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Mill Valley Patch
Bently Holdings, Last Call, Here's My Op-ed that the IJ Declined to Publish
The Board of Supervisors will hold the Bently Holdings hearing tomorrow, April 12th, at 2:00 PM at the Civic Center in Room 330. If the Supervisors approve this project, then they deliberately will be adding more traffic to Highway 101 in Strawberry that already is operating at Level of Service F.
If you oppose this project, then please attend the hearing so that the Supervisors will hear our voices.
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Here is my op-ed, which the IJ declined to publish:
Supervisors Intend to Add More Traffic to Highway 101
Bently Holdings and MarinGeneralHospital have been scheming for the past two years to win approval for medical offices in the Belvedere Place office complex adjacent to the StrawberryVillageShopping Center.
Marin General wants to lease all of the medical office space that Bently Holdings can offer.
Although they both know that residents adamantly oppose this project because of the increase in traffic, Bently Holdings and Marin General have relentlessly and wantonly pressed for approval for their own financial gain.
The Board of Supervisors has accommodated them by granting all sorts of special favors, including continuing hearings seven times without a valid traffic study.
Residents oppose this project because converting up to 47,500 square feet of general office space to medical offices will generate an additional 1,200 vehicle trips per day on our already heavily congested roadways and intersections.
Moreover, our 1984 Master Plan specifically prohibits medical offices in these buildings because we have been trying to reduce traffic congestion in this physically constrained location for years.
Nevertheless, based on their subjective personal “feelings,” all of the Supervisors are determined to eliminate the restrictions on medical offices that were initially approved by their predecessors, including such luminaries as Supervisors Giacomini and Aramburu, after months of public hearings and negotiations between all stakeholders.
The approval process has been corrupted.
CountyPlanning Commissioners failed to do their jobs because they recommended approval of the project without ever seeing and vetting the original traffic study, but the Supervisors accepted their recommendation as legitimate.
County planners failed to do their jobs because they didn’t conduct their own research. They told the Supervisors that they were satisfied with the initial traffic study, but when Caltrans and the City of Mill Valley opined that the traffic study was inaccurate and inadequate, the planners changed their minds.
Multi-million dollar Bently Holdings dropped out of the review process last summer by refusing to pay for any more traffic studies. The applicant wants to amend our Master Plan on the cheap, and the Supervisors let Bently Holdings get away with it.
Then Marin General wasted $20,000 of our tax dollars on a peer review of the discredited original traffic study. The peer review also determined that the original study was inadequate and inaccurate.
With Bently Holdings and Marin General unwilling or unable to spend more money on traffic studies, we expected the Supervisors to deny the project. But in an outrageous twist, Public Works spent an additional $27,000 of our tax dollars for traffic studies that the applicant should have paid for. This expenditure amounts to a gift of public funds, which is prohibited.
Marin General sobs that it’s having trouble recruiting new doctors because it can’t find Class A office space, but there is plenty of such space along Highway 101 in locations without traffic congestion problems, including 70,000 square feet in Marin Commons and 700,000 square feet in the former Fireman’s Fund building.
Choosing Marin Commons would be mutually beneficial. County owns the building and wants more rental income, and Marin General would get Class A office space in a prime location between the two largest cities in the County. In addition, recruiting doctors would be easier because the cost of renting medical offices and purchasing nearby housing are less expensive.
The Supervisors’ bias to deliberately approve additional medical traffic along a stretch of Highway 101 that they know is currently operating at Level of Service F during peak hours is indefensible. It smacks of deep-pocket political cronyism.
Everyone along the Highway 101 corridor will be impacted if the Supervisors approve this project.
Please send letters to bos@marincounty.com.
The Board of Supervisors hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, April 12th, at 2:00 PM at the CivicCenter, Room 330.