Branson plan doesn’t fit Strawberry’s vision

Last spring, Supervisor Kate Sears brought together a diverse group of Strawberry residents to create the Strawberry Community Vision. Being in the unincorporated part of Marin County, it was important for Strawberry residents to come together and really define how we’d like to see our community’s future take shape.

Through workshops, a large public open house, and hundreds of survey responses, members of our community volunteered a great deal of their time and effort to produce this comprehensive document.

That’s the good news.

Now for the bad news.

Not one year has passed since the creation of the Strawberry Community Vision, yet the new owner of the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary has chosen to completely ignore our vision.

North Coast Land Holdings, which is funded by the billion-dollar Barbara Fasken trust, is proposing a super-sized Branson High School to be relocated into an existing neighborhood along with hundreds of luxury apartments.

The Vision document is as clear as can be: the Strawberry community will not accept intense density or a high school on the seminary site.

All one has to do is look at the neighborhood to see that Strawberry is already providing much more than its fair share of density. Apartments and townhomes are abundant, which is one reason why neighborhood traffic is already at a breaking point.

If all of the effort that went into the Strawberry Community Vision meant something, this North Coast Land Holdings proposal should never get off the ground.

— Robert W. Hendry, Strawberry

http://www.marinij.com/opinion/20151103/marin-ij-readers-forum-for-nov-4