See Article: Marin County's development debate comes to a head at St. Vincent's / Silveira.
Author: Bill Meagher and Peter Seidman
December, 2006 Issue
It isn’t quite 7 a.m., and the southbound traffic on Highway 101 crawls as cars crest the hill coming out of Novato and drop down into Marinwood. Commuters on the northbound side of the highway can look toward the San Pablo Bay and see the fog hugging the ground, shrouding the rolling hills and oaks in a ghostly blanket. Further north, the cows from Silveira Ranch gather near the fence line and head out to a pasture dry and barren from a late Indian summer. The 78-year-old Italian Renaissance church of St. Vincent towers over the herd of Holsteins as if keeping track of the bovines. On this chilly morning, rays of sun squeeze through the marine layer and mix with the wet mist to lend a mysterious quality to the 1,300 acres known as St. Vincent’s/Silveira.The curtain-like haze fits the land to a T as uncertainty has draped the ranch and church land for almost three generations. That ambiguity hasn’t really benefited from three different land-use committee studies, a ballot measure, countless public meetings or a lawsuit. Perhaps the most remarkable thing to come from this tortured process is that there’s only been one legal action in relation to the area in a county where some organizations and businesses have their barrister on speed dial.
Depending on whom you talk with, the adjoining properties that belong to the Catholic Youth Organization and the Silveira family north of San Rafael are an ideal location for market-rate housing, affordable housing, commercial development, a mixed-use development, a senior care center or open space.
The land in question
The St. Vincent’s land is owned by the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO), which falls under the organizational umbrella of the San Francisco Catholic Archdioceses. It began with a gift of 317 acres that was donated by Timothy Murphy to Archbishop Alemany. The school for boys, which was opened by the Sisters of Charity in 1855, is the oldest continuously operating school for children west of the Mississippi; it’s number 630 on the California registry of historic landmarks. There are 952 total acres of land on which it sits, including the St. Vincent’s Holy Rosary Chapel that can be seen from Highway 101. Today, the program consists of residential counseling for troubled youth as well as educational programs.The school, like most in California, is always in need of more funding. For St. Vincent’s, the need is more critical since the buildings are in need of repair—in some cases, complete rebuilding or tear-down. In the 1990s, the school had proposed selling 594 acres of land to Shappell Industries for development of homes and commercial buildings. But the sale never came off, due in large part to the fact that, although the property has long been planned for building, the city of San Rafael and the county of Marin have never agreed officially on whether the development could take place, nevermind at what level.
Bordering the church property is the Silveira Ranch, a 358-acre spread on which the Silveiras run the last remaining dairy operation in east Marin. Led by family patriarch Tony Silveira, the family has made a living off the land for as long as anyone can remember. As part of the 1972 General Plan, the county elected to take away the family’s Williamson Act designation, meaning it would no longer be taxed at a rate consistent with agricultural use but rather as land that could be developed. The new plan zoned the ranch and neighboring St. Vincent’s land for development as part of the “city-centered corridor” (CCC).
The CCC was designated for the lion’s share of future development along the Highway 101 corridor.
The change has cost the family literally thousands of dollars extra in property taxes each year as they continued to run the ranch. And since then, the Silveiras have done a slow burn waiting for the city and county to come to grips with what could ultimately take place on their family land. They have met with city and county officials, participated in studies and even come forward with an informal development plan of their own.
But today, the cows graze in quiet solitude, undisturbed by construction, and the family’s developmental rights are in limbo.
The problem for both St. Vincent’s and the Silveiras is that, up until 2005, while both properties are outside the San Rafael city limits, the lands were within the sphere of the city’s influence. “Sphere of influence” is planese for land that will eventually be annexed into the city, and thus the city must take it into account when planning for such things as fire protection, sewer service or affordable housing requirements.
To date, there’s little (if any) agreement among land owners, the city of San Rafael, the county of Marin, the business community, environmentalists, affordable housing advocates or anybody else who’s ever bothered to circulate a petition, step up to a microphone at a meeting or write a letter to the editor. Moreover, there’s even less political will to do anything, leaving the CYO and the Silveira family to twist in the wind.
What is undisputed is the fact that the 1,300 acres that run from Highway 101 to the San Pablo Bay represent the largest and last block of undeveloped-but-buildable property in Marin County. What’s also undebated is that the uncertainty over the future of the land has cost the Silveira family a small fortune and delayed the CYO’s plans to renovate its aging school. It has propelled a political unknown into a county supervisor’s seat and, for all intents and purposes, ended the political aspirations of one city councilman.
The tale is the stuff of movies, with a cast of characters that includes a politically connected development company headquartered in Beverly Hills, a crusty family patriarch, the most powerful religious organization in the world, various elected officials of every stripe, captains of industry and take-no-prisoner environmentalists. It also stars troubled kids and slow-moving cows. It would make a dandy comedy…if only the story weren’t so true and so sad.
At this writing, the question of what can become of the portion of the land belonging to the CYO is before the Marin Superior Court. The CYO has brought a lawsuit against the city of San Rafael, claiming the city was arbitrary and capricious in taking St. Vincent’s out of the city’s new General Plan. The suit also contends the city illegally certified its General Plan before the associated environmental impact report was certified and that the city’s housing element is legally deficient. Marin Superior Court Judge James Ritchie is expected to render a decision soon.
To understand the future of St. Vincent’s/Silveira, one must try to understand the past—which is not an easy thing to do. Moreover, one must understand the agendas of all parties involved in this 25-year-old land dispute.
