Aside from a few details about trails, wildlife, and Prohibition-era nightlife, the draft of the San Geronimo Valley Community Plan looks more or less complete, members of the Valley Property Owners Association said last week.
"With few exceptions, we're pretty happy with the results that came out," said association President John Wallace. "Most of the stuff we would take umbrage with has been taken out."
The new plan - a rewrite and reorganization of the existing 20-year-old plan - took two years to draft. Association members have added sections, including an economic element, and have reformatted the plan to match the county general plan.
Association members and other Valley residents will be commenting on and revising over the next three months. Afterwards it will go for approval by Marin planning commissioners and supervisors.
"The community plan is a blueprint on what you can and can't do on your property," Wallace said. "We need to decide if this is what we want now and at least for the next ten years."
The impact of community-led planning was demonstrated when the first plan was drafted two decades ago. At the time, developers were eyeing the Valley for shopping centers, 5,000 homes, more schools, a population of 25,000 people, and a major freeway. Under the 1976 community plan, the Valley has remained largely a string of villages with narrow roads, open space preserves, and a population of 3,500.
"A lot of this [draft] is directly out of the countywide plan," Wallace said. "Generally speaking, a community plan makes the countywide plan more restrictive."
Association members:
Wallace explained that the plan recognizes second units as valuable low-cost housing, and does not encourage the county to check on whether a unit is legal.
Woodacre resident Jack Barnes said the draft also short-shrifts the history of nightlife in the Valley, which was once flush with dance halls, bars, and contraband liquor during Prohibition.
In one Forest Knolls bar, "It was a real brawl sometimes," Barnes said. "They had to put chicken wire around the band so they wouldn't get hit with debris."
A historic designation could be made for another old Forest Knolls dance hall at the corner of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and Tamal Road, Barnes suggested.
Talk shifted to other types of wildlife listed in the historical appendix. Mountain lions, bobcats, and foxes are mentioned in the draft as local species.
However, spotted owls, which are purported to live in the Kent Lake watershed and on the Morrissey (Zeidman) property above Forest Knolls need to be added to the historical list, members said. Also ignored in the draft is another rare species, the Blind Harvestman's Spider which thrives in the Valley's abundant serpentine rock.