Category Archives: Land Development

Smart land use revolves around linking transit to land use that includes concepts like Pedestrian Pockets, SunTrain, solar, affordable ownership housing, etc.

Land Development

‘Smart’ planning needed in Marin                        

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Marin Voice, Marin Independent Journal

Published May 15, 2001 (unedited version)

DWAYNE HUNN

Recently strategy/economic consultant Stephen Roulac spoke on Marin’s Economic Future to a Marin Community Development hosted public gathering.  He concluded that Marin’s # 1 priority must be bringing back rail. Then the IJ editorialized about the need not to forget the train as a means to address Marin’s land use instigated traffic mess. Then the Chronicle published a Texas Transportation Institute study listing San Francisco-Qakland commute as the 2nd worst in the nation and stated, “cities will have to judiciously invest in new roads, public transit, affordable housing along transit corridors…”

Several years ago local government commissioned a Calthorpe Associates Study that concluded Marin and Sonoma needed and can justify a train. Fifteen years ago Peter Calthorpe and I did local radio shows trying to educate people on the benefits of building European style communities along the large parcels adjacent to the existing rail line.  These villages would more effectively address affordable housing, traffic, resource conservation, and open space then would downzoning developments into auto-dependent suburban sprawl communities.  Peter gave up on Marin.  He moved his home and office to Berkeley where he designs projects through out the nation for developers and cities concerned about using the earth’s limited resources efficiently.

For decades, environmentalists world-wide have pushed for increased train and mass transit use to address air quality, resource conservation, and cargo and travel costs.

Back in Marin a handful of people continue controlling groups with environmental nametags who oppose the train, fight housing projects for decades and downzone them into mega-costly suburban sprawl, building resource devouring, auto-dependent exclusive enclaves.

Where did Marin lose its definition of enviromentalism?  It lost it when working people allowed the county’s policy decisions to be dominated by a handful of people with myopic environmental views. Consequently, too often Marin has a NIMBYized (Not In My Backyard) definition for environmentalism.  Marin lost a true environmental perspective when elected officials a decade ago would say to me, “Oh, but I can’t support pedestrian pockets along the rail line, my constituents won’t vote for it.”

Responding, “Well, gee, isn’t one of your responsibilities as a public official to educate the community on what might be in their long term best interests,” didn’t help.  Well, today we suffer the consequences of that short sightedness in California’s oldest median aged county with gridlock, high labor costs, outrageously priced housing and crowded rentals for our hard working, imported workers.

What’s part of the answer?  Involvement by people yearning for more housing who, unfortunately, are stuck wasting hours in gridlock while working a couple jobs and trying to raise a family.  Also needed is leadership, guts, and common sense foresight from elected officials as well as planners and media makers on land use issues.

How government officials force developers to use the land determines how the people who eventually live on it must get around.  St Vincent’s Silveira is Marin’s largest remaining developable piece of land, and it has a rail line running through it that can connect to Sonoma, Sacramento and Tahoe.  Environmentally conscious, far sighted, regionally concerned leadership would make sure that land was used to design a large, oriented to the train, mixed-use development.

What do policy makers continue to hear from the leadership of many of Marin’s s self described environmental groups on St. Vincent’s Silveira?  1) No development.  2) No train stop.  In fact, some of Marin’s misnamed environmentalists got the Marin Supervisors to put a Memorandum of Understanding into the two year St. Vincent Silveira Task Force Study to expressly remove the historical train stop from the site’s existing tracks.

Of course, governmental leaders can take these Task Force suggestions and make them better.  For the long-term benefit of the region – and by reverberation – the world, Marin should change the Task Force’s narrow parameters and help developers do smart land uses on the few big sites remaining.  Smart land uses helps true environmentalists get away from auto-dependently polluting our sky’s lovely birds and the people who share the same air.

Dwayne Hunn  provides solar  photovoltaic net-metering systems for homeowners and businesses and rides his bike to the rail road tracks to throw stones at the weeds covering the ties over which trains used to glide.

 

Land Development

I see San Rafael in 2020, and it works

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Marin Independent Journal October 13, 2000

 Marin Voice, Dwayne Hunn

September 23rd Michael Doyle, who guided San Rafael’s successful Downtown Visioning process, his troupers and many City staffers decorated the Shield Room at Dominican College with visions of San Rafael’s past and future.  The only waste during the productive day were the stacks of uneaten lunches, reflecting dashed hopes that more citizens would fortify the City’s future while nourishing themselves.

