Marin developer seeks 90-home project in San Anselmo

A Larkspur developer is seeking investors for a 90-residence project on about 13 acres in the Ross Valley.

The parcels on which Mike Folk hopes to build in unincorporated San Anselmo are among the development sites included in Marin County’s new housing element. As a result, Folk envisions a project that could be approved ministerially, with little or no ability for any local officials to require changes.

The California Environmental Quality Act does not apply to ministerial projects. Such projects must only conform with so-called “objective” design and building standards.

Folk owns four parcels that span about 2.2 acres. He said he is in contract to purchase another 10.6 acres that are adjacent to those parcels. That property is owned by Jerry Draper, who has a history of legal disputes with the county over past development proposals. Draper declined to comment.

Folk said he plans to place a conservation easement on 8.5 acres of the Draper property, but he wouldn’t say whether Draper would retain ownership of this section of the hillside parcel or whether public pedestrian access would be granted to the conservation easement.

Draper pledged to conserve 9.2 acres of his 10.6 acres as open space in 2017 when county supervisors approved his plan to build six homes on the property. That agreement dissolved, however, following subsequent legal action between Draper and the county.

The housing element allots 64 residences to the four parcels that Folk owns, at a density of 30 dwellings per acre.

The parcel that Draper owns is also included in the inventory of development sites in the county’s housing element. The housing element, however, assigns only 10 residences to this parcel at a density of one per acre.

That would seem to limit Folk to a total of 74 dwellings. But Folk said he is also counting 16 existing residences on the site, which he plans to demolish and replace.

“We are planning a community of new apartments and resident amenities to replace these aging units,” Folk said in an email. “The Housing Element designates 64 units in addition to the existing units onsite.”

“At this time, we are not planning to use the state density bonus law to propose additional units,” he said.

On Monday, Sarah Jones, the county’s community development director, wrote in an email that “there was confusion on the developer’s part about the regulatory mechanisms for getting to the number of units they hope to build.”

“The zoning on the site allows for 64 units; additional units could be considered as allowed under state density bonus law,” she wrote.

On Tuesday, Folk confirmed there had been a mix-up. He said he now plans to use the density bonus to keep to his original plan of building 90 residences.

“It’ll just be by a different method,” he said.

Marin County Supervisor Katie Rice raised the issue of replacing those existing homes when supervisors were approving the final site inventory list for the housing element late last year.

“How do we address displacement?” Rice asked county planning staff. “It’s really a big concern for me.”

Rice also questioned whether the development of the site would result in a significant net gain of affordable housing. She said that the existing residences “probably lean more to the naturally affordable end of things given that they are older buildings.”

The housing element calls for 44 of the new residences on the four parcels Folk owns to be priced “above moderate” and 20 to be affordable for “lower income” people. The housing element designates all 10 of the potential homes on the Draper parcel to be “above moderate.”

Nevertheless, Folk wrote, “Affordable housing units are an important part of our proposal, and the existing residents who wish to return to the newly built community will be given first right of refusal for apartments on the property. There are state mandates for relocating tenants to facilitate construction of the new community, and we will work closely with the existing tenants through that process.”

At the December meeting, Barbara Kautz, a lawyer hired by the county to advise it on housing issues, said, “Current state law has a lot of protections for lower-income households whose homes may be demolished.”

Kautz said that in such cases displaced residents are entitled to generous relocation benefits that must be paid by the developer.

“That person is entitled, even after being paid to relocate, to a right of first refusal to a comparable unit,” Kautz said, “one that is affordable for the person and in most cases, the unit must have the same number of bedrooms and same square footage as the one they vacated.”

Since Folk now plans on seeking a density bonus, his project will have to meet certain state affordability requirements. State density law requires that either 5% of the dwellings be affordable for very-low-income residents, or 10% be affordable to low-income residents.

As part of his project, Folk is also seeking an easement over a 9,800-square-foot portion of the San Anselmo corporation yard. The yard is at the end of San Francisco Boulevard, adjacent to the land Folk hopes to develop.

“We plan to use the land for parking and circulation,” Folk wrote in a letter to the San Anselmo Town Council. “The driveway on each property would connect so that emergency vehicles could ingress on one property and egress through the other.”

“Our all-electric new community will have its own micro-grid with both energy generation and battery storage, making it an ideal location for a command post in the case of a natural wildfire emergency and blackouts,” he wrote.

The plan, which would require the removal of two empty and decaying warehouses on the strip of land, was set to be discussed by the Town Council in closed session on Tuesday night.

The Sorich Park Area Residents, a group that has been trying to acquire or preserve open space around the park since 1972, has not yet formulated a position on Folk’s development plans. Brian Crawford, a longtime member of the organization, said Folk briefed the group’s executive committee on his plans in October 2021.

“It all sounded pretty green, and we tentatively supported it,” Crawford said. “But he wouldn’t tell us how many units he was going to propose.”

“When we heard about 90 units, everybody said, no way. That can’t happen,” Crawford said. “That is going to be so much more traffic. The road is only 18 feet wide at the entrance, and people park on both sides.”

Nancy Bennett, another longtime member, said, “It’s insane to put any more cars down there at all. It’s already a traffic jam.”