MarinIJ: State Drafts Toxic Cleanup Plan for Marin Housing Projects, Particularly Around Removing Toxic Substances Near San Quentin Prison Where Two Housing Developments are Planned.

State regulators have released a draft plan for removing toxic substances from a site near San Quentin prison where two housing developments are planned.

The projects along East Sir Francis Drake Boulevard are linked because they plan to share infrastructure. One project has to delay construction because the other is struggling with financing.

The Marin County Public Financing Authority, a joint powers agency formed by the county government and the Marin County Office of Education, is overseeing one of the projects in partnership with Education Housing Partners. That project calls for 135 below-market rental apartments for local education employees and county workers.

The other project is being developed by Eden Housing. It involves 115 apartments that would be priced to be affordable to low-income households and extremely low-income households.

In August, Matthew Hymel, director of the financing authority, said the workforce housing project had a shortfall of about $12.5 million. That was bad news for Eden Housing, which had already secured financing for its project.

Eden Housing is required to start construction by Oct. 18 or risk losing millions of dollars in tax credits. The budget problems of the workforce housing project complicate that because of the plan for shared infrastructure.

Final approval of the remedial action work plan, or RAW, to remove lead and other toxic materials from the site could also pose a problem.

During a meeting of the financing authority board on Sept. 17, Joanna Julian, program director of Education Housing Partners, said the public comment period for the RAW closes Oct. 12.

“So based on that schedule, we anticipate the final RAW will be approved by late October or early November,” Julian said. “We’re working towards that date with the hope that remediation would start shortly thereafter and be completed in the first quarter of 2027.”

At that same meeting, Teddy Newmyer, an Eden Housing executive, said, “We’re going to ask for a 30- to 90-day extension.”

The RAW calls for removing 3,430 cubic yards of contaminated soil. The site, a former gun range for law enforcement agencies, is contaminated with high concentrations of lead as well as smaller quantities of arsenic, cobalt and two potentially carcinogenic compounds known as PAHs.

According to the work plan, the full vertical extent of impacted soils in “minor areas” of the site and the full lateral extent of lead-impacted soil in the northeast and east sections of site are unknown. Testing will be conducted following initial excavations, and if more contaminated material is discovered, the project will have to be expanded.

Eden Housing has said it plans to start construction as soon as the RAW is approved and won’t wait until the remediation is completed. There has still been no agreement reached, however, on how the shared infrastructure would be paid for if the workforce housing project fails to proceed.

Regarding the workforce housing project budget deficit, Hymel said at the meeting, “We’ve identified $2 million in value engineering options. We think there is more to explore.”

Hymel said in August that Education Housing Partners also would explore the possibility of converting the workforce housing project into an affordable housing project and seeking tax credit financing.

Julian said most of the value engineering savings would come from substituting Juliet balconies, which provide no standing room, for traditional balconies.

Mary Stompe, a retired executive director for PEP Housing, said, “If value engineering changes the quality or marketability of the apartments, we also need to understand whether it changes achievable rents, occupancy or ultimately the project’s net operating income.”

“I would ask that the JPA provide an updated market analysis based on the project that will actually be built,” Stompe said.

Hymel said Tim Cornwell, a principal at the Concord Group, a San Francisco real estate advisory firm, is doing just that. Cornwell’s report is due soon.

At the September meeting, Bruce Dorfman, cofounder of Education Housing Partners, pushed back against critics of the workforce housing project who have suggested that the venture might not be competitive in the market, pricing apartments at 80% of area median income.

“There are certain people that don’t believe there’s really even a demand for workforce housing,” Dorfman said. “Not only is there a demand, but there’s no other supply that’s going to occur other than what we do at Oak Hill.”

In an email, Dorfman wrote, “Over the past 25 years, Marin has produced fewer new housing units, as a percentage of its existing housing stock, than any other metropolitan county in California. More importantly for renters, the vast majority of that production has been single-family homes rather than apartments.”

“Rents have increased approximately 5% over the past year, and rents in the ‘shadow market’— typically units rented directly by private owners — have increased approximately 7%,” Dorfman added. “Occupancy has increased from 95% to 97% which primes Marin for rental rate spikes for available units.”