Planning for Reality: Disenfranchised by an Ecosystem

See Richard Halls Blog in the Patch: Planning for Reality: Disenfranchised by an Ecosystem

Posted by Richard Hall , August 19, 2013 at 05:02 PM

The "fast growth" ecosystem

Many of us have been attending community meetings objecting to high density housing near transit for a year or more  -  yet we find ourselves facing  highly organized, well-funded opponents who have controlled the conversation for years - before we ever showed up. These groups helped usher in designations of many Marin neighborhoods as Priority Development Areas – hot-spots where 80% of new housing growth is targeted by Plan Bay Area. 

While we learned about neighbors wanting to build kitchen extensions somehow our elected representatives overlooked telling us about their far more radical development plans. Finally when we did show up we found ourselves dismissed as a nuisance as anything from “johnny come latelys” to NIMBYs and racists.

The outcome despite a near 10 to 1 ratio of opponents to proponents is that fast growth and high density is going through in Marin:

• Civic Center is going to be turned into a 5-story Northgate City metropolis. Its "Transit Town Center" PDA designation signals MTC’s target to pack in 7,000 housing units within ½ mile of the SMART train station where there are currently only 1,165 units. (Read this MTC guide to understand PDA designations)

• Marinwood and Lucas Valley face absorbing 546 high density housing units. This has the potential to cause significant impact on schools - it is estimated to place a burden of $4.9m year on local taxpayers if schools are to maintain their quality due to subsidies and tax exemptions provided to low income and affordable housing developers and residents.

• Strawberry and Marin City face similar fates, Marin City’s situation is especially perplexing as high density affordable housing could displace the black population of Marin, many of whom are low income and cannot by definition afford affordable housing

Most of us returned from meetings where opponents outnumbered proponents dumbstruck by how this could have happened – and was continuing to happen. So we started to research - and we followed the money…

Plan Bay Area – Following the ABAG Money

Plan Bay Area and the associated Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) are the two major tools being used by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) to drive our cities and county to embrace high density housing.

ABAG claims there is no loss of local control, but if the planning numbers aren’t met then city and counties open themselves up tolegal liability. Those locations that embrace development via Priority Development Areas receive lucrative transportation and housing grants.

The Ecosystem of Advocacy Groups

Plan Bay Area started its conception years ago in conjunction with a number of housing and transportation advocacy groups. These groups formed strong relationships with ABAG, MTC and have also endeared themselves to counties, cities and businesses.

Here in Marin an organization calling itself the Grassroots Leadership Network was formed, it evolved to become Marin Grassroots. Receiving donations of over $634,116 in 2011, with plush offices located amongst Marin County offices, and employing multiple full time staff it doesn’t quite align with the definitions of Grassroots on Wikipedia. 

Like other housing and transportation advocacy groups, Marin Grassroots embedded itself in the committees involved in planning. They showed up early and often while most of us slept unaware of the radical change that was planned for us.

In March 2013 Marin Grassroots along with other housing advocacy groups was paid by MTC to conduct focus groups to capture feedback from minorities and low income residents on  their needs (see page 4). A laudable goal, but paying a political organization with a strong agenda to increase high density housing and switch residents from cars to transit was surely unlikely to produce unbiased conclusions.

But these groups weren't treated just as vendors, they are partners of ABAG  with Marin Grassroots awarded a $56,000 grant by ABAG.

These groups would attend community meetings, not disclosing their relationships to ABAG and MTC and cheer on ABAG and MTCs Plan Bay Area, holding up signs promoting the plan.

When finally accused of derailing conversations and failing to disclose that they were funded by taxpayer , ABAG and MTC contributions they claimed not to have taken a position on Plan Bay Area . Yet even the most glancing visit to the Marin Grassroots' website proved otherwise as they strongly advocated not just the enactment of Plan Bay Area, but it’s most severe variant – the Environment, Equity and Jobs alternative (EEJ) - even going so far as to create a petition advocating adoption of this alternative . The EEJ option diverts a further $2.5bn from maintaining and expanding highways towards transit.

Consider also that these advocacy organizations are non-profits (501(c)(3)s) where donations are not taxable.

Marin County Connections

Marin County through the supervisors has become heavily intertwined with Marin Grassroots. Between 2009 and 2011 the county paid Marin Grassroots $115,000(see item CA-4 (d)(ii)).

