Marin Independent Journal Monday, March 15, 2004

MARIN VOICE

There are choices for Canalways

DWAYNE HUNN

San Rafael is updating its General Plan to zone how parcels can be used.

Adjacent to Home Depot, Canalways is one of San Rafael’s largest remaining parcels. It is 100 acres, including the City’s 15 acre flood control pond.

The owners of Canalways have explored with various groups how to do a future project that addresses community needs. However, Canalways faces the deft political opposition of groups who have created myths that would deny, or seriously limit, Canalways’ ability to deliver a beneficial project.

This is another example of the politics that has forced developers into land uses that have caused Marin’s 101 congestion and housing unaffordablitiy.

Developers don’t choose to build car dependent, pricey suburban sprawl. Developers don’t choose to build communities without the benefit of a train stop. Politics determines what developers are forced to build.

Canalways is asking the San Rafael Planning Commission to remove the Draft General Plan designations that places unfair burdens on Canalways’ ability to address community needs.

San Rafael has a crisis in finding revenues and retaining businesses.

There’ll be a mini-crisis when Lucas leaves town, when he would’ve enjoyed expanding his San Rafael facilities to adjacent Canalways.

There is an affordable housing crisis in Marin, and 87% of the county’s geography is protected from development.

Canalways would like to address these crises, but it will have difficulty, or be deprived of doing so, by being designated as a “wetlands, endangered species, conservation site.”

Is Canalways a wetlands?

Almost all of San Rafael, up to around Zappetinis Steelworks, on Second Street, was once wetlands.

For some mysterious reasons, the uplands of Canalways have not been filled, like the rest of the city, with beneficially reused dredged materials.

For 15 or more years, the Canalways site was flooded by the city’s broken 60” flood control drainage pipe.

Only after being sued in 1998 did the city fix that flooding pipe, which caused wetlands to be produced and sustained at Canalways.

Canalways is not all wetlands.

Is Canalways an Endangered Species site?

In 1982, after 300 trapping nights, the California Dept. of Fish and Game concluded:

“..the salt marsh harvest mouse does not occur on the parcel in question….

Someone was dissatisfied with that report, so there was another 525 nights of trappings. The result? In 1982 one SMHM and one with the “gestalt” of a SMHM was captured.

There is not enough factual basis to list Canalways as an endangered species site.

Is Canalways a conservation site?

In the General Plan public meeting process, maps listed Canalways as a conservation site, propagating the myth that nothing should be done at Canalways.

Consequently, when public votes were taken as to as to whether to use Canalways as a housing opportunity, dredge spoils, or mixed used development site – the myth prevailed.

If you needed to borrow against Canalways to deliver a good project, would you prefer having the General Plan list it as a “wetlands, endangered species, conservation site?” Would you like to be forced to do a General Plan Amendment to deliver a project that would benefit the community?

Or would you prefer a designation based on science that limited where wetlands and endangered species MIGHT be?

These are politically deft undertakings.

Canalways is asking the city Planning Commission to remove the unfair language. Instead, add some language that lists Canalways as a good interim-use site on which to beneficially re-use San Rafael Canal and Across the Flats dredge materials on its uplands and levee areas. This would substantially reduce dredging costs to property owners, the city and the federal government. Instead, list it as a site with housing and mixed-use potentials which could benefit the community.

Canalways hopes that common sense planning will prevail over politics, so litigation will not develop. Litigation just drains money that should be used for good development and good government.

Dwayne Hunn of Mill Valley is a representative of Canalways and has worked on affordable housing, transit and rail projects.