in Arcata we don't have it because there was such a In Eureka they had the Business Improvement District and so they were able to use that as their funding mechanism. Correct, and so they were able to use that as their funding mechanism, because it's in concentric circles and Arcata didn't have any kind of business improvement district, so we had the Chamber of with this and that, so it became difficult.
Speaker 2:So for a number of years I've thought we should really think about how to consolidate the two, and it took the right mix of people at the Chamber of Commerce to allow that to happen.
Speaker 1:We have that now. Mm-hmm, so we don't have Arcata Main Street anymore. We've I shouldn't say we've, I guess I'd say we've. In a bigger picture, we've had a great chamber for years in Arcata and I think there's a lot of good chambers actually in the county for the. Let's get shout outs everywhere. But yeah, I think Arcata Main Street made a big difference. And you're right, there is a whole history that I would have to talk about at some point.
Speaker 2:Yes, you do.
Speaker 1:And some personalities that are just magical and fun. So there's Haleashi, and then there's the Yakima stories, and then the Brio and some of the folks that are over in the Creamery District, right. Well there's all of that I just remember.
Speaker 2:I heard that there was this organization in downtown Arcata. So when I thought we should create a really strong downtown organization because that's one of the things when you applied for Main Street funding or to become a Main Street city said, we aren't an organization, we're just friends that work in the downtown. We have stores, so we do President's Day, we do Valentine's and so forth. I made them really nervous, but I was able to get them to start coming too. We started meeting every Wednesday at one o'clock at lunch and we grew and grew until we had maybe 30 people coming and we met for 10 years and that was our beginning for everything, and that's how we solved many, many problems and figured out what was going on. Everyone knew each other because of that and that's how we came up with the Oyster Festival, nice.
Speaker 1:That was a brainstorm, I remember. So was that at Golden Harvest Cafe, where it used to be there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Because they were fantastic. There. Everyone would get, you could order whatever you wanted. You got your individual bill, you didn't have to figure it out and she'd just come oh, do you want what you had last week? And you'd just go.
Speaker 1:And we did it. Clock is noon. That waitress is amazing. I forget her name. She was magical.
Speaker 2:She'd been there 20 years and she knew everybody. She was fantastic and she remembered all your orders.
Speaker 1:She was great and less than Diane Christian. Oh my gosh, what a great couple.
Speaker 2:And they had their store there too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and she had her little store up front and I remember some of the first issues were homelessness because it was becoming a thing. After Jerry Garcia died, arcata started to see the fruit of homelessness in spades. I mean, there was people showing up and merchants were concerned, for good reason, and I remember some of that was the dialogue too. But I digress.
Speaker 2:Well, you know they would have. I had a tenant. He worked all summer long for Jerry Garcia. He was gone all summer and then the bus you know, rainbow bus would show up, and it was just. You know, it was an era period.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, hey, the part of the show and we're almost done here where I ring the bell and it's kind of the pop quiz. So there's no wrong answers. This is about you and what you would like to do with your perfect Humboldt or Arcata day. If you want, and it's probably harder to go, hey, can you pick a restaurant, can you pick a coffee shop, because you're on the council and you have some neutrality, but we'll take a shot. So what do you do with your day off? If you had a full day to do whatever and we gave you the day off, I don't know if I think about it as a day off.
Speaker 1:What would you do with an afternoon that was yours, that was, I don't know, therapeutic and refreshing?
Speaker 2:Well, maybe I would get a massage.
Speaker 1:There you go In Arcata. My masseuse is in Arcata. She's amazing Over by the co-op.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:How about another one? Where do you go for coffee when you're in Arcata?
Speaker 2:I don't drink coffee, so I only drink. I grew up only on iced tea, so hot tea was sort of an unusual thing for me.
Speaker 1:Who's got tea? Where would you drink tea? Who's got good tea?
Speaker 2:Well, usually I go beat people at Brio.
Speaker 1:Okay, good place to meet. Delicious food and their coffee.
Speaker 2:I have no idea, you have no idea, none whatsoever.
Speaker 1:My father-in-law used to go. I'd go to Starbucks and he'd have a Coke and I'd be drinking at Starbucks. He goes how do you put that in your body? And I go, it's because it's delicious. And now I have no use for Starbucks whatsoever. What trails do you like to walk? Do you trail walk or do you?