The Marin County supervisors are very involved with Grassroots, involving them on committees and attending and supporting their "We are Marin" party.

The Billion Dollar Community Foundations

The other way that these groups raise money is through bequests made typically by wealthy individuals to Community Foundations such as the Marin Community Foundation (MCF) or the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. MCF has assets of $1bngathered initially through bequests such as Mrs Beryl Buck and subsequent donors many of whom made donations in their wills. It is meant to direct funds to improve the quality of life and diversity for the people of Marin. However of late it has donated $250,000 to Marin Grassroots and $75,000 to Stand Up for Neighborly Novato - both housing and social equity advocacy groups that have supported Plan Bay Area.

Where Does this Leave Us Marinites?

Now we know what’s occurring Marinites can better understand how we got to this fast growth situation. Plan Bay Area was conceived and promoted by a network of political patrons. What we can do about this is vote out officials that let this patronage occur, especially those who supported it:

• Supervisors Steve Kinsey , Katie Rice Judy Arnold voted to make Marin Grassroots Director, Ericka Ericsson , a Marin County Planning Commissioner despite a perceived lack of experience.  

• All the Marin County Supervisors are “host sponsors” of Marin Grassroots upcoming “We Are Marin” picnic event at Civic Center Park. 

• San Rafael city council candidate and fast growth proponent Greg Brockbank, alongside Marin County Supervisor Kinsey have both regularly attended and shown their support for Marin Grassroots events such as the declaration of the state of emergency where fast growth opponents were labeled a racist lynch mob. Supervisor Kinsey spoke with the Marin Grassroots and Concerned Marinites protest outside the Citizen Marin town hall.

Elected officials need to be on notice that their patronage and support of these organizations is unacceptable. Voters in Marin should demonstrate the ramifications of this behavior at the ballot box starting by voting for Randy Warren in the November San Rafael city council race and supervisor candidates Carol Brandtand Toni Shroyer. Businesses and individuals can also help offset the imbalance by donating to their campaigns.

Marin needs a major reform - voters need to send a clear message – this political patronage is unacceptable and we do not want Marin overrun by fast growth.

The Big Idea: California Is So Over

Photo Illustration by Emil Lendof/The Daily Beast

Joel Kotkin

• 
  

DRIP, DRIP…


04.19.1512:01 AM ET
The Big Idea: California Is So Over


California’s drought and how it’s handled show just what kind of place the Golden State is becoming: feudal, super-affluent and with an impoverished interior.


California has met the future, and it really doesn’t work. As the mounting panic surrounding the drought suggests, the Golden State, once renowned for meeting human and geographic challenges, is losing its ability to cope with crises. As a result, the great American land of opportunity is devolving into something that resembles feudalism, a society dominated by rich and poor, with little opportunity for upward mobility for the state’s middle- and working classes.


The water situation reflects this breakdown in the starkest way. Everyone who follows California knew it was inevitable we would suffer a long-term drought. Most of the state—including the Bay Area as well as greater Los Angeles—is semi-arid, and could barely support more than a tiny fraction of its current population. California’s response to aridity has always been primarily an engineering one that followed the old Roman model of siphoning water from the high country to service cities and farms.


But since the 1970s, California’s water system has become the prisoner of politics and posturing. The great aqueducts connecting the population centers with the great Sierra snowpack are all products of an earlier era—the Los Angeles aqueduct (1913), Hetch-Hetchy (1923), the Central Valley Project (1937), and the California Aqueduct (1974). The primary opposition to expansion has been the green left, which rejects water storage projects as irrelevant.


Yet at the same time greens and their allies in academia and the mainstream pressare those most likely to see the current drought as part of a climate change-induced reduction in snowpack. That many scientists disagree with this assessment is almost beside the point. Whether climate change will make things better or worse is certainly an important concern, but California was going to have problems meeting its water needs under any circumstances.


Not Meeting the Challenges.


It’s not like we haven’t been around this particular block before. In the 1860s, a severe drought all but destroyed LA’s once-flourishing cattle industry. This drought was followed by torrential rains that caused their own havoc. The state has suffered three major droughts since I have lived here—in the mid ’70s, the mid ’80s and again today—but long ago (even before I got there) some real whoppers occurred, including dry periods that lasted upwards of 200 years.


