Graham Groneman has spent four years, $200,000 and a lot of emotional energy trying to get his dream home built on a patch of Muir Beach real estate with a spectacular view of the sea. On Friday, the California Coastal Commission told him to go back to the drawing board.
The commission gave him permission to build a house, but not the one his architect designed and that Marin County approved a year and a half ago.
Mr. Groneman had hoped to build a house, garage and storage unit totaling 3,000 square feet at 183 Sunset Way. The commission restricted the construction to a total of 2,000 square feet and pushed the home’s location farther away from the sea and as close to the street as possible.
The commission approved the scaled-back project after a hearing on Friday that involved discussion of complicated technical issues and conflicting testimony about whether the project would violate Marin County’s Local Coastal Program. The L.C.P. lays out regulations to ensure that coastal development is consistent with the California Coastal Act.
The commission left it up to Mr. Groneman’s design team and the commission staff to work out their differences and find a way to make the revised project work.
“I’m cautiously optimistic that we can work with the staff to come up with a solution that avoids litigation,” Mr. Groneman told the Light. “I do not want to fight the coastal commission. I don’t want this to be a landmark case. I want to build a house for my family. I want to enjoy my life.”
The commissioners approved the project even though they concluded that it would violate Marin’s L.C.P., as the California Coastal Act forbids the taking of private property from a landowner who has a reasonable economic expectation of developing it. In such cases, the commission tries to approve a plan that limits environmental impacts and conforms as closely as possible to a coastal plan.
Mr. Groneman and his wife, Brett Sibley, were gifted the parcel by his parents, who live next door. Mr. Groneman is a third-generation Muir Beach resident and a Marin County fire battalion chief. Ms. Sibley is a nurse. Their project enjoyed broad community support.
“We hope to raise our two small children next door to their grandparents and amongst the community that we have such a deep connection with,” Mr. Groneman said at the hearing.
Although every coastal development project is unique, the couple’s experience illustrates the extensive procedural and regulatory hurdles that shoreline property owners in California must clear before building seaside homes. At a cost of over $200,000, they commissioned detailed engineering, architectural and environmental studies for the county, which approved the project in May 2021.
Mr. Groneman listened to one of several hearings on the proposal by Zoom while fighting the Caldor fire, one of the most destructive fires in California history.
The project required the county and the coastal commission to interpret Marin’s coastal program. When the two agencies don’t agree on how to interpret the L.C.P., the commission’s view prevails.
In this case, their differing interpretations centered on whether they considered the proposed construction site to be located on the top of a bluff, where new construction is allowed, or on a bluff face, where it is prohibited. The county based its determination on a geological survey commissioned by the property owners that concluded the site was located on a bluff top that began 25 to 50 feet from the shore. After sending their own geologist to the site, coastal commission staff concluded that the entire property consists of a bluff face.
The parcel, largely covered with trees, is one of the last remaining undeveloped lots on Sunset Way, a narrow blufftop road with spectacular views. Most of the homes were built between 1920 and the 1970s, before the Coastal Act existed—and before climate change intensified concerns about coastal development.
Mr. Groneman and Ms. Sibley strenuously reject the idea that their entire property is a bluff side. They proposed building 90 feet beyond the bluff’s edge that their engineering team identified. They planned a 2,160-square foot house, a 430-square-foot detached garage, and a 369-square-foot storage structure, with the garage located next to the street. A stairway would lead down to the house, and a septic system would be installed directly in front of it. The house would have been situated roughly halfway between the water and the road.
Marin’s L.C.P. prohibits armoring seaside bluffs with the installation of retaining walls or other structures intended to hold land in place. The owners maintained that their plans did not require any armoring at all, but commission staff said the planned foundation constituted armoring because it included retaining walls. Staff proposed replacing the plan with a pier foundation that would not require cutting into the bluff.
The couple’s architect, Michael Heacock, told the commission that it would be impossible to support the house without retaining walls. “If you look at every other house around the area, they’ve all got some kind of retaining walls,” he said.
The commissioners said the owners and commission staff should work together to determine if a pier foundation would work. If it proved infeasible, they could perhaps proceed with a hybrid foundation or revert to retaining walls if necessary.
The commissioners emphasized that they wanted to allow the couple to build a house on the site—just not the one they had spent several years designing.
The commission also said any seaward development of the property should be limited to the outermost point of the two adjacent houses. That restriction would confine the entire project to an area significantly closer to the street than the couple had intended.
Steve Kinsey, a former Marin County supervisor and coastal commissioner who helped craft the homeowners’ proposal, compared the size of the reduced area to a “postage stamp” and said it was too small to accommodate the house.
Commissioners said the front boundary of the construction area could be flexible, agreeing that parts of the project could extend slightly beyond the line connecting the adjacent houses if necessary. The 2,000-square-foot limit they placed on the project was based on the size of 10 neighboring dwellings, which averaged 1,700 square feet.
Some environmental groups, including the Surfrider Foundation and the Watershed Alliance of Marin, argued against the project in letters to the commission and at the hearing. The watershed alliance said the project would result in the loss of large trees and pose potential threats to wildlife in and along Redwood Creek, whose mouth is located 315 feet from the property.
“Every additional impact to this creek seals the coffin on the Muir Woods coho, which are hanging by a thread,” wrote Laura Chariton, the group’s president.
Meanwhile, the homeowners’ supporters described the family as pillars of the community. They stressed the importance of providing housing for local workers, especially first responders, for whom Marin home prices are prohibitive. Dozens of neighbors submitted letters backing the proposal.
Mr. Kinsey told the Light that the commission’s ruling will make it more difficult for homeowners up and down the California coast to make even minor modifications to their homes. “I think the commission is trying to be aggressive in defining a bluff so that they can limit future development along the coast as part of their strategy for sea level rise adaptation,” he said.