Speaker 2:The marsh.
Speaker 1:Nice. It's always nice down there, even when it's windy. It's fun. And what, I guess? What do you see as the future for Arcata? 5, 10, 20-year plan? What do you see? What do you want to see?
Speaker 2:Well, I always thought about when I was on the council, about my grandchildren. Now I have them in their 20s, the ones that live here, and I think I look at Arcata. I think it's going to be such an exciting place. I'm really happy that the gateway has been approved. People were like, oh my gosh, it's going to happen. And I say yes, yes, go to Target, spend an hour there. When you come back it'll be built, because that's the anxiety it created. But it takes a long time. The minimum that you can probably get into a building project maybe have it finished, is four years.
Speaker 1:Describe the Gateway program.
Speaker 2:Well, the Gateway is just a land use code over an area that's considered very close to the downtown, within walking distance of the plaza. So it's Samoa Boulevard and it goes down K Street and it's on both sides the Creamery District.
Speaker 1:How far up toward Humboldt does it go? Does it go up the hill? It's not up that way. Is it bordered up there?
Speaker 2:It ends around 14th, 15th, 16th, yeah, down there, mm-hmm, 14th, 15th, 16th down there. But it has higher buildings. The further out gets lower and lower.
Speaker 2:But basically four-story buildings is something that a lot of people can build, because if you're under a certain height, if you stay under 60 feet, then you don't have to have an additional elevator placed inside of the building for construction, because you're 58, whatever it is. So all the OSHA doesn't come in. That requires that. So I feel like we're going to have a lot of four-story buildings and we probably will for a long time.
Speaker 2:One of the more exciting things for me is mass timber and how that can affect our buildings, and our building official was showing he had just come back from a conference and he was showing how you could take a four-story building and you actually could have five floors in there because of mass timber and mass timber if you use that and where fires start at the edges they don't start in the middle of a wood floor or whatever it might be. So if you have your tight edges and then with all the building codes that we have today that are so stringent, and every two years they redo the building codes and so they become a little more stringent, I think we're going to be fine. There's a lot of concern about the new dorms that Cal Poly is building and the heights of them, and I think it's really interesting how they've been building them, for one thing, in whole cleat pieces which have all the windows in them, when they attach it to the outside of the structure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I watch it go up every night when I drive home. Oh you, would.
Speaker 2:It's really I like it. And there's two of them right, yes, there's two of them, and then there's a lower one, well, a much smaller one, one story which will be like the cafe the.
Speaker 1:Right, I noticed they left trees in line on the highway to kind of just mitigate.
Speaker 2:And there's going to be a lot more landscaping on site. Yeah, it just takes a while to plant your trees and to have them grow, and so I just that's. My feeling is that we'll have four-story buildings just because of the parameters, and if you drive down to San Francisco, you can see how many three and four-story buildings are being built just off the freeway.
Speaker 1:I think here's what I like about you, amongst many things. But can I pay you a compliment? May I pay you a compliment? Yes, so for five decades you've sat and listened to people debate, whatever the issue is the high rises, the high rise dorms Got to be a lot of naysayers, right, and then the fire concerns and all that. But to patiently walk through that with people and go all right.
Speaker 1:So we have consensus or maybe we don't, but we're going to move forward or we're going to pull it off. Pull it off the docket, whatever it is. But just to go through that process with, with those who might just be obstructionist at heart and not have a long-term vision, and to be able to differ with people and go, hey, here's the process, here's the law, here's what people want to do, and to walk through that I think it's extraordinary. It would just require amounts of patience I don't have, even as a father of nine, and I've seen it all. So take that, I appreciate that about you.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. One of the drawbacks or unfortunate thing with the city council when the Craftsman Mall was being discussed was that the city council kept. Well, they went through so many meetings with the planning commission and the city council and the developer just finally walked away and eventually contacted the university and said you want the plans. Whatever he did, he worked it out. I don't know what he did, but I feel like it was a loss for the city of Arcata because that would have allowed us to have property tax and any sales tax that happened there and all the building fees and so forth. So we have that, the forfeit. It's gone.
Speaker 1:And it's going to happen regardless.
Speaker 2:And I just think what are people thinking in the long run of their community? If it's going to happen, why not make it beneficial for you Instead of? But there was nothing I could do. I tried really difficult, you know to convince people. The council, please, please, vote for this, because it's affected us economically and we're we just have to deal with it.