This, like the threat of earthquakes, is part of the price we pay to live in this most beautiful and usually temperate of states. The real issue is how to meet this challenge, and here the response has been slow and lacking in vision. Not all of this is to be blamed on the greens, who dominate the state politically. California agriculture, for example, was among the last in the nation to agree to monitoringof groundwater. Farmers have also been slow to adjust their crops toward less water-dependent varieties; they continue to plant alfalfa, cotton, and other crops that may be better grown in more water-rich areas.


Many cities, too, have been slow to meet the challenge. Some long resisted metering of water use. Other places have been slow to encourage drought-resistant landscaping, which is already pretty de rigeur in more aridity-conscious desert cities like Tucson. This process may take time, but it is already showing value in places like Los Angeles where water agencies provide incentives.


But ultimately the responsibility for California’s future lies with our political leadership, who need to develop the kind of typically bold approaches past generations have embraced. One step would be building new storage capacity, which Governor Jerry Brown, after opposing it for years, has begun to admit is necessary. Desalinization, widely used in the even more arid Middle East, notably Israel, has been blocked by environmental interests but could tap a virtually unlimited supply of the wet stuff, and lies close to the state’s most densely populated areas. Essentially the state could build enough desalinization facilities, and the energy plants to run them, for less money than Brown wants to spend on his high-speed choo-choo to nowhere. This piece of infrastructure is so irrelevant to the state’s needs that even many progressives, such as Mother Jones’ KevinDrum, consider it a “ridiculous” waste of money.


We are producing a California that is the polar opposite of Pat Brown’s creation.


And there needs to be, at least for the short term,an end to dumping water into San Francisco Bay for the purpose of restoring a long-gone salmon run, or to the Delta, in order to save a bait-fish, the Delta smelt, which may already be close to extinct. This dumping of water has continued even as the state has faced a potentially crippling water shortage; nothing is too good for our fish, or to salve the hyper-heated consciousness of the environmental illuminati.


The Political Equation


The biggest reason California has been so slow, and uncharacteristically feckless, in meeting this existential challenge lies with psychology and ends with political power. The generation that built the sinews of modern California—most notably the late Governor Pat Brown Sr., the current governor’s father—sprang from the old progressive spirit which saw in infrastructure development a chance not only to create new wealth, but also provide opportunity to working- and middle-class Californians.


Indeed, if you look at California’s greatest achievements as a society, the Pat Brown legacy stands at the core. The California Aqueduct turned vast stretches of the Central Valley into one of the most productive farming regions in the world. The freeway system, now in often shocking disrepair, allowed for the construction of mass suburbia that offered millions a quality of life never experienced by previous generations. At the same time the development of energy resources—California still boasts the nation’s third-largest oil production—helped create a huge industrial base that included aerospace, semiconductors, and a host of specialized industries, from logistics to garment manufacturing.





In contrast, Jerry Brown has waged a kind of Oedipal struggle against his father’s legacy. Like many Californians, he recoiled against the sometimes haphazard and even ugly form of development that plowed through much of the state. Cutting off water is arguably the most effective way to stop all development, and promote Brown’s stated goal of eliminating suburban “sprawl.” It is typical that his first target for cutbacks this year has been the “lawns” of the middle-class suburbanite, a species for which he has shown little interest or tolerance.


But it’s not just water that exemplifies the current “era of limits” psychology. Energy development has always been in green crosshairs and their harassment has all but succeeded in helping drive much of the oil and gas industry, including corporate headquarters, out of the state. Not building roads—arguably to be replaced by trains—has not exactly reduced traffic but given California the honor of having eight of the top 20 cities nationally with poor roads; the percentage of Los Angeles-area residents who take transit has, if anything, declined slightlysince train-building began. All we are left with are impossible freeways, crumbling streets, and ever more difficulty doing anything that requires traveling.


The Road to Feudalism


These policies have had numerous impacts, like weakening California’s industrial sector, which cannot afford energy prices that can be twice as high as in competing states. Some of those who might have worked in the factories, warehouses, and farms of California now help swell the numbers of the welfare recipients, who remarkably make up one-third of the nation’s total. As recently as the 1970s and ’80s, the percentage of people living in poverty in California wasbelow the national average; California today, based on cost of living, has thehighest poverty rate in the country.