Probably over 200 people attended. Some left after limited participation.  Most graded the City on its handling of 26 issues (housing, traffic, parks and rec, homelessness, etc.) since the last General Plan and then voted on which of those issues should claim the City’s future General Plan guided efforts.  At any given time, probably a hundred people participated in 6-7 small group workshops.  These groups outlined weaknesses and strengths in one of the City’s four districts and then “Visioned” what they wanted San Rafael to be in 2020.

Or group choose Area 4, (roughly from Dominican and east from 101 to the Richmond Bridge and often referred to as East San Rafael) as their area of concentration, as did several other groups.  Our group had some initial trouble waking to this “vision thing,” so I produced my sleepy-eyed version.  It went something like this:

“Canalways, the largest parcel in East San Rafael between Bay Point homes and Home Depot, would be a mixed-use, pedestrian oriented development.  Many of the garage door and storage businesses that dominate East San Rafael would have been redeveloped under an umbrella plan that made this area of East San Rafael into a pedestrian friendly, mixed-use community that had jobs, shops, affordable ownership housing, a new  school and recreational fields and parks.  The completed Shoreline Park would be alive with walkers, joggers and bikers using it to connect to the San Rafael Canal, which would have been reoriented from emphasizing a parking lot to featuring the Canal with a Venice shopping and strolling atmosphere. A walking and biking bridge would span the Canal and complete a relaxed and scenic connection from East San Rafael to downtown. Downtown San Rafael would have even more sidewalk tables and increased day and night activities on its more often closed-to-vehicles main streets, a la Farmers Market nights.  St Vincent’s Silveira would be a pedestrian oriented mixed-use community designed around the train connecting Sonoma, Marin and more.  Spurs from the train’s 101 mainline  would run east and west from downtown San Rafael and the 580 interchange to and over the Richmond Bridge.  Of course, the train (or some futurized transit mode) would also continue south to other communities.  Gridlock would have dissipated.”

Our group wanted to see a “connected community.”  Connected physically and in “community enhancing” ways.  They wanted more shady streets, more walking and modes of transportation than the ubiquitous car, less traffic and less parked cars.  Even though the City and its visioning for its General Plan has little authority over educational policy, our group wanted more parental involvement, better facilities and more efficient use of them.  There was a call for schools to integrate community service as part of students’ learning experience.  Those calls ranged from working with Marin’s mushrooming elderly population, to working with the poor, to physically participating in returning beauty to San Rafael High’s now degraded campus look.  The group also wanted the Marin Community Foundation playing a greater and more coherent role in addressing the gaps that limit this community from achieving a healthier vision.

Our group was probably reflective of the other groups’ concerns and overall vision. All the groups dwelled on the need for more affordable housing for the low and middle-income households and less traffic.  One envisioned personal GPS (Ground Positioning Systems) linked to on-demand transit as an answer to today’s transit shortcomings.  Most groups also wanted a more involved community in policy guiding events like this “Visioning Day.”  Maybe next summer those who stayed home recovering from their long commute and work woes will find a way to beam themselves to Dominican to munch on a free lunch and visions of the future.

 

Land Development

10 questions for San Rafael

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10 questions for San Rafael

 Editor’s note: On June 24th, 550 people attended a meeting of a new group, San Rafael 2000, to discuss .San Rafael’s General Plan. This is an edited version of a speech delivered by Dwayne Hunn, which he asked San Rafael 2000 consultants and the City of San Rafael “to provide some community insight and answers to 10 questions. “Here are the questions:

