Residents take step to thwart housing

A group of Strawberry residents has filed an appeal to prevent an environmental review for a newhousing development at the former Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

The Marin County Community Development Agency announced on Sept. 24 that it was initiating the “notice of preparation comment period” for an environmental impact report on the project. That announcement came three days after the Strawberry Design Review Board (SDRB) issued a strong recommendation that the project not be allowed to move forward.

“The message was clear,” said Riley Hurd, the attorney representing the Seminary Neighborhood Association, which filed the appeal Thursday. “The county assigned zero weight to the SDRB’s input, or to the unanimous community opposition underpinning the SDRB recommendation.”

North Coast Land Holdings purchased the 126-acre site in 2014 for $84 million. It is seeking approval for a new master plan and amendments to the Strawberry Community Plan to permit it to implement an ambitious redevelopment project.

In addition to a 1,000-student college, North Coast wants to build 337 new residences with 859 bedrooms. Fifty of the residences would be affordable.

The master plan includes a 267,354- square-foot residential care center that would contain 100 independent living apartments and 44 to 50 assisted living and memory care apartments. It also includes a 20,000-squarefoot site for a preschool and fit--

ness center.

North Coast also wants to conduct environmental analyses on two alternative projects, one smaller and one larger. The smaller project would consist of 234 new residences, of which 47 would be affordable; the larger scenario would include 546 new residences.

“The crux of the appeal is that the project description proposed for the EIR is woefully inadequate because it does not include the 1,000- student college being sought by the applicant,” Hurd said.

“Failure to analyze

a

massive, and central, component of the project,” Hurd said, “will result in a deficient and meaningless EIR that does not inform the Board of Supervisors of the true impacts.”

Charlie Goodyear, a spokesman for North Coast, wrote in an email, “For the record, the academic and housing uses at the Seminary were decoupled once the county decided to let the 1984Master Plan expire in 2017 — not through any action or request of North Coast.”

On Dec. 12, 2017, the supervisors upheld a decision by the county Planning Commission to deny North Coast’s request to extend a master plan approved in 1984 and cancel plans for

an environmental impact report on an earlier development proposal.

The 1984 master plan gave the seminary permission to have up to 1,000 students and 304 residences to provide on-site housing for students, faculty and staff.

Following the 2017 ruling by the supervisors, North Coast entered into two separate legal agreements with Marin County pledging not to sue for a period of time, while preserving its right to take legal action later. The second agreement expires at the end of this year.

“This latest appeal of our plan to revitalize the Seminary property is wholly without merit,” Goodyear wrote, “and if allowed to stand would deprive North

Coast of due process.”

Hurd said that for North Coast to decouple housing from the school it would need to amend a conditional use permit granted in 1953. That permit allows for dormitories and other buildings incidental to the operation of a seminary.

“The failure to seek this required conditional use permit amendment adds to the deficiency of the project descriptionfor theEIR,” Hurd said.

Goodyear said, “When the neighbors and their counsel insist that only a seminary can replace a seminary, they are making an overly narrow and potentially unconstitutional interpretation of the 1953 conditional use permit.”

When the Marin County Planning Commission denied the extension and halted the earlier EIR on Oct. 30, 2017, it did so against the recommendation of Community Development Agency staff.

At that time, Hurd, who was representing the Seminary Neighborhood Association then as well, made the same basic argument: that the project description was incomplete due to inadequate information about the type of school planned.

County staff, however, wrote that “the California Environmental Quality Act and the county’s Environmental Impact Review Guidelines provide the opportunity for these concerns to be addressed

through the scoping process for the EIR.”

Supervisor Kate Sears, whose district includes Strawberry, wrote in an email on Thursday, “Before an application of this size and scale can be truly understood, it needs to be studied carefully so that its impacts on the community can be understood and shaped to mitigate negative impacts. The environmental review process does just that.”

After the 1984 master plan expired, North Coast agreed to a series of facilitated meetings with eight community representatives in hopes of reaching a compromise. Some 50meetings took place between May 2018 and October 2019.