Of course, the rich and entitled, particularly in Silicon Valley have achieved unprecedented riches, but those middle-class Californians once served by Pat have largely been abandoned by his son. California, long a relative beacon of equality and opportunity, now has the fourth-highest rate of inequality in the country. For those who, like me, bought their first home over 30 years ago, high housing prices, exacerbated by regulation, are a personal piggybank. But it’s doubtful either of my daughters will ever be able to buy a house here.


What about “green jobs”? California leads in total number of green jobs, simply by dint of size, but on a per-capita basis, a recent Brookings study notes, California is about average. In wind energy, in fact, California is not even in first place; that honor goes to, of all places, Texas, which boasts twice California’s level of production. Today even  The New York Times has described Governor Jerry Brown’s promise about creating a half-million green jobs as something of a “pipe dream.” Even surviving solar firms, busy in part to meet the state’s strict renewable mandates, acknowledge that they won’t be doing much of the manufacturing here, anyway.


The Cost of Narcissism


Ultimately this is a story of a state that has gotten tired, having lost its “animal spirits” for the policy equivalent of a vegan diet. Increasingly it’s all about how the elites in the state—who cluster along the expensive coastal areas—feel about themselves. Even Brown knows that his environmental agenda will do little, or nothing, to combat climate change, given the already minimal impact of the state on carbon emissions compared to escalating fossil fuel use in China, India and elsewhere. But the cosmopolitan former Jesuit gives more priority to his spiritual service to Gaia than the needs of his non-affluent constituents.


But progressive narcissism is, as some conservatives assert, not the main problem. California greens are, to be sure, active, articulate, well-organized, and well-financed. What they lack is an effective counterpoint from the business class, who would be expected to challenge some of their policies. But the business leadership often seems to be more concerned with how to adjust the status quo to serve privileged large businesses, including some in agriculture, than boosting the overall economy. The greens, and their public-sector allies, can dominate not because they are so effective as that their potential opposition is weak, intimidated, and self-obsessed.


What we are witnessing the breakdown of a once-expansive, open society into one dominated by a small group of plutocrats, largely in Silicon Valley, with an “amen” crew among the low-information donors of Hollywood, the public unions, the green lobby, and wealthy real estate developers favored by Brown’s pro-density policies. This coalition backs Brown and helps maintain the state’s essentially one-party system. No one is more adamant about reducing people’s carbon footprint than the jet set of Silicon Valley or the state’s planning elite, even if they choose not to live in a manner that they instruct all others.


This fundamentally hypocritical regime remains in place because it works—for the powerful and well-placed. Less understandable is why many Hispanic politicians, such as Assembly Speaker Kevin de Leon, also prioritize “climate change” as his leading issue, without thinking much about how these policies might worsen the massive poverty in his de-industrializing L.A. district—until you realize that de Leon is bankrolled by Tom Steyer and others from the green uberclass.


So, in the end, we are producing a California that is the polar opposite of Pat Brown’s creation. True, it has some virtues: greener, cleaner, and more “progressive” on social issues. But it’s also becoming increasingly feudal, defined by a super-affluent coastal class and an increasingly impoverished interior. As water prices rise, and farms and lawns are abandoned, there’s little thought about how to create a better future for the bulk of Californians. Like medieval peasants, millions of Californians have been force to submit to the theology of our elected high priest and his acolytes, leaving behind any aspirations that the Golden State can work for them too.


Joel Kotkin is the RC Hobbs Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, California, and director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His last book, The New Class Conflict, was published by Telos Press Publishing in 2014.

The New Coastal Plan for Marin County-Take away property rights from Farmers.

Imagine a farmer getting a permit for each time he changes crops.  In addition, the coastal plan severely limits the uses and buildings that a farmer can place on his property.   This some of the outrageous intervention in private property rights that everyone will face in the Coastal Plan. This is not freedom.  Ultimately this will undermind the business of agricultural in Marin County.  

It will be great for the "trust fund progressives" that do not depend on the land for their income.   They will get to live in  the most exclusive gated community in all of Marin.  

Who are the real NIMBYS?

Prosperity, Poverty and Really Bad Planning.

By Zelda Bronstein

See the story in  48 Hills HERE

APRIL 14, 2015 – Last October, a 100-page document called the Economic Prosperity Strategy for the Bay Area appeared on the website or the urban-affairs group SPUR. Coordinated by SPUR and commissioned by a little-known outfit operating under the aegis of two regional agencies, the EPS has been designated by the Association of Bay Area Governments staff as one of the “Key Reports” to inform the Bay Area’s first “Regional Economic Program.”

