George Lucas is moving forward with plans to build 224 affordable housing units on a 52-acre portion of his 1,039-acre property known as Grady Ranch, located off Lucas Valley Road near Nicasio. The filmmaker’s developer, Petaluma Ecumenical Properties, submitted a pre-application to the Marin County Community Development Agency last week that would amend the property’s 1996 Master Plan. So far the plan has met with little resistance from Lucas Valley residents, who have opposed previous attempts by Mr. Lucas to develop Grady Ranch.
A lone potential hindrance to the plan is a discussion about designating Lucas Valley Road as a California Scenic Highway, which would bring restrictions on development at the property. That discussion was postponed for another year, though not killed, by the Board of Supervisors this week.
The proposal calls for a combination of senior and workforce housing—all rented at below-market rates—and other amenities, including a community center, a pool, terraced gardens, an orchard and a small farm, a barn, interior roadways with two bridges and a Golden Gate Transit District bus stop. It follows up to earlier plans to build a 270,000-square-foot studio facility on the property, an idea Mr. Lucas scrapped after receiving pushback from a local neighborhood association. Mr. Lucas subsequently withdrew a plan to develop affordable housing on his property after funding from the Marin Community Foundation fell through in 2013.
The latest project is unique in that Mr. Lucas intends to finance it entirely out of his own pocket. Doing so will allow him to circumvent the kind of long, regulated processes for securing outside financial sources that hampered previous plans.
Critics of the proposal have alleged that the move marks an attempt to spite those that opposed his studio plan. They cite the potential to drive down real estate costs in the surrounding communities, obstruct visual resources and increase traffic along Lucas Valley Road as key arguments against the project.
Mr. Lucas’s attorney, Gary Giacomini, has brushed aside those claims. He stated that Mr. Lucas wants to give back to Marin County what he perceives it needs right now: affordable housing.
“He’s a much bigger guy than that,” Mr. Giacomini, a former longtime Marin County supervisor, said. “He’s spending $150 to $300 million to develop this.”
Lucas Valley residents and homeowner groups could not be reached this week for comment.
On Monday, at a Board of Supervisors’ budget workshop, Supervisor Damon Connolly expressed his continued support for efforts to designate Lucas Valley Road as a scenic highway. Though Mr. Connolly withdrew the scenic-road consideration from any discussions during this year’s budget cycle, he signaled that he “will definitely explore [the issue] again in the future.”
“The idea for this county pilot program has significant community support and momentum,” said Mr. Connolly, San Rafael’s representative to the board. “My hope is that, in the future, my colleagues will approach this issue with an open mind.”
Incensed by the scenic highway proposal, Mr. Giacomini promptly berated Mr. Connolly and called for the subject of a scenic highway for Lucas Valley to be dropped entirely. “Now and the future and forever, we will never allow this to happen,” said Mr. Giacomini, who represented West Marin on the board for 24 years. “I want to impress, in no uncertain terms: this will be the last straw for George Lucas.”
West Marin’s current supervisor, Steve Kinsey, has thrown in his support for Mr. Lucas’s project, praising it as an opportunity to address the lack of affordable housing in Marin, one of the country’s wealthiest counties.
“The folks who didn’t want the last Grady Ranch proposal for a production facility brought the scenic road idea up at that time,” he said. “This is really a ruse for a neighborhood group to try and put up one more roadblock to consideration of the proposal.”
A more detailed proposal for the project will be submitted to the Community Development Agency within the next few months.