San Rafael’s latest housing prospect: High-rise with 180 apartments

A developer has filed a preliminary application with San Rafael to build a 16-story, 180-apartment building along Highway 101.

The 201,900-square-foot building would be constructed on a half-acre property at 700 Irwin St. The property is between Second Street and the San Rafael Creek near the northbound freeway offramp to downtown.

The developer wants to demolish the four-story office building at the site. The project would include 5,000 square feet of commercial space.

The structure would be the tallest building in San Rafael, even taller than a 13-story building recently proposed for 1230 Fifth Ave. The project is less than two blocks away from 930 Irwin St., the proposed site of an eight-story, 213-apartment building.

The property owner listed on the 700 Irwin St. application is BioMarin Pharmaceuticals, one of Marin’s larger private-sector employers. BioMarin purchased the property in 2015 for a little over $2 million, according to public documents.

The application was filed by a limited liability corporation controlled by the two principals of Urban Pacific Development, a privately held real estate firm that specializes in large urban projects. Projects in the company’s portfolio include two apartment towers at the One Rincon Hill complex in San Francisco. One tower is 50 stories, the other 60.

The company is also partnering with Hines and Goldman Sachs to develop the Transbay Parcel F project in San Francisco, a 61-story tower. The developers, known collectively as F4 Transbay Partners LLC, acquired Parcel F for $160 million in an agreement that required them to complete construction before Dec. 21, 2023.

F4 has already accrued $10 million in penalties for missing its construction deadline. It has agreed to pay an additional $20 million if the tower hasn’t been completed by April and another $10 million if it still remains unfinished by July 2027. F4 does not anticipate completing construction until mid-2027.

Urban Pacific Development did not respond to a request for comment.

Andrew Villani, a spokesperson for BioMarin, said the company had no comment.

The site at 700 Irwin St. is among the parcels identified for development in San Rafael’s housing element. The housing element projected 50 residences being built there.

“The proposed project will be using the current state density bonus which will allow construction of 180 residential units,” the preliminary application says.

Enacted in 1979, California’s density bonus law allows developers to build more dwellings than a jurisdiction’s zoned density for a site if they make a certain percentage of the homes affordable.

Urban Pacific’s application anticipates receiving permission to build 85 of the proposed 180 apartments because of the density bonus law. It proposes to make 15 of the apartments affordable to households with very-low incomes and 15 to those with moderate incomes. Very-low-income apartments in Marin County are typically affordable, for example, to two-person households earning $78,350 a year or four-person households earning $97,900 a year.

State density bonus law includes additional incentives to developers. These include concessions from site development standards, such as reduced setbacks, and waivers of development standards.

According to the Urban Pacific filing, the 180-foot-tall building will be controlled by San Rafael’s downtown precise plan. Under that policy, a developer would be allowed to exceed the 50-foot height limit by only 20 feet.

However, the Urban Pacific application says, “The project is utilizing the state density bonus to allow waivers and concessions from the planning code in order to achieve height and bulk described.”

In addition to the height exception, the developer wants waivers from stepback requirements; ground-floor standards related to depth; a bicycle parking requirement; a requirement for carshare and carpool parking spaces; a number of design requirements intended to make the building seem less massive; a requirement for a 25-foot setback from the San Rafael Creek; and specifications for parking space dimensions, including the number of compact spaces.

The project calls for 185 parking spaces, which would be located inside the building and accessed via a mechanical lift.

San Rafael officials have said that the proposal for the 13-story building at 1230 Fifth Ave. will be reviewed by the city’s Planning Commission. The city planning manager, Margaret Kavanaugh-Lynch, said the city would be “able to use a discretionary entitlement process to review the project, using the objective design standards found in the Downtown Precise Plan.”

Under state bonus law, however, no city or county may apply any development standard that will make a project that qualifies for bonus residences infeasible. Urban Pacific’s plans say it will seek waivers from these same objective design standards as prescribed in the city’s “downtown form-based code.”

Regarding what level of scrutiny Urban Pacific’s proposal would receive, San Rafael Assistant City Manager John Stefanski said: “Since this project is still in a pre-application stage, it would be premature to identify the body of review. “

The pre-application was filed with the city in November, but neither it nor the plans submitted by Urban Pacific had been posted on the projects page of San Rafael’s website by Tuesday. Using the city’s “eTRAKiT” search engine, however, it is possible to access a letter the city to the developers on Dec. 5 notifying them that their preliminary application has been deemed complete and that the project is vested. That means even if new zoning regulations were implemented the project would be entitled to proceed under the older rules.

“Once this project is submitted, city staff will set up a page on the city’s website that will include this information along with other details,” Stefanski said.

Brad Sears, a San Rafael resident who has been critical of other planned developments, said the project “will set a precedent for height and greed.”

“It rides on the simplistic supply side view that adding high priced rentals instead of starter homes or truly affordable housing is an enduring strategy to address affordability,” Sears said.

But Jennifer Silva, chair of the Marin Environmental Housing Collaborative, which advocates for more local housing, said there is “ample evidence that higher density housing, and taller residential buildings, are better for the environment.”

“Taller buildings require less energy to heat and cool,” Silva said. “Energy use for transit goes way down, especially when located near transit, like this building will be. Residents use less water.”

Mayor Kate Colin did not respond to a request for comment.