By Dwayne Hunn

  • Two of East San Rafael’s concerns are traffic and affordable housing. If the Kerner street property owners have paid their traffic mitigation fees and some of their money has undergrounded utilities, put in a pond, a bike path, and Shoreline Park, why hasn’t Kerner been connected to help alleviate congestion at intersections like Bellam and throughout East San Rafael?
  • The proposed Irene Street Overcrossing is estimated to cost over $22 million. The Grange Plan Overcrossing  is estimated at $4. million. Shouldn’t the Grange Plan be analyzed in detail to see if it can more quickly and efficiently address East San Rafael traffic needs?
  • Does the overpass proposed from Merrydale to the Civic Center Drive with no offramps onto 101 really serve to alleviate traffic snarls, or does it merely make shopping at the Emporium easier for those at the Civic Center?
  • Does reducing the floor area ratios of future projects really reduce traffic generation? If you reduce the building footprint that can stand on a piece of land to half of what some nice buildings now have– will future buildings. be built?  In certain years Phoenix Leasing has generated more in sales tax revenues to the City of San Rafael than has Macys. Will buildings like Phoenix Leasing that generate minimal traffic, huge traffic mitigation fees, and gigantic sales tax revenues to the City be built in the future on expensive San Rafael land when only 1/2 of the floor area ratio is allowed?
  • How can adequate child care facilities be tied into the East San Rafael neighborhood through the General Plan? Child care overflows into land use, traffic and circulation, and low cost housing needs — so picking a spot to plug that into the General Plan is imperative.
  • By being more successful than anticipated, Federal Express has been forced to close its counter at 3 p.m. Because its service is generating too much peak hour traffic. If Federal Express is generating 100 excessive peak hour vehicle trips per day– rather than closing them down couldn’t they have been required to assist SMART– the local jitney program–to generate 100 more peak hour riders per day? Shouldn’t the General Plan have measures that encourage businesses to find or assist with traffic solutions rather than merely hurting businesses?
  • How can a General Plan allow for senior developments only on flat land while seemingly allowing for all other housing needs to be answered on only flat land? Will not starting families and others with flat land housing wants have inherent conflicts with such excessively specific policy findings? Elderly housing projects almost inherently have transit systems built into them. Doesn’t this policy make providing affordable senior housing much more difficult in California’s to-be oldest median age county?
  • As the hub of the county, San Rafael must find a way to produce housing affordable for it workers. Where are the implementation tools to provide housing to those households earning $16,000 to $30,000 dollars, the household incomes of the bulk of San Rafael workers whose Sonoma commute adds to regional gridlock? Where are the implementing tools that will allow San Rafael workers to own homes at costs between $50,000 and $75,000? These prices can be reached, as households whose average income was $17,000 paid an average of $51,000 for NEH’s Skylark Meadows condo/ townhouses.
  • The problem lies in how we have become accustomed to moving around in a suburban arena while mass transit solutions were designed for the urban arena. Nonetheless, we have the transit modes to handle our problems. The range from buses, light rail vehicles, jitneys, motorized cable cars, to car pools. What we need are transit systems that are managed better for our suburban arena and our moving patterns. How will the General Plan encourage and stimulate better transit management solutions? How will the General Plan encourage entrepreneurs and private developers to answer the community’s need for more effective transit when funds for government to do so have vanished?

Thanks for your patience, like Moses you are probably grateful  there were only ten.

Dwayne Hunn is a board member of. North Bay Transportation Management Association and Canal Community  Alliance

Common Sense Opeds, Land Development

Oh, God, have mercy on our failures

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This is unedited version published in Marin IJ  January 18, 2000

Heavenly pictures and angel added by forlorn altar boy author.

MARIN VOICE

Oh, God, have mercy on our failures

Slipping into cushy slippers on a billowy cloud, he called out, “Gabriel, update me on my blue, green gem.”

“Sir, globalization is beefing up the bigs, strengthening some middies, while your poor continue arduously climbing their hill of needs.”

“Are my beefies being generous and creative in their good times?” he asks, as he sprinkles light into a black hole.

“Bill Gates and  Ted Turner have….”

“No, no, Gabe.  I don’t need to know of their endowments, or Ted and Jane trading aerobic sessions.  Give me an analysis of community actions addressing values extrinsic to mankind.”

“Extrinsic values, sir?

“Gabriel, you mastery of earthling jargon slips.  For planet Earth that means clean and ample water, air, food, shelter and peoples’ actions that help children’s eyes and dreams gleam from birth and far into their sunset years.  You remember, Gabe, it takes a village to raise a child?”

“Yes, sir, and extrapolations of that to raise a region and a world.  Shall I focus the window of your upgraded Deep Universal Problem Evaluating (DUPE) computer on your Golden State, sir?”

“Yes.  Zoom into my Garden of Eden County where they have set aside 301,314 of my 388,352 acres into open space, agriculture and park lands.”

“Zoomed, sir,” the archangel replies, as the 4-D panaview of Marin reels up over one of God’s universes.  “Goodness, look at the brake lights on their ‘freeway’.”

“Hmmh, looks like Chicago Bulls parking lot in the Airness days I dished them… Gabriel, where are those wonderful, friendly trains we watched years ago from this  view?  They zoomed north into surrounding counties, west into small towns and red wooded mountains.”

“Sir, big oil and auto companies derailed those trains 4 or 5 decades back.”

“Tssk, tssk,” God said, shaking His head, “Right.  My bigs sometimes think ‘Might makes right.’ But other parts of my Golden State are returning efficient, community enhancing trains.  What is My Golden Gated County doing?”

“Sir, four times in the last 40 years some have tried to revive them but…

“Who opposed them?” God interjected.

“Groups referred to as ‘environmentalists’ in your blessed county.”

“Gabriel, are you forgetting your earthling vocabulary again?”

“No, sir.”

“Environmentalists oppose trains that move more people while putting less pollution in my skies?  Trains that encourage friendly mingling and wondrous viewing of my open spaces?” God rhetorically asks.

