Dick Spotswood: Planned Novato development needs parking solution

Novato’s City Council will soon approve a new five-story housing development grossly out of scale with the character of the city’s downtown.

The mixed commercial and residential building at Grant Avenue and Third Street will include 56 apartments and 1,735 feet of ground floor office and retail. Under Novato’s building code the maximum height allowed is 35 feet. This structure will top out at 64.4 feet. Zero parking is provided for the new residents or customers.

Don’t blame Novato council members for the out-of-place building. They had no discretion over the proposal’s size, mass and height as new state laws supersede local planning and building ordinances. Responsibility lies at the feet of state legislators.

The IJ reports that California law “allows extra density to fully affordable housing projects on sites within one-half mile of a major transit stop. The downtown Novato SMART station qualifies as such.”

That law is based on a logical fallacy known as “transit adjacent development.” A project is “transit adjacent” if it’s located within one-quarter mile of a transit station. Then, if it’s defined as “100% affordable,” the developer receives bonuses enabling them to forgo local planning and building standards.

The Grant and Third development is close to Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit service and Golden Gate Transit buses and is composed of smaller apartments that are “affordable.” That doesn’t mean the project won’t have unintended consequences.

The fallacy is that those who crafted California laws boosting housing construction presume that future residents of transit adjacent developments will utilize transit or walk/cycle to work and daily activities. Thus, no parking is required.

I practiced civil trial law for 45 years. When reading about “transit adjacent development,” my instinct is to exclaim, “Objection! The question assumes facts not in evidence.” If the objection is sustained, the party asking the question needs to introduce the necessary foundational facts.

There is no hard evidence that future residents of this suburban apartment house will use transit to make their daily rounds.

Think about what transit is designed to accomplish: move large numbers of folks from where they reside to locations where they work, shop, play or attend school. It’s ideal in locales with true high density like New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston.

Mid-sized suburban cities including Novato, Santa Rosa or San Rafael will never approach the needed density regardless of how much housing is built.

Presume a Grant-and-Third resident works at UCSF Medical Center in the City’s Parnassus Heights neighborhood, at San Francisco State or at University of California at Berkeley. Those are all challenging transit commutes. Most will drive.

Suppose even lower-income residents have children attending after-school programs all over Marin. Bus versus car? Don’t be silly. Parents must drive if they live at Grant and Third. They’ll then need to find street or lot parking overnight as there’s no on-site parking.

I could be wrong, but without solid evidence, transit adjacent development is just an unproven theory.

The 65-foot Grant-and-Third building is a done deal. Once it’s finished and occupied, it can be a fine location to learn if the theory behind transit adjacent housing is a fallacy or a reality.

That quandary can be definitively answered by an “origin and destination study” to learn if its new residents really do walk, bike or use transit for most trips. If they don’t, the surrounding neighborhoods will be where Grant-and-Third residents park overnight. The results of that study will be of immense value when future transit adjacent developments are proposed.

Unless the council immediately mandates that an origin and destination study be a condition of approval, it’ll never happen. Too many interested parties have an incentive not to introduce the necessary facts into evidence.

Columnist Dick Spotswood of Mill Valley writes on local issues Sundays and Wednesdays. Email him at spotswood@comcast.net.