Demolition of Belvedere’s Mallard Pointe gets green light
Updated: Oct 6
This story was updated from a preliminary version posted Oct. 2.
Crews are mobilizing to tear down Belvedere’s 22 Mallard Pointe apartments after the city issued a lagoon bulkhead permit Oct. 1, which it required before demolition could begin. But one tenant remains, and a dispute over a silt curtain could stall part of the work.
Demolition can be completed safely in the next 60 days, said Bruce Dorfman, principal of developer Thompson Dorfman Partners. Bulkhead work will begin as soon as removing some of the housing and garages opens access to it, he said, and “demo and bulkhead work will be performed sequentially in segments and largely simultaneously.”
The city said in an Oct. 5 update that demolition, beginning with asbestos and other hazardous-materials removal inside the vacant buildings, is expected to start in late October or early November and run about five weeks. Bulkhead replacement could begin as early as the week of Oct. 5, depending on site access and the installation of erosion and stormwater controls, the city said.
Under the project’s demolition approval, bulkhead replacement must begin within 14 calendar days after demolition starts, but nothing requires demolition to go first, the city said.
Debris will be trucked to Redwood Landfill in Novato by one of two routes the city posted Sept. 30, along Beach Road or San Rafael Avenue.
In the meantime, firefighters from the Tiburon and Southern Marin fire protection districts and the Marin County Fire Department are holding training exercises at the complex through Oct. 12, practicing forcible entry, searches and ventilation without live fire.
Demolition can begin once the developer gives the city details on capping all of the site’s utilities except those serving the duplex containing apartment units 3 and 4, said Rebecca Markwick, Belvedere’s director of planning and building. Dorfman confirmed that one tenant is still living at Mallard Pointe past the end of the notice period. Every other tenant has relocated.
Tenants received 180-day notices to vacate Feb. 6 and, as the law requires, 60-day notices July 15, he said. That was the day the demolition permit was issued. The 60-day notices expired Sept. 14.
“We’re following the appropriate legal process, and out of respect for this individual, we cannot comment further,” Dorfman said.
The city said Oct. 5 that the remaining tenant lives at 4 Mallard Road and that the developer cannot demolish that building while it is occupied. Work elsewhere on the site may go ahead only if it can be done safely, and site fencing must keep residential and emergency access open at all times.
Curtain dispute could leave 150 feet of old bulkhead
The bulkhead is the retaining wall along the site’s edge on the Belvedere Lagoon. The Oct. 1 permit allows the developer to tear out the old one, about 903 feet long, and replace it with vinyl sheet piling — interlocking panels driven into the ground — capped with wood.
The dispute centers on a silt curtain — a floating barrier meant to keep churned-up mud from spreading — which the California Department of Fish and Wildlife requires for in-water work. At issue is whether it can go in the lagoon, which the Belvedere Lagoon Property Owners Association owns.
“Ironically, the only work the (association) is blocking is the replacement of the bulkheads located on its own property,” Dorfman said. “We will replace the bulkhead along the rest of our property as planned, but that one section will remain in its current condition unless the (association) grants access.”
That stretch runs about 150 feet along lots 2 and 3, he said.
The project’s lots are numbered counterclockwise around the site. Lots 1 and 12 sit on the residential island between Community and Mallard roads, lot 1 at Mallard Road’s northeastern entrance, closer to Belvedere Community Park, and lot 12 at its southwestern entrance, closer to City Hall. Lots 2-11 run along the lagoon shoreline.
“Since Mallard Pointe was proposed in 2021, the (association) has pushed for the existing bulkheads to be replaced as part of the redevelopment,” Dorfman added. “Now that we are ready to do exactly that, the (association) is inexplicably standing in the way, continually introducing new requests despite our efforts to accommodate them.”
The city’s Oct. 1 response to the association says the association “has denied permission to access or place materials on its property” and that work on the affected portion of the bulkhead cannot begin until the developer either wins the association’s authorization or finds another way to control sediment that satisfies Fish and Wildlife.
“This is an encroachment issue between two private property owners, and as such, the city cannot enforce this approval,” the response states.
Ken Johnson, president of the Belvedere Lagoon Property Owners Association, who spoke with The Ark before the developer commented, disputes the city’s account.
“We didn’t deny the curtain,” Johnson said.
What the association wants, he said, is a curtain along the entire shoreline before any in-water work begins.
“The installation of a continuous silt/turbidity curtain along the full 903 feet of lagoon shoreline is an imperative, as well as the uninterrupted sequencing of bulkhead removal and replacement, with no gaps between demolition and installation,” he said. “Prevention, not response.”
In a Sept. 27 letter to the city, Johnson wrote that the project’s Fish and Wildlife and regional water board permits require a continuous silt curtain fully deployed in the lagoon before any in-water work, including removing riprap and old bulkheads, driving new sheet piles and rebuilding 19 docks.
Because the new docks reach the association’s property line, and some extend past it, the entire curtain must sit on association property, Johnson wrote. He said the association disagrees that the curtain can be installed in sections or entirely on the project’s land and that a sheet of the plans then under review showed it crossing over several existing docks.
The association will consider granting permission for the curtain once the drawings are corrected and once it understands what work will be done before Fish and Wildlife’s Oct. 15 deadline and what condition the site will be left in as winter rains begin, he wrote.