“It is a little confusing, sir.  You might blaze read the DUPE computer folder “St. Vincent’s Silveira Stakeholders Task Force.”

God blinks His version of Evelyn Wood’s speed reading through 8,769 pages of county documents, “It says the environmental groups want no building on the ‘view corridor, flood plain or near 101 and some environmentalists want 37 units allowed on 1240 acres.  Where’s my colorful train that used to whisk people through this land and into Sonoma, Sacramento and Lake Tahoe?”

“Sir in the file titled, ‘Memo of Understanding’ the environmental stakeholders and politicians removed the train and station.”

“These ‘stakeholders’ are offering no alternatives for those stuck in traffic trying to get home to their loved ones?”

“Should we send them wings, sir?”

Hmmh, Gabriel, your jokes are far from divine… Wasn’t part of this stakeholders’ site owned by a Boys Town place?”

“Yes, sir.  Now St. Vincent’s wants to use development there to endow their future work with troubled children.”

“But without being more creative, thoughtful and logical how will these ‘tempholders’ of my land get the highest and best land uses to endow that hallowed work?  Provide enough housing for my middie and hard working strugglers?  If they continue being self-centered and deplete the region’s air and people’s quality time with myopic land uses, they will rob my not so well off children elsewhere.”

“What would you like done, Lord?”

“They must consider the bigger picture.”

“Shall I put some of them in space, for a bigger view, sir?”

“Perhaps it would be easier to put some of them in my struggling African villages, where the experience would adjust their priorities.”

“That would greatly alter their comfortable lifestyles…Should I zap them there now, Lord?” as Gabriel reaches for God’s staff leaning against a comet.

“For now, let’s just plant this with that IJ staff and see if they get people thinking more about values extrinsic to mankind.”

 

 

While listening to the St Vincent’s Silveira Task force meeting of January 6th discuss  “extrinsic values,” one-time forlorn altar boy Dwayne Hunn received this winged transcript from above.

Land Development

…but, from where I sit, they’re part of the problem

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Marin IJ April 11, 1999  by Dwayne Hunn

 In  February the IJ reported that Senator Boxer introduced legislation that would guarantee $2 billion of oil companies taxes be siphoned off to maintain public parks, expand urban parks and protect the country’s wildlife. It would be titled “Permanent Protection for America’s Resources 2000.”  Ann Thomas of Marin Baylands immediately saw the most pressing need for this money, “We would love to acquire Canalways.  It would be an absolute jewel for San Rafael to preserve that site.”

Because the nation’s people face  more pressing needs and spending  $2 billion differently could better help the environment, why not have a better title and spending program?   Although comfortable Marin does not typify national needs, even here it is easy to spend on more humane and environmental needs..

In the last 20+ years Marin has:

  • spent $32.3 million acquiring 13,107 acres of open space ($2,466 per acres)
  • allowed only about 12% of its land to be open to development, much of what little remains rings the freeway
  • consistently forced developers, thanks to myopic environmentalists, to downzone developments so that affordable units became fewer and harder to deliver
  • grown .08% per year over the past 29 years, with about half of that growth due to people born into or inheriting homes in the county
  • averaged a yearly growth of —-that modest increase is not the overpopulation causing Marin’s traffic congestion
  • pressed to become the oldest median age county in California
  • seen the median home cost rise to a Bunyonville number of $545,000
  • gagged its freeway with solo caring northward workers unable to live in Marin
  • leached more congestion pollutants into canals, farm fields, air and lungs due to its myopic land use policies

Where should conscientious leaders spend the $2 billion in oil  revenues?  In Marin, and elsewhere, take the oil money and put it where Californians need it more, into:

Þ     transit (so freeways won’t continue sucking quality time out of  people’s lives)

Þ     logical land use (quit talking about smart land use and start building smart communities for regular people) along transit corridors

Þ    delivering affordable workplace housing (state statistics show …..

Marin could have had several 100% + more affordable workplace housing units if myopic environmentalists  HADN’T CONTINUOUSLY opposed physically reviving the train. Worse than that, these so-called environmentalist have strategically tried to kill the train’s future by drastically downzoning and forcing designs on communities (Novato Oaks, Hamilton Air Force Base,  the areas surrounding the Civic Center, and now St. Vincent’s Silvera)  that could have produced mixed used communities that provided train ridership, jobs and ridership for the environmentally beneficial train. How environmentally healthy it could have been to have compactly built along Marin and Sonoma’s train tracks a string of  compact communities whose residents walk, work, live, shop and ride the train..

