A developer behind one of the largest proposed residential projects in West Marin has run squarely into the difficulties of building housing on the coast, where heightened oversight and an extra layer of permitting has long been a thorn in the side of ventures of any scale.
Last week, Yan Cui, a San Diego businessman, withdrew his appeal of a county planner’s determination that his proposal to develop 37 residential lots in Point Reyes Station is subject to the strict rules of the coastal zone.
He now has until the end of August to complete his application, and his team is diligently at work to address the more than 20 items flagged by planners.
With panoramas of Tomales Bay and the surrounding hillsides, the 82-acre-property that Mr. Cui purchased in 2023 offers an enticing and potentially lucrative opportunity to reinvent open pastureland just north of town.
The proposed subdivision would result in parcels ranging from roughly one to eight acres, averaging two. At least five homes would be designated for affordable housing and the remainder would be market rate. The project calls for a network of roads to access the lots, a series of storm drains, a community septic system and water service by North Marin Water District.
Critics worry the proposed project skews toward the type of exclusive, upscale subdivision that county rules and the regulatory restraints of the California Coastal Commission were created to thwart. At the same time, most community members are full-throated in their support for more housing.
“The county’s housing element has identified our need for 1,100 new affordable housing units in West Marin,” said Steve Antonaros, president of the Point Reyes Station Village Association. “The number of affordable units should be tripled or quadrupled.” But, he added, “There is not a need for second homes.”
In March, Mr. Cui’s representatives, Ross Guehring and Xiaoqing Zeng, convened a public meeting attended by roughly 25 locals who reacted to the project with suspicion and occasional hostility.
“We don’t want a huge, spiraling-out-of-control development,” said Point Reyes Station resident Jonathan Allen. “We’re a small town, and we want to preserve it that way. We’re happy to welcome one family in one home, but we do not want 37 single-family homes. That would change our town tremendously and forever, and there would be no going back.”
Mr. Cui, who emigrated from China about a decade ago, purchased the property from the family of Toby Giacomini, a trucking tycoon and local legend, for about $3.5 million. Consisting of four contiguous parcels, the land is bounded by Point Reyes-Petaluma Road and Lagunitas Creek to the south, Highway 1 to the west, rural residential housing to the north and open pasture to the east. While most of the acreage is undeveloped grassland, there is a farmhouse near the southwestern end of the property.
Mr. Cui had contended that his project should be shielded from the Local Coastal Program—the set of rules governing development in the zone established by the California Coastal Act of 1976—because of a 1980 county order. That order categorically excludes both the construction of houses and land divisions from coastal permitting requirements to encourage development in a designated expansion area around Point Reyes Station.
But in a Feb. 26 letter, county planner Kathleen Kilgariff informed Mr. Cui that his project fails to qualify for the exemption, and he will be required to secure a coastal development permit. Although his property lies within the area covered by the exclusion order, Ms. Kilgariff explained that the project’s scope exceeds the threshold allowed under the order.
Citing a 1982 letter from then-county planner Mark Riesenfeld, she explained that the order applies only to land divisions of fewer than five parcels. The Community Development Agency typically defines “land divisions” as involving one to four parcels, whereas “subdivisions” are five or more parcels.
Last week, the coastal commission’s executive director, Kate Huckelbridge, echoed the county’s stance, writing that the 1980 exclusion “only applies to land divisions of four parcels or fewer.”
When Mr. Cui appealed the county’s determination in March, he argued that it was an administrative interpretation that lacks legal weight. “I strongly disagree with this finding,” he wrote.
The appeal was set to be heard by Marin County supervisors on April 22, but Mr. Cui withdrew it last Wednesday after planners told him they would seek the opinion of the coastal commission.
Now, the team is returning to the drawing board to revise and refine the plans to meet the requirements of the Local Coastal Program. Mr. Cui recently hired former Marin County supervisor Steve Kinsey, who served on the coastal commission during his time with the county, and attorney Andrew Giacomini. Mr. Giacomini—a cousin of the family that sold Mr. Cui the land—is currently representing dozens of tenants in a lawsuit aimed at preserving affordable housing on ranches within the Point Reyes National Seashore.
“That property ought to be developed,” Mr. Giacomini told the Light. “We ought to use that property to develop as many houses as we can without completely disrupting the culture of Point Reyes Station. We need the houses, and there’s not a lot of places to put them. I mean, we’re in a housing crisis!”
Mr. Giacomini will be focused on “delivering an approvable project within the rules that exist in Marin County,” he said. Meanwhile, Mr. Cui has retained an attorney from Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schrec—one of the nation’s top-grossing lobbying law firms that has represented major oil, mining and western water interests—to handle his dealings with the coastal commission.
A disagreement persists over how to calculate the number of homes that must be affordable. In his pre-application filed with the county in January 2024, Mr. Cui outlined a plan to divide the property into 27 parcels—with five designated as affordable—the maximum permitted under the zoning requirement of one residence per three acres. By January 2025, he had filed a subdivision application requesting the categorical exclusion from the Local Coastal Program. That application stated that because the county requires 20 percent of the parcels to be deed restricted as affordable housing, the project qualifies for a 35-percent density bonus under state law. The bonus boosts the number of allowable homes to 37.
Yet county planners say the ratio of affordable homes to market-rate homes should be calculated from the final total of 37, meaning seven, not five, should be below market rate.
Mr. Kinsey, now a land-use consultant, said the focus in the coming months will be on technical studies examining everything from wastewater capacity to the property’s creeks and wetlands—information that will help shape the project’s revised application.
“I would not concentrate for the next six months on making a lot of noise or losing a lot of sleep over the number of units,” he said. “I think the main thing right now is to make sure that the studies that are needed are done, that they are done well, and are understood by the community and the county.”