Larkspur's Missing Village

Imagine living on San Francisco Bay. You live with its sounds and the smell of the salty sea air. There are fabulous views of shoreline and bits of the City's skyline peak over the hills. Moonlight reflects off the water, and there are places to eat seafood very, very fresh. You work in the city, but it doesn't matter because you are near the best transit in the region: departures are every 30 minutes on the dot and provide a speedy but relaxing 30 minute ride downtown.

I'm writing about Oakland, yes? Near BART? Actually, no: I'm writing about Larkspur Landing. It doesn't have a train yet, but that ferry ride is very real, giving locals one of the best places in the County for transit to the City. Buses regularly depart from nearby bus pads and from the Ferry Terminal, and the Marin Airporter office is in the middle of everything. If a resident does own a car, Larkspur Landing is wedged between Highways 101 and 580, and located along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, giving easy access to Marin's principal arteries and to Contra Costa. This should be a transit paradise and a destination to rival Sausalito or Tiburon, but it's not, and it's a lost opportunity for Larkspur and the County.

Walkable and Livable

Jane Jacobs, the grandmother of New Urbanism, described a vibrant streetlife as vital to the health of a neighborhood. People should be walking, they should be interacting and keeping an eye on the street to keep it safe. Apartments and shops should interface with the street, putting more eyes on the street and adding to the draw of the outdoors. To further encourage streetlife, traffic should be slow, roadways should be narrow and sidewalks wide, and parking lots should be kept away from the street if they exist at all.

Larkspur's downtown does this right: sidewalks are wide and inviting, the stores abut the street, the traffic is calm and there's not a parking lot in sight. When we look at Larkspur Landing, however, it's clear the design is oriented to cars, not people. A clear sign is just how much surfacing parking is available. The Ferry Terminal alone has over 9 acres of parking, a terrible waste of land, and as the map at the start of this article shows that is only half of the surface lots that dot the neighborhood. Larkspur Landing can do better, and the two lynchpins are Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and all that pavement.

Speculating on the Possible

Sir Francis Drake cuts through the area as a divided and busy roadway, and its primary crossing is a pedestrian bridge that avoids the road altogether. Cars zoom through, the sidewalks are narrow and uninviting, and there is nothing to do along almost its entire stretch through the area as it heads towards San Quentin and I-580. It is a dull and unwelcoming street. To combat this, Drake should be narrowed past the entrance to the Larkspur Ferry Terminal. It doesn't need the capacity it has and could be narrowed to two lanes, with the difference going to bike lanes and the sidewalk.

Although parking, given Marin's car-dependent nature, is a necessity at the moment, the lots could be consolidated into two garages spaced to serve different areas of the neighborhood. The freed-up space should be subdivided into streets and 2-4 story buildings.

On the north side of Sir Francis Drake, the Marin Country Mart lot is already subdivided into small blocks.  It could upgrade its parking lot aisles into streets and connect them with Drake and Larkspur Landing Circle, opening the spaces between for walkable and quaint apartments and offices, maintaining the interior plaza for pedestrians.  On the south side, the terminal's parking lot could be subdivided into four to six blocks with fantastic views of the Bay.  Near the terminal itself, a large, programmable plaza could be built for events like Food Truck Crush and farmers' markets.  Strong bus links would be needed to serve the area, but a huge number of buses pass by on Highway 101; they could be diverted to serve a revamped Larkspur Landing.  Improved bus service would be more than paid for, as Golden Gate Transit would create an ongoing revenue stream by leasing its land for this village.

The rousing success of Food Truck Crush shows a strong desire for a sense of place and permanent services and shops. More residents and office workers would support more variety and a greater depth of shopping and restaurants, which would serve existing residents as well.  Its location 30 minutes from anywhere means it could become a magnet for San Franciscans and East Bay residents to visit Marin - a gateway to the North Bay.

J. S. Rosenfield & Co., new owner of Marin Country Mart - formerly known as the Larkspur Landing Shopping Center - plans to give commuters walking between SMART's planned station and the Ferry terminal someplace nice to walk, a third place literally between work and home. But to make it that walkable place, Rosenfield and the City of Larkspur need to examine solutions for the deficiencies of the entire neighborhood: the lack of a street grid, the disconnectedness of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, the oceans of parking, and the pedestrian-unfriendly development already in place. Many waterfront areas are resounding successes, with examples in Marin and San Francisco. Larkspur should take a long, hard look at this neighborhood and what it can do to make it the best it can be.