Since about 88%  of  Marin’s land is set aside in open space, agriculture or park land, perhaps it’s time $32.3 million of that $2 billion be shuttled into a Workplace Housing & Transit District  rather than into acquiring St. Vincent’s and Canalways.  Why not treat people as well as we have treated open space?  Let some smart, truly environmental politician, who is concerned about the quality of peoples lives,  call for using the expertise in the Open Space District to perform the same miracles for today’s crisis needs — workplace  housing and transit.

Let St. Vincent’s be a affordable town oriented to give ridership to the train.  Let Canalways be a mixed use project that provides workplace housing, perhaps a neighborhood school and a high tech campus for the Lucas company types who consistently leave this aging, too narrow minded  and pricey county.

Would Senator Boxer and  Congressman Miller re-title their legislation “Permanent Protection for America’s Resources and  Working People 2000”? Would Marin’s leadership support such?

Dwayne Hunn, a public educator, knows Senator Boxer’s fax number is 415-956-6701    and her email is senator@boxer.senate.gov.

Above is unedited version run by Marin IJ on April 11, 1999.

Additional notes not published:

Since its formation in the 1970’s the Open Space District obtained contributions from Proposition 70 money, Marin Community Foundation, Assessment Districts, CSA {County Services Agreements.

Open Space district collected $32,316,931 and acquired 13,107 acres…

This amounts to $2,466 per acres spent in acquisition.

1995 largest acquisition year = 2,426 acres

1996 = 206 acres

1/97 – 6/98 285 acres (18 months)

Acquisition money is approaching bottom of barrel.

Land Development

Downzoning can punish community

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Marin Scope August 3–9 1998

One Point of View

Dwayne Hunn

Political decisions at the local level seriously affect the world in which we, and tomorrow’s children, must live. Although Democrats cheered wildly when Presidential Nominee Dukakis alluded to working for the ‘community” as a reason for his success, local Democrats as well as Republicans seldom think in terms of the larger community.

Californians spend 300,000 hours a day stuck in traffic at a cost of $350 million a year. Automobile traffic, especially stop-and-go traffic, is overwhelming our atmosphere with carbon dioxide. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen from 280 parts per million in the immediate pre-industrial period to 348 parts per million in 1987, a rise of 24%

Marin’s population has grown 1/2 of 1 percent every year since 1970. Its automobile registration, during the same period, has grown 6 times as fast. Today’s average home sale price in Marin tops $270,000. What do these statistics have to do with local political decisions?

Let’s use a real life example. Recently San Rafael’s General Plan Revision public hearing process ended. Shortly thereafter, at a late June San Rafael City Council Meeting, Council member Thayer moved and the City Council unanimously supported an immediate downzoning of the Spinnaker on the Bay Project.

Neither of the developers, Sidney Hendricks or Dennis Horne, were present nor had they been apprised that this downzoning was under consideration. “Four to five years of work was re-planned in five minutes and $200,000 of our money was wasted,” was how Dennis Horne described the downzoning to medium density (8-15 units per acre). According to Home, the San Rafael Planning Department and Design Review had no serious problems with their design of 18.5 units per acre (506 units) with 15% of those to be affordable units. His disgusted, initial reaction to this decision was to say, “I’m tired of all this jacking around. If the City says we can build 20 palatial estates that’s what we’ll build. No more attempts to provide affordable housing or work with the community. It just wastes our time and money and gets us burned.”

If you are one of those who think all developers are fat cats raping the land, then you don’t realize that after about 7 years in the development business only about two out of five still have the finances to remain in business. What you should also realize is that the few who survive must acquiesce to the ‘planning forces” that publicly control the private land for which so much was paid. The “planning forces” are often composed of legions of NIMBYs (not-in-my-back-yard) or swell-worded environmentalists. Both don’t seem to make the connection between their role in forcing regular folks Into a long distance commute to find an affordable home and the consequent degradation of our atmosphere.

How could this scenario be better handled? The Council could reconsider it’s action based on:

  1. East San Rafael’s pleas for less traffic and more affordable’ housing.

2) The developers desire to build a secure project that benefits more than just the rich

3) Suggestions by Novato Ecumenical Housing to swap the affordable units proposed for Spinnaker on the Bay for in-lieu fees that could have been used to:

  1. Purchase an existing apartment complex(s) in East San Rafael and insure its long term affordability or make it into a coop(s).
  2. Purchase existing condominiums in East San Rafael and use a deferred principal and Interest second trust deed program, as presently implemented by NEH in Novato, to make home ownership available to low Income households.

In-lieu fees equal to 15% of 506 will buy more existing units in East San Rafael than 5–15% of the reduced density of approximately 280 units.

