Neighbors sue Marin County over housing project at Strawbery seminary site
- Tyler Callister
- 8 minutes ago
- 8 min read
A Strawberry neighbors’ group is suing Marin County to overturn its approval of a project that would remake the former Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary site into hundreds of homes, a senior-care facility and a graduate school.
Strawberry Residents for Sensible Development filed suit July 6 in Marin Superior Court. North Coast Land Holdings, the project’s developer, is named in the case as a real party in interest, meaning it can also defend the project in court. The litigation could delay a project that has drawn public debate for more than a decade.
On June 9, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approve North Coast’s plan for the hilltop site. The hearing drew about two dozen public speakers, most of them critical.
North Coast has worked through years of negotiations since buying the site in 2014, including a March 1 settlement with the Seminary Neighborhood Association, which agreed to drop its opposition to the project. But other Strawberry residents say the association represents only a small group and doesn’t speak for those who still object to the project.
The new resident group is part of that continued opposition. Its founder said a July 28 community meeting drew at least 30 residents. The group contends the approved project violates the Strawberry Community Plan and state environmental law.
The lawsuit makes two broad legal claims, both centered on Chapel Hill. North Coast plans 40 market-rate homes there, a mix of one- to four-bedroom units.
First, the lawsuit argues the county improperly waived the Strawberry Community Plan’s ban on housing atop Chapel Hill under state density-bonus law. The county’s own environmental review had found that an alternative design, which would meet the same density without the waiver, was environmentally superior. The lawsuit says the Board of Supervisors rejected that alternative without giving any reasoning.
Second, the lawsuit argues the environmental review required under the California Environmental Quality Act fell short. It says the review did not adequately assess the visual impact of developing Chapel Hill, including the loss of bay views; the raising of the athletic field with 220,000 cubic yards of excavated soil; the displacement of low-income residents whose homes would be demolished; or the county’s reliance on a 1953 permit that allowed up to 1,000 students on the site.
Attorney Michael Graf represents the group. The lawsuit asks the court to set aside the county’s approval, block the project until the county complies with the law and award attorney’s fees and costs. An initial case-management conference is scheduled for Aug. 6.
As of The Ark’s press deadline, court records show no request for an injunction has been filed, meaning nothing currently bars North Coast from continuing to pursue permits while the case proceeds.
The county’s Planning Commission rejected that reasoning in March. It found the project’s density could be approved through state density-bonus law waivers without amending the Strawberry Community Plan, the same legal mechanism the lawsuit now challenges.
County planning staff had also laid out a broader rationale for not shrinking the project: “The applicant has proposed a ‘housing development project’ containing 337 residential units,” staff wrote in a March report. “While there has been a considerable amount of community sentiment for a project with fewer residential units … the county cannot reduce the density of the project unless it can demonstrate that the project would have an adverse impact on public health or safety.”
Sarah Jones, director of the county’s Community Development Agency, declined to comment to The Ark on the lawsuit. “Because this pertains to the litigation in progress, the county and (agency) can’t comment at this time,” she said.
Jones did address the project in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle published July 30, telling the paper the county was obligated to approve the plan under state housing laws that allow waivers for residential developers. She rejected the premise of the group’s central objection, saying the buildings would sit on Chapel Hill’s slopes rather than atop it. She also told the Chronicle a judge would decide whether the project can proceed while the case is pending.
Before the lawsuit was filed, North Coast was preparing to apply for a building permit to begin work on the project, which it describes as “multigenerational.” The project needs both grading and building permits, and no applications have been submitted, Jones said Aug. 3.
The project calls for 336 homes on the hilltop campus, which overlooks San Francisco Bay. It would add 184 new units, replace 139 existing ones and retain 13, with 859 bedrooms in all. Seventy of the homes would be below market rate.
Counting the senior-care facility, which state housing law treats as a single unit, the county puts the total at 337 residential units, up from 152 on the site today.
That 267,354-square-foot residential-care facility includes 150 units: 100 independent- and assisted-living units and 50 memory-care units. A separate 20,000-square-foot building would house a fitness center and a day care for 60 children.
The 127-acre site in Strawberry has a history spanning more than 70 years. It was once considered as a potential home for the United Nations headquarters before Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary developed it under a 1953 permit allowing a campus for about 1,000 students, faculty and staff. The original plan included housing for about 400 people, much of which was never built. Enrollment topped 800 in the 1980s and peaked at 910 in 1987, with most students commuting.
The seminary agreed to sell the property to North Coast in 2014 and moved its campus to Southern California in 2016 and 2017. The site is now temporarily leased by Olivet University, a private Christian college with a few hundred students.
Neighbors’ group: ‘This is not a NIMBY idea’
Strawberry Residents for Sensible Development was spearheaded by longtime Strawberry resident Lewis “Rusty” Williams, a biotech entrepreneur who trained as a cardiologist and has founded and led several drug-development companies. He said he moved to the Tiburon Peninsula in 1984 and raised his four children there.
