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Win Cup 2 Comes to Corte Madera - The Corte Madera Inn "Rebuild"
Will the Town of Corte Madera ever learn?
With the opening of the massive Win Cup development coming soon and a development moratorium in place along Tamal Vista Boulevard, you would think the Town Council would recognize the need to push back on any projects that may have slipped through the legal "cracks." But that doesn't appear to be the case.
After its initial proposal was shot down, Reneson Hotels is back with a new plan to tear down the existing Corte Madera Inn and the adjacent restaurant, and replace it with a massive, 187 room Marriott Springhill Suites and Marriott Residence Inn. This represents a 70 percent increase in the number of units and a 100 percent increase in visual impacts.
The new proposal saves the existing pond that sits in the northeast corner of the property: a very good thing. But instead of reducing the total number of units as the community has been demanding, the developer is increasing height and mass and building up instead. So the latest rehash of the design proposal calls for two, massive 4 story towers that look eerily similar to the Win Cup fiasco a block away.
The Town has issued a revised Environmental Impact Report (EIR), which requires them to open up a second round of public comment. The comment period began on July 17th and ends on August 31, 2015.
Equally alarming is the fact that although the newly recirculated EIR does show the new site plan for the proposal (see document attached below), it fails to provide the public with any views of what the new buildings will look like. The only "project plans" and "elevations" on the Town's web site are of the old, rejected 2 to 3 story proposal, not the new 3 to 4 story proposal.
In addition, the architectural character and style of this over-sized commercial development is very similar to Win Cup. And the EIR attempts to disguise its massiveness with a highly deceptive rendering on the cover that emphasize a low, residential style, covered with tall trees when in fact it will be equal in mass and scale to Win Cup. Just review the old project plans (which is only 3 stories high) or Google images for "Springhill Suites" if you want to really see what this development will actually look like (the attached photo is not a view of the actual project but a typical look of a 4 story Springhill Suites development).
There is no question that this development will block the views of the mountain and the valley exactly the way Win Cup does, and maybe even more so because it's in a more exposed location. For all intents and purposes, it will look like Win Cup 2 as you drive along highway 101.
And considering that the traffic and parking congestion impacts Win Cup are yet to be known, approving another 187 units (auto dependent hotel or residential) on Tamal Vista is clearly ill-advised.
The residents of Corte Madera would be strongly advised to pay attention this time and bring their comments and concerns to their elected representatives before it's too late.