News - Local - North Coast

Tuesday, Jul. 29, 2008

Morro Bay Fishing Industry Special Report: Different city, same story

Morro Bay may be able to gather some lessons from Eureka, which was once one of California’s busiest ports but has seen its fishing industry wither; it’s now taking several steps to re-invent itself

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Until 25 years ago, Eureka was one of California’s busiest seaside ports, with hundreds of commercial fishermen plying its waters.

“When I was a kid on the dock with my dad, every boat on the West Coast came to Eureka to fish for salmon,” recalled Paul Pellegrini, 46, whose family fished the waters for three generations. “There literally were hundreds of out-of-town boats.”

Fishing was enjoying such a boom — peaking in the 1960s—that five thriving fish processors operated at the local port.

Now there are only 20 to 25 active trawling boats that travel south every year, he said. There hasn’t been an area where trawl fishing has taken place off the Humboldt County coast since 1988. And the fish processing plants are long gone.

As in Morro Bay, longtime fishermen in the coastal hamlet of Eureka have struggled to cope with the industry’s decline.

The town, an isolated community of about 26,000 located 272 miles north of San Francisco, has also struggled.

By the late 1980s, dilapidated icehouses and fish processors occupied rotting boat docks. The local economy suffered even more after the late 1960s, when the timber industry declined.

City leaders knew they had to act.

Leveraging city’s heritage

One of the key steps they took was creating a redevelopment agency in 1970. Since then the agency has raised revenue to redevelop parts of Old Town Eureka and its police and fire buildings and to establish a first-time home-buyer program.

The city’s Old Town area is a primary tourist draw, according to J. Hockaday, president of the Eureka Chamber of Commerce.

Old Town Eureka and the waterfront area are about a block apart, which allows tourists to experience commercial fishing activities while visiting retail shops and restaurants, he said.

The Old Town area was redeveloped through the city’s agency and private investments. The agency never used eminent domain as part of its efforts.

A key goal for Eureka city officials and business and property owners was to preserve the area’s rich fishing culture while revamping key infrastructure.

“One of the things we’ve really realized is that we need to help maintain the fishing industry as much as we can,” said Cindy Trobitz-Thomas, director of redevelopment and housing for the Eureka Redevelopment Agency. “Fishing is a part of our cultural heritage,” she added. “Anything we can do to maintain it is very important to the community.”

Since 1994, Eureka has invested about $40 million, some of which came from state and federal grants, toward redevelopment in the city’s downtown, according to Trobitz-Thomas.

Downtown is part of the redevelopment zone, which included waterfront areas of the city.

Tax revenue from the Eureka Redevelopment Agency was also spent on a fishing wharf to serve local fishermen and tourists.

In 2006, Eureka city officials completed the Fisherman’s Terminal Project, which serves as a hub for Humboldt Bay commercial fishermen to sell fish, load supplies and per-form boat maintenance.

The project was funded by federal and state grants.

The dock is an extension of the city’s existing boardwalk that was completed in 2002.

The terminal includes a 16,000-square-foot fish-buying and unloading area with four jib cranes and a public hoist, according to data from the city.

Apublic piazza also was created near the waterfront, and a Fishermen’s Terminal for smaller fish processors is expected to be completed next summer.

Officials have targeted four potential tenants to operate the fish processors. Most are buyers, but others include oyster processors.

In creating Fishermen’s Terminal, Trobitz-Thomas pointed to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco as a model of Eureka’s effort to merge a strong fishing culture with tourism — much like Morro Bay’s city and business leaders want to do.

Part of the Eureka agency’s goal is to allow passers-by to eat and shop within view of fishermen unloading the day’s catch.

“People like to see where things come from,” Trobitz- Thomas said.

The agency also devoted resources to preserving and restoring historic buildings and streetscapes, as well as to enhancing landscaping in those areas.

Those enhancements have encouraged new development in the community, Trobitz- Thomas said.

The city had a 14 percent storefront vacancy rate before starting the agency; today vacancy stands at 1 percent.

She added that the increase in tax revenue from the redevelopment agency also has been used to help first-time homebuyers and increased the amount of low-income housing in Eureka.

Still suffering financially

Despite all of these efforts, Eureka is struggling financially like many other small California cities.

According to 2007 budget documents, the city used part of its reserves to balance the budget. And Eureka’s city officials, like Morro Bay’s, are asking voters to help generate revenue.

Eureka voters narrowly approved a 3 percent utility users tax in November 2006 that is expected to pump about $1 million annually into the general fund.

Sales tax is Eureka’s largest revenue source, bringing in about $9.6 million in the 2006- 07 fiscal year. That was expected to increase about 5 percent to $10.2 million in fiscal year 2007-08.

The city’s hotel tax revenue also was expected to increase by $100,000, generating $1.6 million in fiscal year 2007-08.

Still, that’s not enough. The city has identified several financial concerns. And while it has not laid off employees, a hiring freeze begun in the 2005-06 fiscal year has continued through 2007-08.

“We need to continually remind ourselves that simply making ends meet one year to the next is not the same thing as sufficiently financing this (city’s) future,” a city report says.