Swapping in-lieu fees for community controlled will provide a means to build “community.” Downzoning, just because it sounds good to a narrow constituency, often punishes the larger community. The more often this goes on in Marin and communities across the United States, the more time we waste behind the wheel. The more time we waste behind the wheel, the more we increase the Greenhouse effect and the less competitive we become in the world.

 

 

Common Sense Opeds, Land Development

With no train can we really clean…

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Unedited version published in Marin Independent Journal 7-14-98.  Pictures added.

Marin Voice

With no train can we really clean the air?

Dwayne Hunn

Let’s ponder an imaginary debate on the following topic.  “Is the Marin Conservation League good for the world?”

Team Beemers’ Jennifer Comfy, of Marin’s Platitude High, opens the debate as Team Bikers of Oakland’s Tanning Vocational look on with big eyes.

“The Conservation League merges all those individuals and groups who work to ensure that tomorrow’s children have an environment that blooms with flowers,  billows with fresh ocean breezes, cascades with hiking trails and soothes our eyes with scenic vistas.  Without such a league of the environmentally conscious, not only would the greenery of  our lands and blue of our skies fade and darken, but the tranquility of our lives and creativity it provides our minds would dissipate.   Working locally, these courageous environmentalists institute programs that make the universe an extraordinary partaking….”

While shuffling to the podium, the Bikers’ Dirk Maloney responds, “Well, beam me and my crew up to your world, where life’s a beach and everyone bathes in sunshine and stellar lights.    Conservationists devour resources to save you the blue and green in wavy fields, while leaving others to view concrete and asphalt etched by bars and orphanages…

Zane Farr, the supervising teacher interrupts, “Refrain from being personal.   Use factual references to make your points.”

Bobbing his head, Dirk continues, “A true environmentalist measures his works by how they impact the world beyond the greenery of their county, their hiking trails and their tranquility.  He learns to see beyond a few pretty colors and local scenery when he views the impacts of his efforts.  Thank you.”

“Specifics points, Ms. Comfy,” interjects  Mr. Farr.

“In what is often referred to as Marvelous Marin, we have a richness and beauty of life creditable to the environmental  movement.  Years ago we stopped BART.   Recently we stopped hundreds of beautiful, bucolic St. Vincent’s / Silveira acres from being plied with development, so that our scenic, serene view from Highway 101 will remain.   By disallowing a future train stop and drastically cutting St. Vincent’s developmental potential, we insured minimal nature impacts.  It is such farsightedness that provides for a heavenly, ecologically sound atmosphere.”

“Wonderful vision,” Dirk grumbles.  “While here in Oakland none of your Marin Community Foundation money helps our  serenity.   Yet that money continues supporting Marin’s sereneness deprived environmental organizations.    We support Amtrak and BART to reduce the pollutants your self-imposed congested freeways cause.  Your Golden Drawbridge makes comfortable lives for the rich and famous, while the East Side Bridge relives West Side Stories.   Oakland scrapes for money to make our poverty programs work and spread rail transit, because we want hard working parents to spend as much time as possible with their kids.  Rail-less,  you force hard working families to pollute and commute hither and yon, trading thousands of parental quality hours for  latch-key kiddom.

“You think you’re saving the neighboring pearly mouse and pretty bird, while forcing working folk to exhaust stuff in the air that hurts those same and other critters outside your neighborhood.   The commute time you force on parents increases the likelihood their latch-kids will do time.”

Rolling her eyes, Jennifer retorts, “Conservation, Mr.  Maloney, is not about juvenile delinquency.  It is about saving the environment, so that future generations can enjoy its wonders…”

“Right, Ms.  Comfy.  For you there is no connection and I’m confused…   Someday rest your BMer for a rickety bike adventure on some mean streets or sweat in some poor country, where land use planning for million dollar estates lags far behind putting 1500 calories on tomorrow’s plate.  Then come back and explain to me why your environmental land use crusade to hurt middle class Americans, their kids, and the world’s air is so groovy good for the rest of the earth?”

Mill Valley’s Dwayne Hunn sometimes supervises debates, rides bikes, and gets confused.

“Bad Train….”

Common Sense Opeds, Land Development, SunTrain

All aboard! The future…

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Published Marin IJ Wednesday May 15, 1996

Traffic in Marin:  Where do we go now?

Opinion  Marin independent Journal

 All aboard!  The future won’t wait

Dwayne Hunn

In the late 1970s, Peter Calthorpe was an associate of State Architect to-be Sim Van der Ryn, working to establish a Solar Village at Hamilton Air Force Base.   By the 1980s, Peter was on his own, preaching development Pedestrian Pocket communities where people could walk to and from parks, schools, work places and transit options other than the car nestled in suburbia’s omnipresent garage.