Johnson said the association’s approval turns on a requirement the city attached to the July 15 demolition permit. It bars work or disturbance beyond staked property lines on neighboring parcels until the city has written confirmation of the neighboring owner’s approval, a temporary construction easement or another legal document. The same permit requires the property lines on the west and northwest sides of the site to be surveyed and clearly identified before work begins.
“Our response has been there are no staked property lines,” Johnson said.
The basis for the city’s statement that the association has denied permission, Markwick said, is that any improvement on association property requires the association’s written approval and the city has nothing in writing from the association saying the curtain can go there.
The developer’s latest plans pulled the new bulkhead entirely onto Mallard Pointe’s own land, but the curtain for one portion of that work would still sit in the association’s water, according to the city’s response.
The curtain stretch runs along lots 2, 3 and 4 and part of lot 5, or about a third of the 903-foot bulkhead, Markwick said.
“We redesigned it to sit entirely on our property, so (the association’s) permission isn’t needed and the schedule isn’t affected,” Dorfman said in response to emailed questions Oct. 2.
Responding later Oct. 2 to Dorfman’s account, Markwick said the approved plans are marked to show the curtain cannot go on association property unless the association approves it in writing. The city’s Oct. 5 update says the same restriction covers bulkhead removal, bulkhead replacement and dock work.
The approved curtain plan, dated Sept. 22 and marked up by the city, which Dorfman provided Oct. 5, ends the curtain at lot 4. The city’s red marks run along the stretch beside lots 2, 3 and part of 4, where the plan shows no curtain.
Dorfman said Oct. 4 that the city redlined and approved the permit plan Oct. 1. The redesign followed the association’s demand that property lines and docks in the lagoon be staked, along with other staking before it would approve putting the curtain on association property, he said, a requirement he said no other property has faced.
The developer will stake its south property line, next to 500 San Rafael Ave., and its north line, next to 16 Community Road, as it mobilizes for demolition and has committed to staking the association’s line on lots 2 and 3 at the same time, Dorfman said.
A boundary survey was recorded during the project’s tentative map approval, and the developer’s crew will use its monuments to stake property lines in the field, the city said Oct. 5.
Whether the staking satisfies the association could decide whether the curtain, and the bulkhead replacement along lots 2-4, goes forward this season.
The Oct. 1 response answered a Sept. 17 letter in which the association asked that seven recommendations be written into the permit as enforceable conditions. The city did not adopt the association’s request that demolition be tied, area by area, to finished sections of bulkhead, citing instead an updated work schedule the developer filed under the project’s conditions of approval.
On the association’s request that demolition wait until April 15, 2027, Markwick said the city is legally required to issue a building permit once all conditions of approval are met and regulatory agencies have approved the project.
Dorfman said a delay would be inconsistent with the City Council’s direction in June, when it extended the deadline to finalize the project’s subdivision map to March 2027. Finalizing the map requires demolishing the existing buildings, abandoning certain utility easements and recording new ones, he said.
Work supposed to finish by Oct. 15
Fish and Wildlife’s agreement for the project requires all of the covered work to be finished by Oct. 15, though the department can grant week-by-week extensions in dry weather, leaving the contractor about two weeks from the day the permit issued.
A preliminary schedule from Ghilotti Bros. of San Rafael, the project’s contractor, that the city posted Sept. 29 allots 25 working days to tearing out and replacing the bulkhead, starting the week the permit is issued, and notes the dates are subject to weather, “biological limitations” and extension approvals. The whole project, through the site’s grading, utilities and paving, runs 287 working days in that schedule, which gives no calendar dates.
The entire shoreline likely will not be replaced by Oct. 15 without an extension, the city said Oct. 5. Otherwise, in-water work can resume when the window reopens April 1, and demolition on land does not have to stop in the meantime, the city said.
The National Weather Service forecast no rain for the Bay Area through at least Oct. 11, and the federal Climate Prediction Center favors below-normal rainfall for Northern California through Oct. 18. Long-range forecasts show no rain through the end of October.
Dorfman said the developer will seek “standard extensions” to finish the bulkhead this season, noting that the city’s own seawall work window runs through the end of October.
Fish and Wildlife has approved the project’s biologist in writing, Markwick said, a step the agreement requires before covered work can begin. The developer has not yet requested a variance to work past Oct. 15, though it has asked Fish and Wildlife about one, she said.
If the bulkhead cannot be finished in the window, including any extension Fish and Wildlife grants, the developer must keep its environmental protections in place until work resumes, and the existing bulkhead stays where it has not yet been replaced, the city said.
“It’s so obvious that between now and next April … we’re not gonna have our curtain around the property,” Johnson said. “And then we’re going forward without the curtain around the project and the project has started.”
City staff, peer reviewers and Foth, the Petaluma firm Belvedere hired in September as project coordinator after cutting ties with its first one, will inspect the work, the city said. Foth’s $100,000 contract was approved administratively, Markwick said.
The project will replace the 22 apartments with 40 homes, four of them affordable for 55 years. Construction of the new units is expected to start in the second quarter of 2027, Dorfman has said.
Reach Executive Editor Kevin Hessel at 415-435-2652.