That’s cause for alarm.

The Economic Prosperity Strategy’s take on the local economy is superficial, incoherent, and, in major respects—it assumes that growth per se is good, and that more market-rate housing will help solve the affordability crisis—just plain wrong.

And since it’s backed by ABAG and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, funded by nearly $500,000 of grant money from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and

Citizen Marin meets the Marin County ABAG representatives on April 9, 2015

The county representatives for ABAG met with Citizen Marin members to discuss Plan Bay Area II.

Steve Kinsey, Supervisor and  Marin's ONLY representative for the MTC did not appear.   In fact, he has refused to engage the public in any open forum regarding the forty year plan for your life known as "Plan Bay Area II".

Public Forums will be held around the Bay Area in April and May 2015

Here Comes SMART!

Does anyone think this ISN'T going to affect the Wetlands?  

Where are the environmentalists Now?

Grady Ranch is still a bad idea

DECEMBER 27, 2012 BY DAVID EDMONDSON 1 COMMENT

Stop Sign by thecrazyfilmgirl, on Flickr

Last Thursday, the IJ published an editorial defending the Grady Ranch affordable housing project from critics. If we don’t know what the project will look like, asks the editorial board, how can we criticize? Perhaps it will include a bike lane and sidewalks all the way to 101. Perhaps there will be a place for Marin Transit to run a shuttle, never mind the cost. And perhaps there will be a small grocery store so residents will be able to do at least one errand without getting in the car.

While it’s true that we don’t know how the project will look, the arguments in defense of the project don’t address the fundamental flaw of “affordable” sprawl: the burden of car-dependence on residents, and the burden of maintenance on the County.

Grady Ranch isn’t “a rare opportunity to help meet Marin’s need for affordable housing.” To the contrary, it would doom hundreds of low-income people to an expensive existence of car-dependance. The whole point of creating a walkable, bikeable mix of jobs and housing, which the IJ dismisses so easily, is to free people from the burden of car ownership. A car should be an option for those who want it, not a necessity for those who can’t afford it. Why we would want to give our poor another burden they cannot carry is beyond me.

If car ownership will be residents’ burden, services and infrastructure will be the County’s. MCF, as a nonprofit, doesn’t pay any taxes on any of its land or developments, meaning new residents won’t have to pay. And, even if supervisors could foist the cost of extending services and infrastructure onto developers, that still leaves ongoing costs. Infrastructure needs maintenance and services have payrolls. Will Lucas, or MCF, or “possible grant providers” be willing to pay that expense for the next 50 years? Somehow, I don’t think even George Lucas would be that generous.

These problems and the others I raised before need to be addressed in the first draft of the plan, not later. We cannot give MCF and Lucas “the opportunity to come up with a detailed plan before going on the attack.” Supervisors, citizens, and the two Grady Ranch partners must answer these problems now.

Besides, even if Grady Ranch is an irredeemable project, that doesn’t mean the end result can’t be less terrible. Given how bad the project is just on its face, we need to start to shape it before they’ve put time into a detailed plan. If the county pushes forward, this may be the only chance we’ll get.

Marin Voice: More creativity needed to address local housing goals

By Kevin Haroff

POSTED: 04/15/15, 11:19 AM PDT |

2 COMMENTS

Larkspur’s City Council recently approved a draft housing element for its citywide general plan.

The draft was approved by a vote of 4-1. I was the only council member who dissented, and I think it is important to explain the reasons why.

Like most, I support the goal of improving opportunities for affordable housing throughout Marin County. I worry that the lack of affordable options limits the ability of some — especially the growing number of seniors in Marin — to share the benefits of living in this unique community.

But I also am concerned about how the need for affordable housing can be used, sometimes cynically, to serve the private interests of private land developers and property owners.

In casting my vote on Larkspur’s draft housing plan, I focused on three issues: the role state agency officials in Sacramento play in directing local land use decisions; the importance of meaningful public input on the environmental consequences of those decisions; and the need for flexibility in meeting our housing goals.

On the role of Sacramento, there is a common perception that no housing plan can even be considered unless it conforms to the narrow expectations of staff employees at the state Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD).

That is not true.

