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Bruce Corcoran
Update on Bently Holdings' Proposal for an Additional 1,200 Vehicle Trips Per Day in Strawberry
Led by Supervisor Sears, the Board of Supervisors continued the Bently Holdings hearing to April 12, 2016 without a valid traffic study or any factual foundation for the seventh time!
The Supervisors have chosen to ignore our concerns about traffic congestion. Instead, they are serving as the lapdogs of deep-pocket Bently Holdings and Marin General Hospital.
With a focus on its own financial gain rather than on consideration of existing tenants and neighbors who oppose the project, multi-million dollar Bently Holdings, the owner of the office complex on the hillside above In N Out Burger, wants to amend our Master Plan to allow 47,500 square feet of medical offices, which currently are prohibited, but it has refused to pay for additional traffic studies that Caltrans and County have required for discovery. Bently Holdings wants to make money at our expense, but it doesn't want to spend money.
And, with a focus on its own business expansion interests, Marin General Hospital continues to press relentlessly for renting space in the Bently Holdings office complex knowing full well that there is plenty of Class-A office space available along Highway 101 in other locations where current traffic congestion is not a problem.
Despite the abundance of Class-A space, Marin General Hospital sobs to the Supervisors that it can't recruit doctors unless it can rent space from Bently Holdings, and the Supervisors lap it up.
Bear in mind that Marin General Hospital is a taxpayer-supported public entity, and Bently Holdings' rents are some of the highest in the County. Wouldn't it be easier to recruit doctors if rents weren't so high? Apparently, no price is too high for Marin General Hospital when it comes to spending public funds.
We need to elect new Supervisors if we want to be heard.
Bruce Corcoran
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Here are my comments at the March 15, 2016 BOS Hearing Urging the Supervisors to Deny the Bently Holdings Application:
Good Afternoon, Bruce Corcoran from Strawberry:
The Staff Report recommends continuing this hearing for the 7th time to April 12th, but the citizens of Strawberry strongly disagree because you have no foundation to continue the hearing. We believe that you already have enough information to deny this project once and for all, and we urge you to do so today.
In over 1 full year of hearings, Bently Holdings and Marin General Hospital have failed to produce a valid traffic study and that will not change between now and April 12th.
Multi-million dollar Bently Holdings, the applicant of record, dropped out of the review process last summer when it told your Board that it would not spend any more money on traffic studies that you and Caltrans required.
So Bently Holdings is asking you to amend our Master Plan and Precise Development Plan for its own financial gain without having to produce a valid traffic study, and you have complied.
Then, Marin General Hospital, which wants to rent currently prohibited medical office space, wasted $20,000 of tax-payer money on a peer review of the previously discredited W-Trans Traffic Study. The findings of that peer review were as expected, namely, that the W-Trans study was inaccurate and inadequate.
With both Bently Holdings and Marin General unwilling or unable to pay for the required traffic studies, one would have expected you to deny the project.
At the December hearing, Bently Holdings asked your Board for a decision based on all of the evidence presented to date, but in an out-of-control display of hubris and bias in favor of Marin General, Supervisor Kinsey said, “Despite what you want—applicant Bently Holdings—I move that we continue the hearing, and you voted unanimously to continue based on no facts.
You won’t even give the applicant an answer. It’s all about what the 5 of you want.
You had no foundation to continue then, and you have no foundation to continue now.
Next thing we know, DPW spends another $20,000 of tax-payer money to fund a new traffic study to determine how many medical offices the office complex could accommodate without significantly impacting traffic congestion. DPW is funding a study with the people’s money for a project that the people oppose.
That DPW study is a new study that should be reviewed by the Planning Commission. It is not the purview of your Board to vet traffic studies. That is the purview of the Planning Commission. Otherwise your Board could approve any project without checks and balances, which, come to think of it, is exactly what you are doing now.
We already have expressed to your Board our deep concerns about the limited scope of the DPW study.
If you think for one minute that it is acceptable to us to amend our Master Plan and Precise Development Plan based on a study conducted on only one day, during only one PM Peak, on an unusually light traffic day following the New Years holiday, then you are sorely mistaken. It is unacceptable. And that’s not going to change between now and April 12th either.
All you have to do to suspect that the new traffic study is inaccurate is to look at the Level of Service calculation for the intersection of East Blithedale/Tower, which is listed as LOS B, with an average wait time of only 12.3 seconds. All of you should know right now just how inaccurate that calculation is, just as you should have known how inaccurate LOS C (an average wait time of less than 35 seconds) was for the intersection of Redwood Frontage Road/Tiburon Boulevard (SR-131).
Especially you, Supervisor Sears. I want to be there when you try to explain to the people of Mill Valley, who are gridlocked in bumper-to-bumper traffic, why you believe the intersection of E. Blithedale/Tower is so free-flowing.
In addition, traffic on Belvedere Drive is so bad now that it is no longer considered to be a “livable” street, but no one cares. The solution that your Board, Bently Holdings, and Marin General advocates is to add even more traffic from medical offices in return for mitigation funds that won’t begin to compensate us for degradation of our quality of life. We reject that thinking.
Although a valid traffic report is necessary, it is not the only consideration. Your Staff has failed to consider all of the stakeholders. At our last hearing, the current tenants of the office complex objected to medical office use, and submitted a list of concerns that you had not even thought about. The parking structure, safety features, and security aspects of the office complex still have to be vetted for suitability for medical patients and tenants alike. The safe and sanitary disposal of medical waste is another concern.
I have asked you and your Staff to explain how you are going to account for an occupancy rate of less than 50%, the cumulative impacts of the re-development of the Seminary, and the required peer review of DPW’s traffic study, but no one will answer those questions. We need answers today, Supervisor Sears, because answers to these important questions on the spot at any future hearings are unacceptably too late.
Given the absence of a valid traffic study, and all of the additional work that needs to be done, and without a new recommendation by the Planning Commission, you have no foundation to continue this hearing, so we are imploring you to deny this project today.
We also appeal to Bently Holdings and Marin General to have the good grace to withdraw the project. There is plenty of Class A space available to Marin General Hospital in other locations along Highway 101 that do not have traffic congestion issues, including 70,000 square feet of space in Marin Commons and 700,000 square feet in the former Fireman’s Fund building.
Stop bullying Strawberry.
(Thank you for reading my blog.—BC)