George Lucas’s great foray into affordable housing is wrong for Marin, wrong for affordable housing, and wrong for the people that would live there. The Grady Ranch development plan needs to be scrapped.
After the collapse of LucasFilm’s Grady Ranch studio proposal, then-owner George Lucas promised to build affordable housing on the site instead. Many observers, including me, saw it as payback to the Lucas Valley anti-development crowd that killed the studio project, but few thought George was serious.
Yet Lucas and his partners at the Marin Community Foundation are charging ahead with 200-300 units of affordable housing anyway. While it does present an opportunity to build affordable homes, the site couldn’t be worse.
Grady Ranch is located out on Lucas Valley Road, far from any downtown, commercial center, or regular transit line. It’s right at the edge of the North San Rafael sprawl line – a car-oriented area even where it’s already built up.
Lucas Valley Road itself is essentially a limited-access rural highway, with cars speeding along at 50 miles per hour. There’s no development on the south side, and the north side only has entrances to the neighborhoods. No buildings actually front the road. Yet, it’s the only access to the Highway 101 transit trunk line, to nearly any commercial or shopping areas, or between neighborhoods.
Development here would be bad by any measure. Car-centric sprawl fills our roads with more traffic, generates more demand for parking, and forces residents to play Russian roulette every time they want to get milk. It takes retail activity away from our town centers, weakening the unique Marin character embodied in downtowns.
The infrastructure, too, is inefficient. Grady Ranch would need to be covered by police service, fire service, sewage, water, electricity, and some modicum of transit, but those costs are based on geography, not population. Serving a square mile with 300 homes is a lot more expensive per home than a square mile with 1,000.
Yet the fact that this will be affordable housing makes the project even more egregious. Driving is expensive, with vehicle depreciation, gas, maintenance, insurance, and parking costs all eating up scads of money. On a population level, one can add in the cost of pollution and injuries and deaths in crashes. A home in Grady Ranch would be affordable, but the cost of actually living there would be quite high.
The nonprofit aspect of the project would mean no taxes could be raised to cover its infrastructure and services. Building affordable housing in a mixed area means they’re covered by preexisting services. Though usage is more intense, there is typically enough spare capacity to take on more residents. Building something beyond current development means new infrastructure and services need to be built specifically for that project but without any existing residents to pay for it. It would be a massive and ongoing drain on county coffers.
This is the worst possible place for affordable housing. Grady Ranch, if it’s not going to be a film studio, needs to remain as open space. An affordable housing project out at the exurban edge of Marin cannot be affordable because car-centric development is fundamentally unaffordable.
I respect the efforts of George Lucas and Marin Community Foundation to find a place for the low-income to live, but Grady Ranch is not it. Lucas and MCF need to look at urban infill sites and focus on building up in those areas that are transit-accessible and walkable, places that are actually affordable. Replicating the discredited drive-‘til-you-qualify dynamic in Marin is not the answer; it’s just recreating the problem.
A version of this post appeared in The Greater Marin.
My problem is with the alternative. Housing at Grady Ranch is bad bad bad. The studio would've been low-intensity enough that even the bus-commuting employees could get a ride out to the studio if needed. Much of the land would've been saved. This proposal isn't just bad, it's terrible, for all the reasons I've outlined. I love the irony of the situation, but I hate sprawl more. Let's not cut off our nose to spite our face.
Best piece you have ever written, hands down. While there was a lot going on behind the scenes, you are absolutely correct, this is likely the worst spot you could envision in Marin for such housing. Instead of creek restoration...well you can put your own images in place. Good piece, thanks!
The Grady Ranch project would have helped increase property values in area with little need and brought jobs, payroll taxes and new residents to our community. It will be interesting to watch how this new threat to the Lucas Valley community is handled. This will be a much tougher nut for the Lucas Valley Home Owners to crack. I suspect the project will go through.
This project is outside what I would call "the Goldilocks distance from the 101 corridor", which would be "not too close" and "not too far." (I would not want to live next to 101 due to the pollution and noise.) There are two other issues involving the creek. First, the problems with building the digital studio, might still be a problem with the housing project. Also, if you look at the entrance to Grady Ranch using Google Earth, there appears to be no room for a sidewalk on Lucas Valley Road. Question: You said there would be no property taxes for this project. Do "affordable housing units" get a 100% tax break? That would make for an interesting article. Thanks!
As for the sidewalk - well, there's plenty of space within the area to do a sidewalk. The problem isn't space, though, it's distance and walkability. It's 3.4 miles to the freeway along an isolated, unshaded strip of asphalt. That's biking distance, but there aren't any safe biking paths along there. A good measure to take the project from "quite terrible" to "terrible" would be a shaded Class I bike lane on the north side of Lucas Valley Road. At least that would help the existing communities and give people a bike option in addition to the car.
And thanks for the feedback!
Do not confuse the Lucas Valley homeowners Association (http://www.lvha.org/) with the Lucas Valley Estates Homeowners Association (http://lvestates.org/). Two different groups, with two different opinions.
Was it the residents of Lucas Valley, or the residents of Lucas Valley Estates who opposed George Lucas' project? According to the Lucas Valley Homeowners Association website, they are on record with the county as agreeing with the project. As I recall, it was the Lucas Valley **Estates** Homeowners Association who opposed the Skywalker project. As a former resident of Lucas Valley, I would love to have that straightened out.
When I was growing up in Lucas Valley, what is now Lucas Valley **Estates** was cattle land and horse ranches. Now those who live in the fancy houses that used to be open space want to deny others from being able to do the same. Shame, shame, shame. George is simply allowing the property to be developed as it was originally zoned. That it is a worse use of the space is neither here nor there; the Lucas Valley **Estates** Homeowners Association knew what the land was originally zoned for going in to this. Dn't want housing there? Should have thought about that earlier. Hey, want to stop George and the MCF from building houses above you? Do as the Lucas Valley Homeowners Association (not to be confused with the Lucas Valley **Estates** Homeowners Association) did back when development was planned for the hills above our neighborhood - we bought the land. Do that, and I will applaud you. Otherwise, I find it hard to have compassion....
Good info on non-profits and taxes. I travel out Lucas Valley road often and have looked at the entrance area. From Grady Ranch road to Westgate road, there is almost no room for a sidewalk on Lucas Valley Road. This would need to be walked to get to the nearest bus stop, one mile away. Lucas could build a couple of pedestrian bridges and a path away from the creek. Enter this address in Google Maps to see the area from Street View: 2512 Lucas Valley Road, San Rafael, CA I have no idea who owns the massive estate next to Grady Ranch.
The creek was the big issue with the Grady Ranch Studio project. Did anyone in the county look into relocating the studio on that property or doing a land swap for county property? High paying jobs is what this county needs and Lucas could have brought a many of them.
Well, they still carried the day, won the battle and get to enjoy the fruits of their victory. They kicked George Lucas studio off the back of the bus and now can look forward to a whole new group of neighbors. I venture to say they won't have as much luck scuppering this new project. Smart money says that the person who was the prime mover in killing Lucas' project will simple sell and move on. Wait and see.
Take a look at Marin on google maps, and see all the HUGE MANSIONS all over the so-called woods out on Lucas Valley road. You know what is unsustainable? The American way of life. This land is on high ground. Where do you think all the poors in the Canal and Sausalito and other low-lying areas are going to move to in the next 50 years as the sea takes back large sections of our county? Plus, if this makes that selfish jerkoff Hetfield's property values go down, it's win-win.