Point Reyes Light - October 28, 1999
EAH to take one last whack at affordable housing project for Point Reyes
After almost a year of revisions and approval seeking, the non-profit Ecumenical Association for Housing will take one more whack at designing an affordable housing project for Point Reyes Station before leaving town for good.
Lamar Turner, senior project planner for the Ecumenical Association of Housing, said that he plans to submit a revised proposal to the town's Design Review Committee, an arm of the Point Reyes Station Village Association, on Monday, Nov. 1.
After that, with maybe some tweaking, the revised plan will get published in the Nov. 4 Point Reyes Light. A town meeting has been tentatively set for Nov. 11, at which residents will be asked whether the non-profit developer should submit the plan to the county.
Asked if that plan will be "take-it-or-leave-it," a frustrated Turner said, "Yes."
At a meeting last week between Turner and the Design Review Committee, the group told Turner they would not endorse his plan to develop 27 one-to-three bedroom rental units and ten permanently affordable ownership homes on the 19-acre property between Mesa Rd. and Commodore Webster Dr.
Originally, the EAH plan called for 50 units overall, including eight live/work units along Mesa Road, which before last week had been eliminated.
Design Review chairwoman Wiebke Buxbaum expressed the group's preference for a project of 16 to 20 rental units and only eight single-family residences, which should be relocated away from the Mesa Road to preserve the town's last open, commercially-zoned property.
Buxbaum, who notes that the function of her group is "purely advisory," told The Light she and her colleagues feel their most recent reduction is one that the majority of Village Association members would support.
"All along we have been saying, 'It's too big. It's too big. It's too big.' One purpose of last week's meeting was to let EAH know what we think is not too big."
However, Turner said, the numbers just aren't adding up. Because of how the subsidies would work, a reduction below 27 rental units just isn't going to get any grant-givers interested. "If we go below 27 units, we can't use tax credits because the property does not have positive cash-flow," he explained. "Eliminating the tax credits means that we would have to self-finance it."
Turner explained that the 27-unit plan would require approximately $2.6 million in subsidies, to be sought from the county and the Marin Community Foundation.
However, a 20-unit plan would require a staggering $5 million in subsidies, or about $250,000 per unit. "One of the conclusions we have begun to reach here is that we see it as an inappropriate use to ask for $5 million," he said. "In fact, I'd be embarrassed to ask the MCF for that much money. It's an enormous sum, and it's just not effective to use critical affordable housing dollars to reduce the amount of affordable housing."
Also at issue, Turner said, is the county's suggested cap of 69 total bedrooms for the project. The 27-unit plan proposes 78 bedrooms. According to Turner, the limit adds an additional barrier to the project's prospects. "If the public-serving benefits of affordable housing are not enough to override the unofficial policy, then the project is in trouble," he said.
Design Review member Chuck Eckart agrees his group and EAH are at a "standoff," but said that the committee presented Turner with several ideas on how to reduce the size and footprint of the development, such as consolidating the rental units into apartment buildings, and considering a four-structure quadrangle design. "The project is a little large - a little big for this community" he said. "It doesn't fit...We're trying to get this thing the right size."
Eckart said that while the committee remains flexible within a range of 24 to 28 total units, rental and purchase, he does not see endorsing a plan that exceeds 28 units if EAH threatened to abort the project altogether. "We're not flexible yet," he said. "We think that if they look at other methods of financing they can come up with the lower numbers."
In a recent letter to members of the Point Reyes Station community, EAH planners stated that without local support, they indeed would abandon the project and try to sell the development option on the property to recover the roughly $250,000 they have spent on planning already.
"We would clearly desire the Village Association's support," Turner said. "But more than that we want local support."
Turner added that although Design Review does not itself have the power to prevent the project, he would not go ahead with the planning process and environmental review unless townspeople want him to. "Our time has run out," he said. "Either we commit to submitting an application [to the county] or to abandon the project altogether."
Ironically, some 71 percent of residents and workers from around Tomales Bay this spring voted in favor of a project of 50 total units, some 14 units more than are now on the table.
However, the Point Reyes Station Village Association, whose membership subsequently swelled with town property owners opposed to the project, has been trying shrink the plan ever since.
Seemingly lost in the maneuvering are the general sentiments that got EAH interested in working here in the first place. As expressed by Bob Hildreth of Inverness Park in a letter to Marin Community Development Director Alex Hinds, "The Point Reyes/Inverness community needs affordable housing, not trailers on ranches, not illegal cabins hiding on the Ridge, nor senseless auto commutes by its workers. We planned for affordable housing and we voted for it."
The 19.5-acre property could likely accommodate around 20 or so market-rate homes; it seems likely that anyone buying EAH's option would come up with an exact number soon enough.