Marinwood Village

August 24, 2008

The Pacific Sun wrote an article about the Marinwood Village project.

The Marinwood Village plan is still includes a grocery store, ancillary retail, a plaza or community gathering area, and a redesign of Marinwood Avenue with not more than 100 residential units. The project is being delayed by worse than expected contamination from the dry cleaner. It also looks from the contamination report that more testing might be needed once they realize that the testing areas were outside the groundwater flow.

Trammell Crow is still interested in the project. The next steps will be to finalize a detailed development plan though an engineering study, while also studying pedestrian, bicycle, and transit linkages. The county has received some additional funds for the project’s community planning process and in order to meet the requirements of this grant the county will be putting together what is called “Marinwood Village Collaborative.”

The “Marinwood Village Collaborative” will include the existing Marinwood Task Force, Trammell Crow Company, County staff, addition representatives from the Lucas Valley Homeowners Association/County Services District #3, Dixie School District, the Marin Environmental Housing Collaborative, the Casa Marinwood residents, and an at-large community respresentative. Their job will be to propose a plan that can be submitted by Trammell Crow as part of their development application and environmental review for the project. Leading this process will be David Early from DC&E (Design, Community, and Environment.

There will be a meeting on Wednesday, September 10, 2008, from 2:00 to 6:00pm to go over the roles of the participants of the collaboration. This will not be open to the public. I have been assured by Susan Adams office that “the residents of the Marinwood will have ample opportunity to make their feelings and ideas known regarding the ultimate design for the Marinwood Village.”

February 2009 is a milestone date for a detailed development plan and engineering study.

It remains to be seen if the public will have any impact on what the ultimate design will be. So far, it just seems to me that every time we the public are brought into the process we are being told what will be done rather being a part of the process. They spend their time in public meetings telling us the public what we have to accept and then claim this is a community inclusive process. Sadly, the majority of residents sit outside looking in. Hopefully, with Trammell Crow and this new collaborative will improve on that lack of interactiveness.