Arcata roundabout dispute escalates as city faces new lawsuit, delays

A finished roundabout on Old Arcata Road is still pulling Arcata back into court, where a father and son say the city crossed onto their Bayside property, erased parking for a business site, and cut the value of the land by more than $500,000.

Marc Delany and his son, AO Kirki Ben Tut Malik Silkiss, filed suit in 2024 over the Old Arcata Road Rehabilitation and Pedestrian/Bicycle Improvements Project. Their cross-complaint identifies the property as 2212 Jacoby Creek Road in Bayside, APN 501-011-006-000, and says the city unlawfully constructed part of the project on their land and in the adjacent roadway area. One of the businesses on the site is StreamGuys, the audio streaming company, and the plaintiffs say the work took away parking for 11 cars.

Arcata was not waiting for the dispute to settle. The city sought its own injunction to finish the project after court filings described a prior confrontation in which Delany allegedly threatened construction workers, forcing a halt in work. City officials then tried to negotiate a compromise, but that deal later collapsed. Humboldt County Superior Court granted the city’s injunction and barred the property owners from threatening workers or blocking completion of the project.

The money at stake is now bigger than the original road job. If construction had not resumed and finished before winter, the project would have needed to be winterized, adding an estimated $500,000, along with remobilization and traffic-control costs. Arcata had already committed to a nearly $6 million construction contract with GR Sundberg, Inc. in September 2023, approving $5,996,109 plus authority for up to $179,883 more. That was well above the city’s earlier engineer’s estimate of $4.0 million to $4.5 million.

The project itself had been building toward this fight for years. Public planning discussions began in 2016, and by 2019 Delany was already telling neighbors, “I would rather have a stop sign than a roundabout.” The city and Coastal Commission records describe a broader package of repaving, bike lanes, sidewalks, drainage work, crosswalks, speed humps and a new roundabout at Old Arcata Road and Jacoby Creek Road, with the corridor running about a mile from Samoa Boulevard to Jacoby Creek Road.

The project also moved through CEQA review and coastal permitting. In 2022, Bayside Cares and Delany appealed to the California Coastal Commission, whose staff recommended no substantial issue. By December 2024, the road work from Jacoby Creek Road to Sunny Brae was essentially complete, with sidewalks, bike lanes, flashing crossing signs and added parking.

Even so, the dispute has not disappeared. As of May 2026, the Arcata City Council still lists the case in closed session, a sign that the roundabout fight remains an active legal and financial risk for the city, and a warning for future infrastructure projects that cross uncertain property lines.