If the County Supervisors make this change, Strawberry residents will have reduced power to influence developments in our neighborhood.

North Coast Land Holdings is seeking County approval to develop the former Baptist Seminary on a scale of great concern to neighbors.

Once again, SNA seeks to inform the County of Marin that the current review process for the Seminary is flawed based on two major factors:

• If the proposed educational use is not analyzed in the project EIR, it will be a deficient CEQA document
• If a new CUP is not sought for any educational use proposed at the property, such a use will be unpermitted

Please read our latest letter informing the County of these critical issues.

The County of Marin is hosting a virtual public scoping session for the North Coast Land Holdings Environmental Impact Report (EIR) on Tuesday, May 18, 2021 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. The meeting will be conducted virtually via Zoom, and members of the public may attend and participate in the scoping session online. 

This meeting is an important moment in the application process to ensure ALL of the neighborhood impacts of the proposed development are fully analyzed.

To participate in the scoping session, the Zoom weblink and meeting information is as follows:

https://zoom.us/j/94160826487?pwd=UWhFbk1wM2R2c0xRSy9JV3M0NHloQT09 
Webinar ID: 941 6082 6487
Passcode: 506440

Or by Telephone: (669) 900-6833
Webinar ID: 941 6082 6487
Passcode: 506440

During the virtual public scoping session, members of the public will have the opportunity to provide oral comments, which will be recorded and posted at a later date on the environmental webpage for this project. Those wishing to speak will need to indicate so during the course of the meeting by either using the "Raise Hand" button. If you choose to call in to the Zoom meeting, press *9 to inform the moderator that you would like to comment.

Please visit the environmental project webpage via this link to find out more information about the meeting, the scoping session process and how to submit comments.

At the start of the environmental review process, the public is provided the opportunity to comment on the scope of the project's EIR. Here is a link to SNA's comments on what the EIR needs to address.

SNA will provide more detailed input regarding the impacts and merits of the project as this project moves forward. 

If you’ve been following the various attempts to redevelop the Seminary property over the last decade or so, you’ll recognize that the presence of a school on the site is the common theme.  The Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary and later Olivet were allowed to operate because of a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) issued by the County back in 1953.  The CUP runs with the land, so when North Coast Land Holdings (NCLH) purchased the property, they inherited the CUP.

The existence of the CUP is how NCLH bootstrapped their proposed 1,000 student college (and previously Branson) into their plans.  Of course they didn’t stop with the school but proceeded to add a continuous care facility, market-rate and affordable housing, a fitness center, childcare center, etc, etc.

Everybody (the community, NCLH, the County) all took the validity of the CUP as a given.

However, our attorney spent the last several months digging through the dusty files at the County and has determined that the 1953 CUP is in fact null and void!  If you take a little time and read the attached letter, you’ll learn that the CUP was replaced by the (now expired) 1984 Master Plan.

If the County takes the time to review and act on this information, then this will be a game changer.  NCLH’s key entitlement, the basis of their current (and all previous) applications will vanish.

Neighbors, please read SNA's most recent Marin Voice OpEd, which explains our reasoning for appealing the start of the environmental review process. In short: where is the school? 

You can read the entire appeal to the Board of Supervisors here.

After months of hard work spent by community members to reach a good-faith compromise that would create much-needed new housing, North Coast submitted an application that abandons the Seminary Tomorrow working group promises.

Indeed, they walked away from the plan they showed at their December 2019 open house. The plan they submitted to the County had never been shown to the community.

All of us wonder: what was the point? Community volunteers spent hundreds of hours working on the Seminary Tomorrow negotiation process. The applicant also spent a tremendous amount of time and resources to move the conversation forward. But during the final stretch, they simply walked away. Why?

In December 2017 the Marin Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to not extend the Seminary’s expiring Master Plan and to not begin environmental review on North Coast Land Holding’s application to redevelop the site. At that meeting, Supervisor Sears admonished all sides to “get real” and to “come out of their corners”.

In January, Seminary Neighborhood Association president Josh Sale wrote a letter NCLH president Bruce Jones indicating his belief that it was time to break the cycle of acrimony and for the parties to begin an honest conversation about the future of the site.  The letter sketched out what this conversation might look like:

• We identify a small number of Strawberry residents to represent the community.
• We have a series of facilitated meetings.  The cost of the facilitator should be shared, in proportions to be determined, between the community, County and North Coast Land Holdings.
• The meetings should be private but not confidential (i.e., the broader community is aware that they are occurring).
• The scope for this group should be limited:  broadly identify acceptable uses and intensities for the Seminary site.  It shouldn’t venture into detailed site planning.
• The group should establish an ambitious but realistic timeframe for doing its work.
• Everything should be on the table … including a school.  At the same time, there can be no sacred cows … including a school.
• The group should conduct a couple of public meetings to keep the community up to date.
• The ultimate work product of this group should be a general description of the land uses at the Seminary in the future.  While this description might not technically be an update to the Seminary section of the Strawberry Community Plan, it should hopefully be a straightforward process to create such an update from the group’s efforts.

In March NCLH reached back to Sale indicating they were prepared to proceed along these lines.

Since then a group of eight individuals who have all been active in the struggle around the future of the site were selected to represent and advocate for the Strawberry community, a facilitator (Marie Rainwater) has been hired and the first facilitated meeting took place (May 15^th).  All of the parties also agreed to the attached communication.  They also agreed on a name for this process:  Seminary Tomorrow.

As the meetings continue we will keep you apprised.  We will organize checkpoint meetings with the entire community.

There is no assurance that this process will result in an agreement that all parties can live with.  But we need to make every effort to try to find agreement if we’re ever going to bring closure to the future of the site now that the Seminary is gone.

Finally please remember that even if the Seminary Tomorrow process yields a compromise solution, that isn’t the end of the process.  Indeed anything that comes out of this process will still need to go through all of the County’s approval process (Strawberry Design Review, Planning Commission, environmental review and Board of Supervisors).  Seminary Tomorrow doesn’t short-circuit any of this.

Thanks for reading this far and we hope you will take a few additional minutes and read this announcement.

On October 30^th, the Planning Commission will be hearing two important matters related to the Seminary site.  The first is the Seminary Neighborhood Association appeal of the County’s decision to begin the environment review process (you can read our letter on this subject here).  As part of our appeal, we’ve hired a traffic engineer to study North Coast Land Holdings proposed project as well as the CEQA alternative.  You can read about the traffic here.

In addition, North Coast Land Holdings is requesting that the property’s 33-year-old Master Plan be extended yet again instead of letting it expire.  We oppose this extension.  You can read our reasoning here.

Please attend this important meeting if you can.  If you can’t make it to the meeting, you can write to the Planning Commission ([email protected]) and share your thoughts.

Thank you.