Point Reyes Light - November 18, 1999
Point Reyes Station endorses housing project one more time
After a spirited and sometimes rancorous town meeting, voters in Point Reyes Station on Thursday convincingly endorsed a revamped plan to build affordable housing on a 19.5-acre property next to downtown.
At a standing-room only gathering called by the Point Reyes Station Village Association, roughly 80 association members and some 175 additional area residents discussed Ecumenical Association of Housing's scaled-down plan to build a total of 36 dwelling units - 14 units fewer than originally planned.
Then, in separate, contrasting polls:
93 townspeople (63 percent) who were not association members voted to go ahead with plan, compared to 54 non-association members (37 percent) opposed.
31 members (55 percent) of Village Association opposed the project, compared to 25 members (45 percent) in favor.
All told, 118 residents and property owners (58 percent) supported the plan, while 85 (42 percent) voted against it.
Lamar Turner, senior project manager for EAH, said afterwards, "It's clear to me that the majority of the Point Reyes community supports us moving forward on this development. It's important for us to have that, and it will be helpful in dealing with any obstacles we come upon in the future."
Chuck Eckart, a member of the Village Association's Design Review Committee, said that while some members of the community questioned the design-review process, he said he felt that the vote was an overall success.
"Personally, I feel that the vote was positive and encouraging, and I hope it encourages EAH to proceed," he said. "Design Review supported the project, and we worked hard for it. If that plan is followed, I think it will be a good thing, and it will fit well."
Asked to evaluate the results of the poll, Eckart explained that he believes the split among Village Association voters in some part represents the division between long-term members and those who joined up this summer, after a decisive show of support for the project in May by a much larger universe of voters.
"The only reaction that has come my way is that a lot of the 'no' votes came from the new members that came into the association after they felt disenfranchised with the May vote," Eckart said.
As outlined by EAH architect Michael Rex, the current plan calls for 27 rental units of one to three bedrooms to be offered for $522 to $907 per month; seven for-sale cottages to be sold for $150,000 to $200,000 each; and a four-acre organic farm, which EAH hopes to sell to Inverness organic farmer Peter Worsley.
Rex explained that the price of the cottages - which until recently had been estimated in the low $200,000s - could be less now due to new sources of funding.
Some 50 residents not eligible for the balloting - many from Inverness and Inverness Park - filled the back of the room. Many expressed anger that the Village Association had restricted the polling, and had taken a role in changing and shrinking the project - something that might likely have happened at Civic Center or the Coastal Commission anyway.
"The Village Association is not the community," protested Charlie Morgan, who lives in Dillon Beach. "I have lived here and I have worked here, and as the rules stand I cannot vote. I am asking EAH why the community boundary of who's included has changed."
Turner responded by saying that EAH and county officials "wanted better support within the community" of Point Reyes Station itself.
Village Association President Mike McClaskey defended the Design Review Committee's work. "The other plan would not have made it through the county approval process," he said. "The Village Association has been working with EAH and other agencies to find something acceptable to everyone."
Inverness' Carlos Porrata and others called for an end to hostilities. "We're at a juncture here where we're going to have to look at how we're moving forward to keep everybody in the community happy with each other - instead of this divisiveness," he said.
At the meeting's close, EAH's Turner asked Supervisor Steve Kinsey and Alex Hinds, chief of the Marin Community Development Agency, to take the lead on the project by agreeing to accept the current configuration of 73 total bedrooms, four more than Hinds' earlier, unofficial recommendation.
"Ultimately the decision on this project will be with the county planners, the Board of Supervisors, and the Coastal Commission," Hinds replied. "And occasionally I've heard that they listen to a vote like this."
County senior planner Tom Lai, who also attended Thursday's meeting, confirmed Monday that the county prefers the new design, and will work closely with EAH in the application process. "The modified project does address a lot of the problems of the original project," Lai told The Light. "I had a positive overall impression."
For his part, Turner reiterated on Monday that EAH would like to see stronger support from county officials, and that even in the wake of the vote, the development faces several high barriers.
The next hurdle, he said, is an early December meeting of the Marin Community Foundation board, whose directors will vote on whether or not the foundation would subsidize the project. At Thursday's meeting, Turner explained that the scaled-down project already requires a much larger degree of subsidization than the foundation - which oversees the Buck Trust - typically offers.
Turner said he wants to develop a plan to keep the Point Reyes-area community involved as EAH takes the project to the next level.
"What I need to do is constitute a game-plan and a strategy that gathers the broadest sense of support for getting this project through the planning process," he said. "I will do everything I can to move forward with finding the appropriate way to involve the community."
Some 18 months ago, EAH bought a three-year option from the Toby Giacomini family on the property bounded by Mesa Road, the Coast Guard housing facility, and West Marin School.
No application for any housing project has been submitted yet, and the project must undergo formal environmental review before going to Marin planning commissioners, supervisors, and state coastal commissioners.