San Rafael development proposal calls for 79 condos

Marin County has received a preliminary application to build 79 townhouse-style condominiums along Woodland Avenue in unincorporated San Rafael.

The proposed development, dubbed Auburn Cove, would be located on both sides of Woodland Avenue between its two intersections with Auburn Street.

The application was filed by City Ventures, a limited liability company with corporate offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Orange County.

“We’re looking forward to providing more housing in Marin County,” said Kian Malek, director of development.

Sixty-three of the homes will be market rate while the remaining 16 will be priced to be affordable for households at 60% of the Marin County area median income.

In July 2020, City Ventures received approval from the Novato City Council to build 75 townhomes at 802 State Access Road in the Hamilton area. A majority of those homes were priced between $600,000 and $700,000. Seven were were priced in the $500,000 range and eight were priced in the $300,000s.

The proposed 123,585-square-foot San Rafael project would be in 16 buildings on 3.29 acres of five parcels that total 4.55 acres. The buildings would be three stories high with a maximum height of 36 feet. The development would include 158 parking spaces.

All of the homes would have three bedrooms, solar panels and a two-car garage, which would be wired for electric vehicle chargers. The homes would range from 1,500 square feet to 1,665 square feet, not counting garage and deck space.

The project site is in a Federal Emergency Management Agency designated floodplain with a base flood elevation of 10 feet. As a result, all of the living space will be on the second floor and above.

The parcels on which the developer is proposing to build were included in the county’s list of preferred sites for development in its housing element. The county’s housing element includes 10 contiguous parcels in the Woodland Avenue/Auburn Street vicinity among those on its preferred site inventory list.

All parcels included on the list of preferred sites are entitled to ministerial approval, which means that they are subject to virtually no local review and do not have to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act.

Before the passage of state laws several years ago to promote the creation of new housing, developers had to comply with a Marin County general plan requirement to provide a 100-foot setback from a seasonal wetland. One is located to the west and northeast of the project site.

The developer indicated in its application that it will seek a waiver from this requirement using the state density bonus law. The law provides waivers and variances for projects that include a requisite amount of “affordable housing.”

“By law, density bonus waivers can’t be used for development in wetlands themselves, but they can be used for development in our locally-required wetland buffer,” said Sarah Jones, director of the Marin County Community Development Agency.

The company is proposing a 20-foot setback instead.

“That’s hardly enough,” said Barbara Salzman, president of the Marin Audubon Society.

Judy Edmonson, who has lived in the neighborhood for the last 33 years, called the proposed setback “completely unacceptable.”

“The marsh is such a precious and rare thing,” Edmonson said. “There is a reason for the 100-foot setback, to keep the marsh surviving.”

The developer is also seeking a density bonus law waiver of a requirement to provide a 10-foot setback between the homes on the northeastern side of Woodland Avenue and a Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit path. The developer is proposing a 5-foot, 5-inch setback.

“I don’t know who is going to want to live with the SMART train running right behind their house,” said Richard Bernstein, who lives near the proposed project and has taken the lead in overseeing development plans for the neighborhood.

“We’re not wild about it,” Bernstein said. “We have about 80 units in our neighborhood now. It’s doubling the size of the neighborhood. It is totally out of character with the neighborhood.”

Bernstein said traffic through the neighborhood is typically jammed for a couple of hours every day during commute hours because of motorists seeking alternate routes to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

“There only a few ways out of the neighborhood and all of them are two-lane roads,” he said. “This will create more congestion.”

Edmonson shares Bernstein’s concerns.

“It’s too big for our neighborhood,” she said. “What are they going to do about the traffic issue?”

The developer is seeking to build on just five of the 10 contiguous parcels listed in the county’s housing element.

“We’re phasing the project,” Malek said, but declined to provide more detail. “We’re hoping to focus on the first two sections right now.”

Salzman said, “They’re not proposing anything in these areas, I assume because they’re wetlands.”

A map submitted to the county with its application appears to show some of the unused parcels located in the wetlands area. The map can be viewed at bit.ly/49OQWoI.

Salzman said the Marin Audubon Society owns a small piece of one of the parcels. She said none of the proposed homes appears to be in the wetlands but she said she worries the developer might propose development on the other five parcels at a later date.

The housing element zones the 10 properties for a total of 110 residences, with all but 25 slated to be affordable to households with above-moderate income. The remainder, all of which were assigned to a single parcel, were zoned to be affordable to lower-income households.

The other five parcels on the county’s housing element inventory list total about 3.7 acres and are zoned for 36 above-moderate-income households. Marin County zoned one of the parcels, located in the southwestern corner of the property, to accommodate 24 dwellings. The property is owned by Roger Pierce, a San Rafael real estate agent.

“We’re partnering with the owner,” Malek said.