Arcata planners weigh sauna business plan that conflicts with city rules

Arcata planners approved a sauna and contrast-therapy project on South G Street after weighing a request that ran straight into the city’s ban on new wood-burning stoves. The decision forced the city to decide whether a small business that does not fit neatly inside the General Plan should be treated as an exception or a precedent.

The project sits at 40 South G Street, on about 0.87 acres at the southern end of the corridor and directly beside the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary. The parcel was vacant after a prior equipment-rental use, and the existing development includes a 1,267.5-square-foot office building, an attached 8,735-square-foot metal awning and 3,150 square feet of covered or enclosed storage.

Applicant Zachary Vondrak said the facility would put eight 160-square-foot shipping containers under the awning and convert them into saunas, spa rooms, plunge pools and changing rooms. The public-facing side would offer two saunas and cold plunges seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., with as many as 220 customers a day and at least two employees on shift. The back portion of the property would be used by about five workers building custom sauna and spa units to order, using an existing roughly 1,000-square-foot enclosed storage area.

Vondrak said he expected the business to open by the end of the year, though he declined to name the business or his partners and said pricing was still being worked out. He has pitched the plan as both a health service and an economic one, saying the project could help bring life to a floundering stretch of Arcata’s commercial corridor.

The policy snag was the heating source. Vondrak wanted the saunas to be wood-fired, using lumber from fallen trees or recent fires, but Arcata’s 2024 General Plan update prohibited new wood-burning stoves. His proposed workaround was a gasification stove designed to turn most smoke into vapor, and he asked the city for an exception. City staff said sauna manufacturing is principally permitted in the coastal industrial and commercial district, but the contrast-therapy business itself required a Minor Use Permit.

Because the property is in the Coastal Zone, the project also needs a Coastal Development Permit from the California Coastal Commission. Arcata’s Local Coastal Program controls development in that zone and must be certified by the state commission. City materials say the Coastal Zone covers about one-third of Arcata, and the South G Street area has already been discussed as a place for lower-infrastructure, visitor-serving uses as sea levels rise.

The Arcata Planning Commission, the city’s only operating commission with seven members, approved the Contrast Therapy and Sauna Manufacturing Facility Minor Use Permit on June 9, 2026. The permit expires in 24 months unless activated, and appeals must be filed with the City Clerk within ten working days.