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Critics blast storage-facility plan
The project would create a 247,440-square-foot structure with 685 storage units in 25 metal buildings. Each would be 14- to 24-feet high and built on pilings, because most of the area sits on bay mud. The buildings would store cars, recreational vehicles, boats and home and office materials. "This is a massive project that juts out into wetlands, an environmentally significant area that should be protected," said Barbara Salzman, director of the Marin Audubon Society. "It's also in conflict with just about every policy and standard the county has, requiring all sorts of changes to the countywide plan." Yet a lawyer for property owner Rob Ham says the project he's proposing for a stretch of Binford Road in unincorporated Novato would be better for the environment than the boatyard already in place. "This was a junkyard at one time," said San Rafael attorney Neil Sorensen. "There were derelict boats and other vehicles. My client made the decision to clean it up and spent thousands of dollars on an environmental assessment, which the Planning Commission approved in April 2000." The Binford Road facility has attracted opposition in part because it is the first significant project proposed within an area of East Marin called the Baylands Protection Corridor. Many local environmental groups have supported the idea of designating all undeveloped lands between Interstate 80 in the east and Highway 101 in the west for protection. "This would have adverse effects on the bay and the surrounding ecosystem," said Marjorie Macris, a former county planning director who now serves as an executive committee member of the Sierra Club's Marin chapter. "It's an area of sensitive habitat." After reviewing the proposal on Aug. 28 and Sept. 11, members of the county Planning Commission concluded that Ham has not adequately addressed the potential impacts of the project. In addition to concerns about drainage and the impact of sinking large concrete pilings into bay mud to support the project, commissioners agreed the 16-acre storage facility would simply be too big for the site. "The amount of floor space for this project is the maximum allowed by the county," Commissioner Don Dickenson said. "It's the same intensity of development you'd find in an urban setting. That's just not appropriate." Rather than request a more comprehensive environmental study, however, the commission told Ham not to waste his time. "We're unlikely ever to approve it," Dickenson said. "We recommended disapproval without going through the process of creating an environmental impact report." Sorensen says that assessment is premature. "They haven't raised the environmental impact issue," Sorensen said. "Their main concern is (whether the project is compatible with) the countywide plan." The area in question is a long, narrow strip of land just south of Novato's Gnoss Airport. It lies along the Novato Canal, an artificially-maintained channel passing through Black John Slough to the Petaluma River. The canal was once used to ferry paving stones from the old Mount Burdell Quarry to San Francisco during the post-1906 earthquake building boom. Owners of the property hoped to transform it into a marina resort complex during the 1970s and 1980s, with various proposals including 22,500 square feet of office space and 41,000 square feet of commercial space for marina facilities and a boat repair yard, boat storage, moorings, docks and parking. The county Board of Supervisors tried to halt the plan in 1973, calling it incompatible with the nearby airport. But a 1977 court judgment, upheld in 1996, said the plan could go forward - with the stipulation that the site had to have a county-approved sewage disposal system. The Board of Supervisors used that provision to deny the proposal in 1982. "The applicant can't build because the sewer is not there," Dickenson said. "How could you have hundreds of employees working there without bathroom facilities?" In the decade that followed, the land became a junkyard, accumulating Vietnam War-era barges, abandoned vehicles and stacks of firewood. Ham's company, Binford Road LLC, purchased the property in 1996 and agreed to a court-ordered cleanup. Today, the former boatyard remains idle next to a cow pasture and across the street from two self-storage facilities. "It's returning to nature rapidly," Dickenson said. "The siltation is restoring the tidal flats to their original nature. There's little chance of building a marina there now." The latest proposal for the site would preserve 18.3 acres of open space, restore about four acres of wetlands and provide a viewing area and parking lot. But the project would also require the construction of three levees using 85,000 cubic yards of fill, as well as the creation of two roadways. That detail, as well as the size of the project itself, led to the commission's declaration that the project is inconsistent with the countywide master plan. "A 247,000-foot building may not be an appropriate use for that location," Commissioner Dickenson said. Sorensen, the attorney for Binford Road LLC, doesn't accept that assessment. "We believe that the project complies with both the current and proposed countywide plan," he said. While the area consists of seasonal and tidal wetlands, previous environmental studies have concluded it is not home to any of the endangered species whose presence has blocked development at similar sites throughout the county. Nevertheless, environmental groups have expressed concern that the storage of boats and other vehicles at the site could lead to oil and gasoline spills in the surrounding area. The Marin Audubon Society has proposed purchasing the property. "There would be an important visual impact of having a huge structure visible from the road next to the slough," said the Sierra Club's Macris. To attorney Sorensen, however, those environmentalists are looking a gift horse in the mouth. "What's going on now, the storage, would be a better project than a boatyard," Sorensen said. Marin Audubon's Salzman disagrees. "The only reason that would be the case was if the boatyard was doing something it wasn't supposed to be doing," she declared. NEXT MEETING A public hearing on the proposed self-storage facility, which had been scheduled for review Tuesday by the Marin County Board of Supervisors, has been postponed to Dec. 5. |
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