Under the state government code, HCD guidelines are only “advisory” to local agencies in developing draft housing plans. Even if HCD disapproves a plan, the statute allows local government to adopt it anyway, so long as it makes a finding to explain why the plan meets the requirements of state law.

On the importance of public input, some argue that draft housing plans have no significant environmental impacts, so long as they do not change pre-existing zoning determinations — that way, local governments can avoid the public review and comment process that ordinarily is required under the California Environmental Quality Act. This approach ignores the fact that current conditions may be different from those existing at the time earlier zoning decisions were made.

Formal consideration of public views is essential to ensuring that current conditions and potential future consequences are fully addressed.Finally, on the need for flexibility, it is a mistake to assume that our housing needs can only be met through the development of large parcels that conveniently are adjacent to transportation corridors like Highway 101 or the looming SMART rail project.

In a low-growth county like Marin, there are other options, such as encouraging junior second units as an adjunct to the existing housing stock. Affordable junior second units can be particularly attractive to seniors needing less living space than growing families might want.

The promotion of junior second units is sometimes dismissed by planning consultants as not credible, since it doesn’t have a sustained track record showing past success in meeting regional housing goals.

Yet that kind of record will never be developed without a strong commitment to giving this strategy a priority over more traditional approaches.

There is no reason why local government officials cannot do more to foster creative strategies that meet the county’s affordable housing needs. Our constituents remind us repeatedly that they do not want new high-density development cluttering Marin County’s unique landscape.

By adopting innovative approaches to planning, we can meet our community’s expectations in all respects — and be proud of what we have accomplished in the process.

Kevin Haroff is a Larkspur City Council member. He also is the managing partner of Marten Law PLLC in San Francisco.

Grady Ranch Is All Wrong

DECEMBER 6, 2012 BY DAVID EDMONDSON 8 COMMENTS

A great place for some infill development. Photo by Skywalker Properties.

George Lucas’s great foray into affordable housing is wrong for Marin, wrong for affordable housing, and wrong for the people that would live there. The Grady Ranch development plan needs to be scrapped.

After the collapse of LucasFilm’s Grady Ranch studio proposal, then-owner George Lucas promised to build affordable housing on the site instead. Many observers, including me, saw it as payback to the Lucas Valley anti-development crowd that killed the studio project, but few thought George was serious.

Yet Lucas and his partners at the Marin Community Foundation are charging ahead with 200-300 units of affordable housing anyway. While it does present an opportunity to build affordable homes, the site couldn’t be worse.

Grady Ranch is located out on Lucas Valley Road, far from any downtown, commercial center, or regular transit line. It’s right at the edge of the North San Rafael sprawl line – a car-oriented area even where it’s already built up.

Lucas Valley Road itself is essentially a limited-access rural highway, with cars speeding along at 50 miles per hour. There’s no development on the south side, and the north side only has entrances to the neighborhoods. No buildings actually front the road. Yet, it’s the only access to the Highway 101 transit trunk line, to nearly any commercial or shopping areas, or between neighborhoods.

Development here would be bad by any measure. Car-centric sprawl fills our roads with more traffic, generates more demand for parking, and forces residents to play Russian roulette every time they want to get milk. It takes retail activity away from our town centers, weakening the unique Marin character embodied in downtowns.

The infrastructure, too, is inefficient. Grady Ranch would need to be covered by police service, fire service, sewage, water, electricity, and some modicum of transit, but those costs are based on geography, not population. Serving a square mile with 300 homes is a lot more expensive per home than a square mile with 1,000.

Yet the fact that this will be affordable housing makes the project even more egregious. Driving is expensive, with depreciation, gas, maintenance, insurance, and parking costs all eating up scads of money. On a population level, you can add in the cost of pollution, as well as injuries and deaths in crashes. A home in Grady Ranch would be affordable, but the cost of actually living there would be quite high.

The nonprofit aspect of the project would mean no taxes could be raised to cover its infrastructure and services. Building affordable housing in a mixed area means they’re covered by preexisting services. Though usage is more intense, there is typically enough spare capacity to take on more residents. Building something beyond current development means new infrastructure and services need to be built specifically for that project but without any existing residents to pay for it. It would be a massive and ongoing drain on county coffers.

This is the worst possible place for affordable housing. Grady Ranch, if it’s not going to be a film studio, needs to remain as open space. An affordable housing project out at the exurban edge of Marin cannot be affordable because car-centric development is fundamentally unaffordable.

