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Setback To Rational Planning Deliberations In Corte Madera
Picture this.
A prospective home buyer scouts the Corte Madera market and finds what for her is the perfect fit -- a high-end house, designed around a view of a ridge line that is protected as open space.
That living room has a big bay window, looking out and up towards the very hillside that an ad hoc grassroots citizen group called Friends of Corte Madera Northridge saved from development in the early 1970’s, by first raising $64,000, then securing a matching funds grant and finally deeding the 58-acre property to Marin County Open Space.
The real estate client admires this house that the realtor shows her, especially the living room with the sunny bay window looking out onto a landscaped yard and the ridge beyond. In fact, for the prospective home buyer, it’s love at first sight. The sense of view corridor openness is what attracts her. The living room with the big view window is just a few steps beyond the front door, the first thing a visitor sees when entering the house.
So she buys the house, making for what most people, including her, is the biggest investment of all life’s investments, especially here in pricey Marin County. She buys with full knowledge that Corte Madera’s General Plan and Municipal Code both offer ample protections for the view that attracts.
Then she spends a full two and one half years remodeling her nest in the leafy Chapman Park neighborhood; a labor of love that allows for expression of fine taste and appreciation of inner and outer space. She doesn’t overdue decor, as she is a self-described minimalist. But the end result, accenting cool, clear uncluttered lines, resonates as decorator’s art.
Then comes the unexpected shock.
A next door neighbor, with a backyard immediately adjacent, submits plans to the Town for a bedroom “master suite” addition -- including another bathroom and walk-in closet -- which would block 90 percent of the hillside as seen through her beautiful bay window. Furthermore, his proposed addition includes two windows that look directly into her backyard and living room.
Officially, on paper, he appears oblivious to impacts. In his application, he writes:
This project will not significantly affect my neighbor’s view, sun light or privacy.
And, incomprehensibly, he receives staff level approval from Corte Madera’s new Assistant Planner.
Of course, our distraught homeowner appeals this ruling.
Planning Staff researches its findings for approval, and then justifies them in the following manner in a staff report submitted to Commissioners:
The approval was based on the required design review findings, specifically Finding #3 which states that ‘The project will not significantly and adversely affect the views, sunlight or privacy of nearby residences, provides adequate buffering between residential and non-residential uses, and otherwise is in the best interests of the public health, safety and general welfare.
Continuing, in the same paragraph, staff writes:
This finding is not based on specific metrics; it is a discretionary and subjective decision that was made by Planning Staff. Furthermore, the decision by the Planning Commission will also be discretionary.
And so the stage was set last Tuesday night, March 8, for a public Planning Commission hearing, which seemed to this observer, to be a debacle straight out of the pages of surrealist short story writer and novelist Franz Kafka.
Having done their due diligence and personally visited the home and the lovely living room view of the appellant, the Commissioners could not deny future impacts.
In preliminary discussion at the Hearing, three of the five Commissioners joined in acknowledging the obvious: yes, the project would cause significant view impacts for the appellant and her property.
Only Dan McCadden -- who in his day job serves as a managing director of Alliance Residential Company, specializing in land acquisitions for multi-family real estate in California and Nevada -- deferred an initial opinion. A fifth Commissioner, an attorney, Tom McHugh, had left before hearing this issue, due to an unexplained prior engagement.
The three Commissioners in agreement on significant impacts began to discuss placing altering conditions on the applicant’s design, exploring possible mitigations that focused on alternatives that would maintain the valuable view from the neighboring property, including “turning” the addition to utilize other available space on the property, shortening the length of the expansion, or possibly even requiring excavation to place several feet of the master suite below grade.
Discussion of these options appeared to seriously anger the applicant, an attending operating room physician at Marin General, who during several minutes of heated back and forth with the Commissioners, became more and more adamant.
“I’m only lowering the roof -- that’s it,” he said at last, digging in his heels.
There was discussion about breach of protocol and the Commissioners said "that's not the way we do things", but the back and forth continued.
Face flushed, the applicant finally rose from his seat to leave and walked to the door of the Town Hall, declaring: “I don’t have time for this. Write me a letter. I’m a doctor and I'm on call at the hospital. This is a modest project of only 465 square feet. If not approved, I’ll plant a bunch of tall trees in the view then sell the house.”
At which point Commissioner McCadden also rose on the dais -- from chair to standing -- enjoining the petulant doc: “Don’t go. We haven't finished. Come on back. Let’s see if we can come to some agreement.”
It was at that point, I thought, that the ghost of Franz Kafka seemed to enter the room, sweeping away all rationality that had come before it. And the drama began to take on other-worldly overtones.
Earlier McCadden had spent time on the dais discussing his concern that if the applicant were asked to reduce the grade of the structure, a future hypothetical “grandma” who might ever be in the house would have a problem with a step. Then, becoming more emphatic, he raised arguments to derail the other meaningful impact remedies previously proposed by the Commission -- including “turning”, or shifting the direction of the project into other available space on the property.
And the majority three Commission members started to one by one relent -- deferring to McCadden, in essence, agreeing that blocking of a protected view was no longer a serious enough consideration to deny the project.
“This (view blocking by new projects) is happening all over town,” opined one Commissioner.
That statement echoed an earlier one by Planning Staff that “Every project we get these days alters views to some extent.”
I wondered: Had the new goal become appeasing the applicant so that he didn’t go home mad? (And possibly imbued with a litigious frame of mind?)
The applicant, who at first had halted halfway to the door, walked back to his seat with a slight smile, sat down and began to scribble on a notepad as the ensuing Commissioners’ discussion lurched towards outright capitulation favoring the applicant.
It looked to me like the applicant was trying to intimidate and manipulate the Commission into giving him what he wanted and that McCadden had already decided that he was going to get this project passed, no matter what.
In the end, the Commission voted 4-0 to approve, placing only these absurdly minor ‘conditions” on the project: lowering the roofline by one foot while slightly decreasing the pitch, diminishing the length of the 17.5 foot addition by one foot, requiring a shield of green plantings as high but no higher than the roof of the addition. McCadden even recommended that windows looking directly into the appellant’s living room could be added, at the applicant’s discretion.
Other Commissioners agreed.
But would any of those cosmetic mitigations added to the project actually accomplish anything substantial in terms of preserving the appellant’s protected and highly valuable view? The view that called her name when she bought the house and added significantly to the sales price?
Vote thus taken, it was past midnight when the Commission closed shop for the evening.
I walked out to the street, incredulous.
Post Wincup, we all had high hopes, this writer included, for Corte Madera’s new Planning Staff and Planning Commission. They for the most part are friendly, approachable and seem committed to fairness and transparency.
But the Commission’s approval last Tuesday night of an expansion project, which would devalue a homeowner's investment and wipe out her cherished view of an open hillside, appeared to hand a serious setback to Corte Madera’s latest initiative in cool deliberations.