Marin City critics pan Tam Junction housing offshoot

A proposal to shift 32 apartments from a controversial Marin City affordable housing development to a location near Tam Junction has landed with a thud with project critics.

Save Our City, a community group, issued a statement saying skepticism remains about the revised proposal to place the apartments at 150 Shoreline Highway and whether such a plan will benefit Marin City.

The group, which formed to oppose a five-story, 74-apartment affordable housing project at 825 Drake Ave. in Marin City, said “nothing has changed” in its opposition to the plan.

The group sued Marin County and the Board of Supervisors last year in a bid to invalidate the decision to approve the issuance of $40 million in tax-exempt revenue bonds to underwrite the project.

Members of Save Our City are concerned about the effects the project would have on traffic, parking and Village Oduduwa, a nearby complex for low-income seniors. Critics say that because Marin’s area median income is high, many residents of Marin City would be unable to afford the new apartments.

Save Our City is led by Bettie Hodges, a founder of the Marin City Community Development Corp., and Marilyn Mackel, a former court commissioner in Los Angeles.

The group said it briefly engaged in talks over the summer with the project’s developer, Caleb Roope, but ended the discussions after the developer “reneged” on a promise made at the beginning of the talks. Roope did not respond to a request for comment.

The group said it received a letter from an attorney representing the developer, Dan Cucchi, inviting a settlement discussion if the group backed the new plan and “suspended” legal action while the talks were underway.

Meetings were held with Cucchi to evaluate the offer, according to the group, which inquired as to what the plans were for the remaining apartments and what portion of the tax-exempt bonding authorizations would be applied to the smaller project.

Save Our City said it never rejected any offer on the size or scope of the Marin City project but did attempt to place “preconditions” on settlement talks to include “delaying of construction, foundation or other development related work on the site during settlement discussions,” which they said were rejected.

The county has said the Marin City project features prefabricated modular dwellings that make up two wings — one five stories with 42 apartments and one four stories with 32 apartments — and must remain intact.

Marin County Community Development Agency Director Sarah Jones that the county was unaware of the talks involving Save Our City and Roope, and made no promises about limiting the height of the planned Marin City project.

“The revised proposal benefits Marin City residents for the same reason that any affordable housing benefits the residents of any community,” Jones said in an email. “It’s an opportunity for people who have ties to a community through family, work, or social connections to live there.”

“There’s displacement happening now in Marin City and 42 new affordable units will be a small piece of addressing that,” she said. “While all 42 units would qualify as affordable, there will be 25 project-based vouchers made available for 825 Drake which will ensure that people at the lowest income levels can live there.”

Michael Lozeau, an attorney representing Save Our City, said the proposal to transfer some of the apartments has not affected Save Our City’s pending lawsuit. Lozeau said the next hearing is scheduled for Oct. 1 in Marin County Superior Court.

Public records show that the company that Roope heads, Pacific West Communities, paid about $1.8 million in April for the approximately half-acre lot at 150 Shoreline Highway.

Roope is requesting that county supervisors rezone the property to accommodate up to 32 apartments using a housing element procedure that would make the final project’s ultimate approval ministerial. That means the project would not be subject to the California Environmental Quality Act or denial by local elected officials except for strictly objective design criteria, or basic safety and environmental concerns.

In 2021, county supervisors approved a plan to build a two-story building with 10 studio apartments and 11 studio extended-stay hotel rooms at the Shoreline Highway site. The project developer made extensive use of the state’s density bonus law to secure approval to construct a 11,323-square-foot building, 2,377 square feet more than the property was zoned for, and to add an additional 5 feet to the building height to bring it to 30 feet.

Daniel Chador, who represented the developer at the time, said the project was never built because market conditions changed. Chador said the project was initiated at a time when technology workers were streaming to San Francisco.

“Then the San Francisco market collapsed and now there are no more tech workers, so we sold it,” Chador said.

During the public comment period that preceded the supervisor’s vote to approve the 2021 project, numerous Marin residents stated their opposition. Several said serious flooding occurs in the area frequently.

The site has been classified as a flood zone by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the California Department of Transportation is contemplating including the site in a sea-level rise project. The building that was approved was to be constructed on a raised 3-foot-high concrete plinth base to protect it from flooding during a 100-year storm event.

“Unfortunately, this ‘solution’ basically moves 32 units from a high fire hazard zone into an active flood zone subject to sea level rise,” Amy Kalish, a member of the Tamalpais Design Review Board, wrote in an email. “Neither choice is good.”

“The area would need serious and expensive remediation to support this project,” Kalish wrote, “and it seems contrary to ‘affirmatively furthering fair housing’ to site ‘affordable housing’ in a flood zone at a busy freeway intersection. The county doesn’t intend to extend infrastructure to properties that build in flood zones once they’re compromised.”

Kalish added, however, that the area is “blighted” and the county is desperate to meet its state mandate for new housing.