I respect the efforts of George Lucas and Marin Community Foundation to find a place for the low-income to live, but Grady Ranch is not it. Lucas and MCF need to look at urban infill sites and focus on building up in those areas that are transit-accessible and walkable, places that are actually affordable. Replicating the discredited drive-‘til-you-qualify dynamic in Marin is not the answer; it’s just recreating the problem.

KCBS story on Grady Ranch and "St. George"

See the KCBS story HERE.   The news media are all gushy over St. George's "gift".  What they don't realize that the middle class communities of Marinwood, Lucas Valley and Terra Linda will be stuck paying for all of the infrastructure upgrades to roads, bus lines, public safety and schools.   Low income housing can escape environmental safeguards and infrastructure costs that market rate developers must pay. His generosity will be paid by us over and over again in higher taxes.

Why does he want to put housing on a site that will DOUBLE the development cost because of the landscape?  He could build TWICE the housing at lower cost elsewhere in Marin. Better yet, he could provide more integration if small sites were spread throughout the county.  Why massive big box developments that isolate communities? Clearly there is more than meets the eye.

Setting the Record Straight. The LucasFilm Project was pulled because of Water Regulations not neighbors.

See this 2012 story in the Marin IJ 

We Will Save Marin Again!

Marin Voice: Large Grady housing plan 'wishful thinking'

By

By Neil Sorensen, Guest op-ed column

POSTED: 12/31/69, 4:00 PM PST | UPDATED: ON 09/30/2012

# COMMENTS

I RIDE my bicycle past the Grady Ranch a couple of times a week. It is a beautiful piece of property bordering Lucas Valley Road, with the upper reaches of Miller Creek and two tributary creeks, as well as steep, highly visible hills and ridges.

Recently, on my ride past the property, I was troubled by the plan put forth by the Marin Community Foundation and county planners to develop 240 housing units on the property.

Past housing approvals for this property allowed less than half this number under less stringent environmental rules. Allowing 240 houses on the property under today's rules seems idealistic at best.

In the interest of full disclosure, my wife and I live near the property, in Lucas Valley Estates, and I supported the 1996 Lucasfilm Ltd. digital studio master plan and, with some reservations, the recent revised film studio plan that was withdrawn by Mr. Lucas.

I make my living as a land- use attorney representing property owners seeking permits to develop property and formerly worked as a land use planner in the Marin County Planning Department.

In 1983, when a 114-unit housing project was approved for the Grady Ranch by the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors, I was one of the county planners assigned to review and analyze the application.

Developing 240 housing units of any kind on the property seems like wishful thinking.

The Countywide Plan prohibits development within 100 feet of a creek and designates some of the property as a Ridge and Upland Greenbelt, which prohibits development on visible ridges and hillsides.

The zoning for the Grady Ranch permits one housing unit for every 2.64 acres of land, which does not allow 240 units on the property.

County policies to promote low-income housing would theoretically allow an increase in the number of houses as long as all requirements of the Countywide Plan are met.

Given the environmental constraints associated with the property, including the small amount of flat land, the existence of landslides, and the need to maintain a 100-foot setback from three creeks, it is hard to imagine such an increase in density complying with the Countywide Plan, or the myriad of other state and local regulations applicable to the property.

As Lucasfilm well knows, there are other regulatory agencies (Regional Water Quality and Fish and Game) that will highly scrutinize any development proposal adjacent to these creeks.

Grady Ranch does not seem like a good candidate for high-density, low-income housing. The property is about four miles from the Highway 101 corridor; too far to easily provide the necessary transit and related services to develop and maintain high-density housing for low-income persons.

Because of its remote location, and the need to extend public services such as sewer, water, and power, it will also be very costly to develop — much more than property closer to essential urban services. With landslide repair and creek restoration costs added in, the development of low-income housing seems improbable without large subsidies.

As I recall there were good environmental and policy reasons the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors approved only 114 units on the property in 1983.

Land-use rules and policies have not relaxed since that time. If anything they are more stringent.

Let's hope the coming debate on the county's Housing Element includes a careful look at the Grady Ranch and the appropriate amount of housing — whether market-rate or low-income.

I believe that when all the facts are in, 240 units will be far too many.

Neil Sorensen is a San Rafael land-use attorney. He is a former Marin County planner and served as a trustee on the Dixie School District board.