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Marin IJ
The Fallacy of Replacing Commercial Zoning with Residential Use in Marin
The Marin IJ recently reported on the development proposal in Corte Madera that would replace the existing cinema with more single family and multifamily housing.
Another consideration in all the discussion of new housing projects being proposed is that we're over building housing while reducing the number of opportunities for businesses to operate and for people to have jobs in Marin. This is just bad land use planning.
- We aren't doing anything in Marin to help stimulate employment. Planners don't even talk about the need to provide incentives for businesses and services that create local jobs. By building more and more mostly market rate housing (moderate income housing means incomes of close to $100,000 to $120,000 per year) we're doing everything we can to make Marin just another bedroom community where everyone must commute longer distances by car to work. Local jobs mean shorter commutes.
- Commercial use tends to create the opportunity for jobs that pay significantly more than retail and typical service worker jobs, enhancing quality employment opportunities in our communities.
- Loss of commercial zoning reduces locations for local serving businesses (retail sales and services of all types) forcing resident to have to drive further to make day to day purchases.
- "TOD" without the "T" is a joke: To continue to justify building more and more housing by falsely calling it "transportation oriented development," while making no investment in actually creating public transportation options is nonsensical.
- Housing is generally at best a break even proposition and usually a net revenue loss for cities, whereas commercial property is generally revenue positive and uses far fewer public services (fire, police, schools, social services, infrastructure, etc.).
- Overbuilding housing without any consideration or planning policy vision for providing places for companies that employ people to operate (i.e., those needing office space, business incubator space, technology manufacturing space, educational and vocational training, professional services and medical services, etc.) and generate tax revenues is economically unsustainable without constantly increasing taxes and fees for services on existing residents.
- A commercial use has traffic impacts that are the lowest of any type of use (e.g., much lower than retail and about equal to housing).
The Corte Madera cinema site is clearly a location for the use it presently is zoned for (a theater or theater complex or other commercial office development).