A developer has filed a pre-application to build 62 townhomes in the Santa Venetia area of San Rafael.
Regis Homes Bay Area LLC is proposing for-sale, three-story residences at 160 N. San Pedro Road. The land is owned by Metropolis San Pedro Road Limited Partnership, which acquired the property from the Bernard Osher Marin Jewish Community Center in 2021.
Zoning on the 6-acre parcel limits development to about 25 residences, according to the developer. The developer is also seeking a lot-line adjustment to increase the size of the property slightly to qualify for another eight or nine dwellings.
“We’re planning to change the zoning,” said Ken Busch, director of development at Sares Regis Group of Northern California.
In a letter to the Marin County Community Development Agency, Busch asked for “feedback” on rezoning the property, securing an amendment to the county’s general plan and transferring housing proposed in the county’s housing element for four adjacent parcels.
The adjacent properties, which are owned by the JCC and Congregation Rodef Sholom of Marin, were rezoned by the housing element to accommodate a total of 49 residences.
The sites are among 148 preferred building sites identified in the housing element of the county’s general plan. The housing element included zoning changes to permit 5,197 new residences on those sites.
Development of any site on the preferred list is ministerial, which means they are not subject to the California Environmental Quality Act or denial by local elected bodies. The only requirement developers will face, beyond basic safety and environmental regulations, is conformance with strictly objective building standards.
If the developer decides to move forward with the proposal, its rezoning and general plan amendment requests would be reviewed by the Marin County Planning Commission and then forwarded to county supervisors for approval.
In a letter to the Marin County Community Development Agency, Busch wrote that the pre-application was submitted “utilizing the state density bonus law.” The law allows developers to exceed zoning limits if a certain percentage of their homes meet affordability criteria.
“This is going to be a great opportunity for the community,” Busch said. “There is such a need for housing, especially ownership housing on an affordable level.”
Busch said that 5% of the dwellings would be affordable to people earning between 50% and 80% of area median income (AMI) in Marin; 10% would be affordable for people earning between 80% and 120% of AMI; and 5% would be affordable for people earning between 120% and 150% of AMI.
That means for a family of four, the townhomes would be affordable for families earning $93,300 a year on the low end and up to $279,900 at the high end. The townhomes would be three or four bedrooms.
Six sites in the Santa Venetia neighborhood along North San Pedro Road are included on the housing element’s list of preferred sites, zoned for a total of 186 residences.
“It’s a lot for the neighborhood to take in with the traffic the way it currently is,” said Linda Levey, treasurer of the Santa Venetia Neighborhood Association.
Gina Hagen, the association’s president said, “This is exactly the kind of thing that we do not want to have in Santa Venetia.”
Hagen said earlier this month that Santa Venetia residents participated in the 41st National Night Out. The events bring residents and public safety representatives together at block parties to discuss issues affecting their neighborhoods.
Hagen said the top concern voiced by Santa Venetia participants was planning for evacuations in case of fire or flood.
“We have limited ingress and egress,” Hagen said, “so adding additional congestion to the main way people get in and out of the neighborhood isn’t something that many people in the community would support.”
According to the pre-application, Regis Homes is proposing to demolish a former church, rectory and classrooms on the site. The property was originally owned by the San Francisco archdiocese, which sold it to the JCC in 2005.
The Marin School, a private high school, was located at the site before closing at the end of the 2022-23 school year, citing low enrollment and a lack of tuition revenue.
The closure of Marin School in turn displaced BayMarin Community Church.
“We had been subleasing from the Marin School. We were there almost 20 years,” said Gary Taylor, BayMarin’s lead pastor. “We had a few months to find a new location.”
Regarding the possibility of the project qualifying for a state density bonus, Joshua Bertain, the county planner reviewing the pre-application, said, there is “still a discretionary development process to go through.”
“There is a stream that bisects the property,” Bertain said. There are very restrictive development setbacks on streams.”
In the letter, Busch stated that Regis Homes is requesting an exception to the county’s streamside conservation area policy because developing the property entirely outside the conservation area is financially infeasible and because the proposed improvements would reduce the impervious area in the conservation area.
Originally Published: