Marin City housing developer files Tam Valley plan

A developer who pitched a contentious plan to build a 74-apartment complex in Marin City has submitted formal plans to construct 32 of the homes in the Tamalpais Valley area instead.

The proposed project at 150 Shoreline Highway calls for a five-story building in an area that has been classified as a flood zone by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The California Department of Transportation is contemplating including the site in a sea-level rise project.

The project was scheduled to be reviewed by the Tamalpais Design Review Board on Wednesday, but Amy Kalish, the board’s chair, said she decided to remove it from the agenda after reviewing the application.

“The designs did not reflect the site constraints,” Kalish said. “It literally did not look like a design that had been produced for that site.”

Kalish said that despite the risk of flooding at the location, the drawings showed windows placed at ground level.

“Even the tree selections, when I checked them, none of them could have tolerated living there because their roots wouldn’t tolerate brackish water,” she said.

Doug Wallace, another member of the board, said the plan “repeats the historical injustice of pushing lower-income people to marginal housing sites.”

“That is my main critique,” he said. “I find that highly objectionable.”

In 2021, county supervisors approved a plan to build a two-story building with 10 studio apartments and 11 hotel rooms at the site. The building was to have been constructed on a 3-foot-high concrete plinth base to protect it from flooding during a 100-year storm event.

Market conditions changed, however, and the developer abandoned the project.

Caleb Roope, chief executive officer of the Pacific Companies, agreed to relocate the planned apartments from the project at 824 Drake Ave. in Marin City to 150 Shoreline Highway as a means of easing criticism of the Marin City development.

Construction of the building there has faced fierce opposition from community activists concerned about the effects the project would have on traffic, parking and Village Oduduwa, a nearby complex for low-income seniors.

Pacific West Communities, a subsidiary of the Pacific Companies and the company that submitted the application for 150 Shoreline Highway, paid about $1.8 million to purchase the half-acre lot in April.

Roope initially requested that county supervisors rezone the property to accommodate up to 32 apartments using a housing element procedure that would have made the project’s approval ministerial. That would have meant the project would not have been 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.

Under the site’s zoning — 30 dwellings per acre — only 18 apartments would be allowed there.

County supervisors were scheduled to discuss the proposed changes on Oct. 15. That plan was scrapped after Save Our City, an activist group opposing the Marin City project, scored a victory in court. Marin Superior Court Judge Stephen Freccero invalidated a decision by Marin County supervisors to approve $40 million in bonds to underwrite the Marin City project.

The county canceled the meeting. Sarah Jones, director of the Marin County Community Development Agency, said the county lacked information at the time about the project’s financial solvency.

More recently, however, Roope has said the ruling had no effect because the bonds had already been issued and sold before the judge ruled.

The plans for 150 Shoreline Highway make no mention of a request for a zoning change. Instead the application asserts that state density bonus law mandates that 15 additional apartments be allowed at the site, since all of the apartments will be priced to be affordable for lower-income households.

State density bonus law requires that cities and counties award a density bonus above a project’s maximum allowable residential density provided the developer agrees to build a certain percentage of affordable dwellings.

In addition, the application says, “Since the project would set aside 100 percent of the units for very low-income households, it is entitled under state law to receive five incentives/concessions.”

In addition to the extra apartments, the developer is seeking relief from the Tamalpais Area Community Plan’s 25-foot height limit; the countywide plan’s floor area ratio limit of 0.35%; and the county’s minimum parking requirement of 12 spaces. The developer is proposing a floor area ratio of 1.3% and eight parking spaces.

Kalish and Wallace said the risk of flooding at the site is just one of many problems with the project.

“There’s subsidence, which will be ongoing,” Wallace said. “It’s all built on marsh mud and that is going to be compounded by ongoing sea-level rise.”

Kalish said traffic congestion is already a problem in the area, and the amount of parking proposed is insufficient.

“It’s going to be very difficult to get in and out,” she said.

Both said the look of the proposed building needs improving. They said one problem is its size.

“This building is just one monolithic structure,” Kalish said. “I would like to see it broken up.”

“I’m very concerned about the visual impact. This is a gateway to much of the rest of Marin,” Wallace said. “I consider it an eyesore.”

Jones said that after the project is discussed by the design review board, there will be some environmental analysis of the site. Exxon operated a gas station there until 1994. Jones said the analysis would likely rely on the environmental impact report prepared for the county’s housing element and would not be an independent report focused just on the 150 Shoreline Highway site.

Next the project will be submitted to the Marin County Planning Commission for its review.

Jones wrote in an email that ultimately, given state law, county supervisors “can only deny or downsize a housing proposal, or the use of a waiver of development standards, if they can make certain findings about health and safety.”