Sydney Bushman has lived next to the public dock and shoreline pedestrian pathway off Harbor Cove Way in Strawberry for nearly four decades, but she said she’s never experienced a summer like the most recent one. After the county issued its coronavirus-related shelter-in-place order in March, asking residents to stick close to home and placing limits on business activity, people began to flock to the dock and pathway, gathering in large groups, flouting physical-distancing and face-covering rules and in some cases hosting barbecues and picnics nearby. The increased activity has spilled over to the pathway — which has become popular with dogs and bicyclists, both of which are prohibited — with some trespassing on nearby private property, leaving trash behind and loitering and drinking after hours. (Frank Fennema photo / For The Ark)

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An anchor out has filed a $1-million federal lawsuit against the Richardson Bay Regional Agency, claiming the agency left her homeless when it improperly seized and destroyed her boat as part of an initiative to clean up the bay. The suit, filed Sept. 29 by Robyn Lynn Kelly in the San Francisco-based U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks damages from the agency and its harbor administrator, Curtis Havel, due to loss of property and pain and suffering, among other claims.

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The Belvedere City Council has approved a renovation design for the Community Park playground that adds a new boat, playhouse and shade sails — but the new look will eliminate the existing sandbox to the ire of some city residents. The design features new poured-in-place rubber surfacing on roughly half the playground, with images of sea creatures and small mounds to mimic ocean waves. Renderings show the existing swing set and seesaw would remain. The existing boat structure would be refinished and moved toward the middle of the playground.

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A Bay Area group charged with divvying up state-mandated housing numbers has given preliminary approval to a proposal that would require Tiburon and Belvedere make way for some 790 new housing units — roughly half very-low- or low-income — in the 2023-2031 housing cycle. At an Oct. 15 teleconference meeting, the Association of Bay Area Governments executive board voted 23-10 to approve a new formula for calculating where the state’s mandate of 441,176 new housing units will be allocated across the Bay Area’s nine counties and their 101 cities and towns.

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Candidate profiles: Incumbent, newcomers seek three seats in Belvedere City Council race, two in Reed Union School District board race //  Measure M: Tamalpais Union High School District seeks renewal of annual parcel tax to stave off big budget cuts. // Ballot guide: A look at the candidates and state initiatives on the Nov. 3 ballot.

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Tiburon is accepting applications for community members who want to serve on the town’s newly established Diversity Inclusion Task Force, created to develop recommendations for addressing issues of diversity and inclusion within town government, the Police Department and the greater community. The Tiburon Town Council at its Oct. 7 teleconference meeting voted unanimously to approve the 10-member task force, following up on a meeting last month where it gave its preliminary OK to creating the group and hashed out its general structure. The resolution passed by the council establishing the group acknowledges “the vital role that diversity plays in our lives and communities and to condemn racism, bigotry, bias, hate speech and prejudice of any form.”

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Tiburon and Belvedere could be on the hook for 790 new housing units in the Bay Area’s next housing cycle — roughly 10 times more than their allotment in the current eight-year cycle — if a new methodology for divvying up regional housing needs is adopted by the Association of Bay Area Governments. The association’s executive board, which consists of representatives from across the Bay Area’s nine counties, will weigh the new methodology at its Oct. 15 teleconference meeting. That methodology will ultimately determine how state-mandated housing in the 2023-2031 cycle will be distributed across the Bay Area’s 101 cities and towns.

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After months of distance learning, students filed back onto Reed Union School District campuses part-time last week — but a full-time return to in-person classes could be further off than originally planned. In an Oct. 9 interview, district Superintendent Nancy Lynch said the district will likely need to push the transition from its current hybrid-learning phase, which combines in-person classes and distance learning, to its next planned phase, which has students on campus five days a week for most of the school day, past the previous target date of Nov. 9. (Elliot Karlan photo / For The Ark)

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Popular Italian eatery Servino Ristorante will move back to its original home on lower Ark Row next spring, paving the way for an organic farm-to-table retail-and-restaurant chain to take its place on lower Main Street.