Pedestrian Pockets offered the opportunity to develop the community that ethnic neighborhoods of the 40’s and 50’s and Peter Calthorpe’s Sausalito houseboat neighbors had.  Unfortunately, Marin’s presumed environmentalists — and the power structure they supported, wouldn’t listen to concepts that allowed clustered communities of affordable housing to be built on at least 13+ large parcels that then laid adjacent to Marin and Sonoma’s Northwest Pacific Right of Way.

For years, few seemed to pay attention to Calthorpe’s rejuvenated concept or to pay for his services.  Luckily, his Berkeley students helped keep him going until the rest of the country realized the good sense of Pedestrian Pockets and paid him to do them.

In a shrinking world where our lifestyle consumes more than its proportional share, and our lack of community produces an abundance of dysfunctional acts, Pedestrian Pockets design part of the needed solutions.

In 1991 Peter was the keynote speaker for the region’s first Land Use and Transportation Conference sponsored by North Bay Transportation & Management Association, the first such association in Northern California.  Twenty regional leaders participated in the all day conference, where 400 listened and participated with the panels.

On Saturday, a similar conference will be held with Phil Erickson of Calthorpe & Associates serving as a keynote speaker.  Phil will report on a study that Peter has tried to fund for 20 years — a Sonoma/Marin transportation and land-use study.    Twenty years ago those 13+ large parcels were less fettered, with planned or existing expensive suburban sprawl homes entwined amid a morass of costly curbs, gutters and dead end streets.

But it is better late than never for Marin and Sonoma counties to use their remaining land to support uses that enhance the environment through more sustainable developments that allow for beneficial reuse of the rail line with passenger and freight traffic.

Thanks to narrow-minded planning, Marin rates at the bottom of the Bay Region’s nine county list when its labor market independence is ranked.  In Marin, 70 percent of county workers live here versus Sonoma’s comparable 94 percent.  In Marin, 59 percent of employed county residents work here versus Sonoma’s comparable 82 percent.   In Marin’s construction transportation, communications and public utilities industries, inbound-commutes hover near 50 percent versus Sonoma’s 10 percent.

Let’s hope Marin will waste no more time in providing land uses that will help make the rail line more economically viable. Even before Pedestrian Pockets are built, the existing rail line can help reduce environmental impacts.  Consider:

  • As development moves forward on Bel Marin Keys, Hamilton Field and St. Vincent/Silveira, wouldn’t it be more environmentally beneficial to import needed fill and building materials by train rather than by road hammering, pollution belching trucks?

And when you consider how much more fuel efficient trains are than cars, and how they, too, add to community building:

  • Wouldn’t Marin’s true environmentalists want to start setting the environmental and community standards for other parts of the country that have the same opportunity we have?

Dwayne Hunn, who lives in Mill valley, was Executive Director of the North Bay TMA and now works on land use, transportation and political issues as well as with Excel Telecommunications.

 

Land Development

Big Green must see big picture

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Marin Independent Journal   Wednesday, May 10, 1995

 MARIN VOICE

DWAYNE HUNN

 T 00 MUCH GREEN power? No, not enough true green power.

Most people don’t have time to become knowledgeable about environmental issues. They let only a few set the agenda for, and define, green power. They live in communities where they have little control over design. From the immigrant era through the Depression, when financial power and resources seemed limited, many designs gave us neighborhoods where amenities were within walking distance and neighbors lent eggs over fences.

Then came a war. Winning, we found we bad plenty of re­sources. We designed our living spaces accordingly, around the car, isolated from vibrant com­munity interaction.

Today, we import about half our oil, and a slug of our nation­al debt lies ignored in that bill. Today, the middle class seems to be shrinking and the poor growing. Consequently, the economics of greenback and people power is striking back at green leaf and mouse power.

If Marin and its 88-percent protected space are a microcosm of superbly organized Green Power, then Marin shares in provoking attacks that true envi­ronmentalists are about to suffer. Consistently, Marin’s established environmental movement has deft­ly used its network and media access to foist ruses involving density, traffic, open space, view corridor and neighborhood character to block the following:

  • Housing developments that would provide a fair number of moderately priced residential units and instead forced the building of a few pricey, ex­clusive units.
  • Healthy pedestrian-pocket communities near rail lines that enhance the economic viability of returning to environmentally sensitive trains and provide almost enough high-quality, affordable condos ~and townhouses to finally put two Marin cities in compliance with state housing laws.

Is that healthy Green Power? If Marin ‘a environ­mental power structure does not show opposition from the get-go, it bides its time with delays, calls for studies, etc., with no concern for the developer’s land, staffing costs or needs of the long-distance commuting middle class. Too often the developer,

trusting the faith of environmental­ists, believes he has addressed their concerns, only to rind that a last-minute attack leaves bun broke, exhausted or ready to accept whatever the supposed environmental group will allow.