He said the group is “pro-housing.”
“I’m involved in a lot of institutions in Marin County,” he said. “I contribute to a number of institutions, educational and otherwise. And so this is not a NIMBY idea.”
He said he sees the former seminary site and surrounding area as something that needs care and protection.
“My own ideas about this are that this is precious land, precious to Marin County, to visitors and to the neighborhood,” he said. “There’s not a single person who was in the room (at the group’s July 28 community meeting) who is against development of the land. It should be developed, but in a thoughtful way.”
Williams said that, given the complexity of the project and the web of laws surrounding it, he worries the Board of Supervisors missed something.
“We acknowledge the complexity of the project and it makes it difficult for anyone to really understand it,” he said. “We acknowledge that the supervisors are busy and it’s very hard to get their hands around the complexity of this project. It did feel like the last Board of Supervisors’ meeting, it was a done deal before the meeting.”
He also said the development should prioritize more than just profit.
“The units they propose to build first would be the ones most revenue-generating. I understand,” he said. “But that shouldn’t be the driver. The driver should be doing what’s right for the community.”
Williams zeroed in on three major concerns: the development on Chapel Hill, the raising of the athletic field with excavated soil and the displacement of current seminary residents who will have to leave.
“(The Strawberry Community Plan) says explicitly no residential units should be built there. There was supposed to be a chapel there,” he said of the proposed Chapel Hill development.
Williams offered an alternative to address the Chapel Hill issue. He said he’d like to see a project more in line with a design studied in the environmental review and found by the county to be environmentally superior. The design, called “Alternative 4: Mitigated Plan Alternative” in a March staff report, would have moved the Chapel Hill residential units to lower ground within the site to reduce ridgeline visual impacts.
One controversial aspect of the project has been North Coast’s intention to fill in 220,000 cubic yards of earth onto the 2-acre seminary athletic field, raising the height of the field by 25 to 30 feet. Williams said that needs a closer look.
“It will impact many people. We think that deserves more study — the hydrology, the technical aspects of that,” he said.
Lastly, Williams said he’s concerned about the people already living there. The lawsuit puts the property’s current population at about 320 residents, most of them in units considered low-income. He said the new low-income units projected to be built will cost more than the current ones and will displace those residents.
“That troubles us. Troubles me personally,” he said. “The units, as we understand it, that are being provided as low-income units, will be higher according to some of the people we’ve talked to.”
North Coast disputes the premise. In a June 5 letter to county planning staff, the company wrote that 132 dwelling units stand on the site, 85 of them occupied, and that none are deed-restricted affordable housing — rents are simply lower because of the age and condition of the 1950s student housing. It wrote that the 70 below-market units the project must build would be deed-restricted for at least 55 years, increasing the county’s affordable stock rather than reducing it.
The letter says tenants may stay until six months before construction starts and will get six months’ written notice, as state law requires. It says North Coast will waive two months’ rent for departing tenants, twice the minimum under the state Tenant Protection Act, and will pay whichever relocation benefit is largest for tenants who qualify for more under the Housing Crisis Act.
Developer says project is not overdevelopment
North Coast Land Holdings responded to the lawsuit with a statement from spokesperson Charles Goodyear: “The seminary project was subject to an extensive environmental review, which adequately addressed each of the project’s potential environmental effects. Our project was recommended for approval by the Marin County Planning Commission and unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors. We are building a fraction of the housing density allowed under state law, and the county properly found our proposal to be consistent with all applicable local requirements and state housing and environmental laws before voting to approve the project. This lawsuit is wholly without merit.”
The developer has long maintained that its proposal is a restrained version of what could be built on the site.
The March 1 settlement with the Seminary Neighborhood Association capped the number of commuting students at 325; students beyond that number must live on-site. The original 1953 conditional use permit allowed up to 1,000 students at the site.
The developer participated in more than 50 meetings with the public as part of Seminary Tomorrow, the county’s community engagement working groups, held in 2018 and 2019.
Speaking at the June 9 Board of Supervisors meeting, North Coast’s attorney, Andrew Giacomini, argued that the proposal reflects restraint rather than overdevelopment. He said the project includes 337 residential units, even though “the entitlement under state law is for 606,” framing the application as “just over 50% of what they’re entitled to build.” He said the current plan would effectively protect the site from denser development that could otherwise be pursued under state housing law.
He also highlighted concessions North Coast made through its negotiations with the Seminary Neighborhood Association, including limits on student commuting, lower building heights and restrictions on future development. Giacomini said those terms are enforceable commitments included in the project’s conditions of approval, not merely private promises.
“It’s not squeezing in as many places as they can to the site,” Giacomini told supervisors. “It’s building housing that’s appropriate for the character of the neighborhood.”
Reach Strawberry reporter Tyler Callister at 415-944-4627.