In an exclusive announcement to The Ark, landlord ACV Argo Tiburon LP said Oct. 1 that Malibu Farm — which has eight locations across Southern California, Hawaii, New York, Miami, Mexico and Tokyo — will open at Servino’s longtime home at 9 Main St. in 2021 or 2022 after renovations and a redesign of the two-story building. 

ACV Argo also confirmed it has submitted to Tiburon its development plans for the former Shark’s Deli site at the corner of Tiburon Boulevard and Beach Road, a planned indoor-outdoor bistro concept that would pay tribute to the site’s history as a former Mobil service station with “retro-garage doors, a large outdoor trellis-covered dining patio and a recreational lawn area.”

Shark’s has been closed since 2014, and recently its parking lot has been use...

Apparently dashing hopes of residents seeking to preserve Tiburon’s downtown movie theater, landlord ACV Argo said it has made several unsuccessful attempts to bring in a new operator and instead is looking at the building with an eye toward redevelopment. The owner of the three-screen Tiburon Playhouse, David Corkill of the Cinema West theater chain, announced last month the theater, which had been closed since March amid the coronavirus pandemic, would be shutting down permanently after more than 60 years. (Elliot Karlan archive photo / The Ark)

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Racial equality, disaster readiness and the COVID-19 pandemic were among the issues at the forefront of a discussion between the four candidates competing for three open seats on the Belvedere City Council at a Sept. 29 virtual forum hosted by The Ark and moderated by the League of Women Voters of Marin County. On the rapidly approaching Nov. 3 presidential election ballot, incumbent Nancy Kemnitzer is seeking a second term on the council and will be competing against newcomers Chelsea Schlunt, James Lynch and Steve Block for the three vacancies.  

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The four candidates vying for two seats on the Reed Union School District board of trustees generally found common ground on key issues facing the district at a Sept. 30 virtual forum hosted by The Ark and moderated by the Marin League of Women Voters of Marin County. Those on the ballot in the upcoming Nov. 3 Presidential Election include appointed incumbent Liz Webb, and  challengers Dan Emerson, Charles Hornbrook and Jacqueline Jaffee. All four have kids enrolled in the district.

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The latest plan to develop the former seminary site in Strawberry is headed for environmental review, despite the community’s Design Review Board issuing a resounding rejection of the project as being too dense and lacking crucial details board members said make it impossible to accurately evaluate. The advisory board at its Sept. 21 teleconference meeting voted unanimously to recommend the county essentially tell owner North Coast Land Holdings to go back to the drawing board. Board members said the developer’s plan to bring 337 units of housing, a school of up to 1,000 students and a 150-bed residential care facility, along with a fitness center and day care, to the site doesn’t improve on previous iterations of the project that were widely panned by the community for being too impactful.

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Belvedere officials are zeroing in on a $20.1-million design concept for the city’s flood-fix project that incorporates feedback from residents and other local stakeholders, including calls to preserve a traffic circle at the intersection of San Rafael Avenue and Beach Road and to maintain the existing road width and all existing street parking on the city’s two arterial roads. The updated design is a riff on one unveiled last December, which added amenities like multiuse pathways, green spaces and seating areas to mask the development along San Rafael Avenue and Beach Road and connect people with the shoreline. The new plan scales back that design and instead favors 5-foot-wide paths and short, exposed floodwalls. Pedestrians would access the shoreline using ramps and stairs that lead “up and over” the seawalls, which would be as tall as 4.4 feet in some places.

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A push to tighten loopholes in Belvedere’s floodplain construction policies hit a speed bump after lagoon residents urged city officials to “go slower” with the changes and solicit more feedback from the community. After nearly three hours of deliberation at a Sept. 22 meeting, the Planning Commission voted unanimously to continue its discussion of proposed options, including requiring third-party appraisals to crosscheck questionable assessments, changing the window of time between “phased” projects and using a $493 per-square-foot multiplier to estimate construction costs. A subcommittee has been weighing such changes after concerns were raised last year that lagoon homeowners are able to dodge federal mandates when completing a construction project by submitting inflated appraisals or undervalued construction costs — which could threaten insurance for the entire city.

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