What’s allowed seems good in the short run for the island of Marin, but in the long run it harms re­gional and global environmental and economic needs. Marin’s Green Power needs more true envi­ronmentalists such as the Greenbelt Alliance, which looks at the larger picture.

Marin’s environmental power structure sees little reason to work with businesses, councils and devel­opers toward a win-win solution that benefits mice, people, economics and the environment. Suppose a. developer took a large low-land parcel, proposed en­hancing a mouse habitat around an existing pond and then proposed a mixed-use development that provided affordable housing, a tax base, park, open space and view.

What would likely happen? The power elite, in­stead of working with the developer for the best regional win-win possible, would probably demand, “Since this was wetland 60 years ago, it should be returned to such today!”

Ah, for the way things were before we had 250 million Americans, before budgets needed balancing and we didn’t know Newt Gingrich could preach and teach.

Dwayne Hunn, a MW Valley writer, worked as a People’s Lobby Steering Board member on the Clean Environment Initiative of 1972.

 

 

Land Development

Marin, why not think ‘regional’?

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Marin, why not think ‘regional’?

Dwayne Hunn  Marin Voice

Published Marin IJ February 15, 1995

Everyone’s knocking government.  From Rush Limbarf and Orphan Newt’s cat calls to Gaebler and Osborne’s Reinventing Government advice — everyone’s ripping or reinventing it.   But you know, some public sector ideas are worth a private sector pick up.

In the early 90’s Sacramento and the Bay Area were abuzz with “regionalism.” Transportation, housing, pollution, employment and local revenue needs required a more relevant, comprehensive approach.   By the 90’s Minnesota’s Regional Fiscal Disparities Act had decades of experience addressing 9 counties ‘regional’   needs through sharing a small percentage of sales taxes from each county.  Why not does creative stuff like that in California?

That vision/goal brought together some high-powered Bay Area leaders. Unfortunately, in their pursuit they didn’t hear the warnings that their power profile and media pitch wouldn’t sell parochial locals on the vision. Too many local politicians saw ‘regionalism’ weakening their authority, and its benefits too difficult to convey to constituents.  Given the choice of spreading more common   good   through regionally confronting problems or re-electing themselves. Through simplistic NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) – oriented needs analysis, these politicians opted for the well-worn, yellow political brick.

Unfortunately, the supposedly smarter entrepreneurs also didn’t, and still don’t, see the benefits and inevitability of regionalism.

Take Marin, for example. Whether developers propose projects, which include affordable housing, office complex, light industry or pedestrian pockets, Nimbys turn out in droves   crying: Traffic! Neighborhood Character! Cut Trees! Open Space!  Property Values!  The Environment!……….A Bombay Slum Is Falling From The Sky!

Result?  Each developer succumbs to putting up fewer, more expensive homes or spaces.  The middle class, whom all politicians support, commutes longer for an affordable home, workspace, childcare, or community atmosphere.

In Marin this happens to every noteworthy development. Hamilton Air Force Base could’ve been a large, rail oriented, affordable pedestrian pocket instead of an expensive suburban sprawl community.  Bel Marin Keys could have provided a significant number of affordable homes through innovative financing.   St. Vincent/Silveira could’ve been another affordable rail and pedestrian oriented community whose development could provide Catholic money to keep kids out of trouble and orphanages. (It is still in the  “thousand cuts” stage, as the so-called environmentalists fight to boost Marin’s meager 88% protected space, and lessen reasons for a railway.)

Only benefits would accrue if the major landowners in any region sat down together and said, “How can we cooperatively structure each of our plans so that our land, effort and profit will address the region’s pressing economic and social needs?   How can we educate the public and politicians so that they will understand the benefits?  Can we do this as a united front, so we don’t suffer a thousand slashes from environ­mental guerrillas?”

If they did that as smartly as they are supposed to be, middle America might find time to break out of their freeway chains, bring their latch key kids to project approval meetings, and break the strangle hood ‘naysayers’ have in throttling progressive developments.

Result?   The private sector would have profitably answered huge, pending public needs.    There would be less government maligning.   A fresh public-private chapter would be opened in America’s New Covenant.

The Renaissance Faire space, planned as a pricey housing mecca with a golf course mural shining through its windows, after cutting its project in half, still got slashed and burned.  All developers should learn from Robin the Regional Hood.  Robin gatherer a regional band of the weary addressed their needs and became loved leader of an improved hood.

Dwayne Hunn, a freelance writer, has consulted on affordable housing, land development and transportation issues.

(Uncut version. Boxed text includes text not included in published IJ edition.)