Speaker 1:Wouldn't it be great to have several million more dollars to create something really? Cool to counter that yeah, wouldn't hurt.
Speaker 2:Instead of struggling. Yeah, to make all the things meet. And then you have Amazon and you have this and you have that. So we're affected in many ways and we live off sales tax. Sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's very difficult. I think yeah.
Speaker 1:I love the fact that you're in the midst of that and that voice. We watch it all the time on on access TV and Eureka, Arcata, Riedel, Trinidad, and the city, and the people that get up and and speak their piece, and and some sometimes it's I couldn't do it, Could you do it, Nick? Nick could do it, Okay. So, hey, Nick Flores for City Council in Eureka. So last question, Big question what do you want to leave behind? What's your legacy? What's your tombstone? However, you want to frame that, what do you want to be remembered for? Alex Stillman.
Speaker 2:It's being a forward thinker, okay, and not getting bogged down and looking for solutions to make things work. That's sort of what I in preserving our built environment and making Arcata cohesive and a place that you really want to be, and working well with the university, because they are our biggest asset that we have in Arcata and, I would say, in the county, and I think we have many, many opportunities. And all along we've had opportunities and I felt like that starting out in the 70s, and that's why I come back on the council periodically, because I can see things are going off the rails and I think, well, we don't have to do that. We can work together and we can create something that's really good for our community and that's why I come back. And so I'm really into housing. I know we don't have enough housing.
Speaker 2:2008 really killed the housing market nationwide and that's why we have a homeless population like we do. And with more housing coming along, whatever it might be, it's going to alleviate other kinds of housing and eventually you'll have more housing coming along. Whatever it might be, it's going to alleviate other kinds of housing and eventually you'll have more housing available for all. But it's a hard, hard struggle and there's been many different ways that it's been handled. And I think there's worries and worries, because homelessness in San Francisco is enormous and you have climates that can handle homelessness better than you can, where it's like North Dakota, south Dakota, where it's freezing cold, and so we have that, and we know that too, that a lot of people have behavioral health issues.
Speaker 2:We don't have the behavioral health that needs to meet, and when Reagan was governor and he got rid of our institutions that we had for people that could actually go and live there, that needed assistance in one way or another and be stabilized, and so, starting with that, when that happened, we all of a sudden saw this incredible issue with people becoming homeless and not in good shape, and so anytime you go down the street, you know you see people here and there, eureka, and you can see if we can only maybe house them, work with them, see what they have going on, is there some way to make it their lives better, that they could become citizens instead of being off? So I feel like there's lots of work to do. I like to work.
Speaker 2:I like to accomplish things. I feel like I work hard, no matter what I'm involved in, and sometimes I think I'm not devoting enough time to certain things that I should be doing.
Speaker 1:We all feel that way. I love that about you, though. My dad said there's always work for a worker.
Speaker 2:There always is. We're in an era right now that people don't volunteer as much as they used to, but I also think, in order to live in our society now and with our housing prices, it takes two people to work in the family in order to support the household. That wasn't true a long time ago, but with 2008, that became true and you see that everywhere and it's really unfortunate and I hope that we can change that so that we can have life as a little bit easier for people and we can all of a sudden get back into more volunteerism, because we actually have the time to do it.
Speaker 1:That's where you come in. Well, that's where we all come in. Thanks for being here. Appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you very much for asking me to be with you.
Speaker 1:You know I want to do a shout out to everything that's around Arcata because I think it helps and makes us one. I mean the Blue Lake and the trail Annie Mary Trail it'll go there the trail into Eureka, the connection to McKinleyville and Trinidad. It's like I know that's not Arcata, but it's certainly part of that's the Great American Redwood Trail. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's going to go all the way down.
Speaker 1:It's going to be great.
Speaker 2:South, and so the furthest is Blue Lake, and so we've got a section of it done. The county's working on their section, eureka has their section. They hope the next goes to CR, and so we're working on the connection now of trying to connect Arcata to the Blue Lake portion. So there's a lot going on in that area, right now, but you don't hear about or see, because it's all in the development phase.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can't wait the whole trail thing.
Speaker 2:So staff is very busy getting things accomplished Go staff on the trails.
Speaker 1:All right, Alex Stilben, thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:All right, have a great day.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
