Developer North Coast Land Holdings proposed redeveloping the former Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary campus adjacent to Mill Valley in 2020 and has been working on the plan since.

North Coast wants to build 337 residential units, including replacements for existing units, on the 100-acre site as well as renovate the existing campus.

Those homes would accommodate about 850 residents, including those living at a proposed senior residential care facility. Up to 50 of the units would be affordable for low-income families.

The project also involves creating a day care and fitness center, as well as outdoor recreation spaces, and renovating spaces used by Olivet University, a private Christian university on site.

The previous master plan allowed the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, which had been in Marin since 1959, to have up to 1,000 students and 304 residential units to provide on-site housing for students, faculty and staff, as well as up to 192,600 square feet, nearly 75,000 more square feet than exists there now.

County officials have weighed in, with Sarah Jones, Marin County director of community development, pointing out that the project highlights the county’s efforts to meet its state-mandated housing targets. Marin County’s housing goal is to permit 14,210 units by 2031, while the housing target for unincorporated Marin County, which includes the North Coast development, is 3,569 units.

“This type of project is something that is unprecedented in our unincorporated county,” Jones told the San Francisco Chronicle. She said the state is prioritizing adding a variety of housing to well-off neighborhoods with abundant resources, “as this project would do.”The county’s report, which took more than three years to finish, highlights the project’s impact, including traffic and noise. Neighbors have objected to the size of the project, lobbying against it since it was announced.

Famed architect Mark Cavagnero, who designed the project, did not return calls seeking comment, but he told the Chronicle in 2019 that the fight has “been a big, big, big taste of NIMBYism the likes of which I’ve never experienced.” “There is no property anywhere near this size anywhere in southern Marin, if not all of Marin, that would be available and zoned for housing,” Cavagnero said at the time. “This is important not only for the housing we can build — workforce housing, affordable housing, senior housing — but also on an exemplary basis.”

Riley Hurd, an attorney for the Seminary Neighborhood Association, which has long opposed the project, called the proposed construction timeline of four years “nothing short of comical,” adding that he “wouldn’t be surprised if this was a minimum of a 10-year construction project.” He said a longer construction timeline would mean great environmental impact. Hurd is also representing a separate proposal for senior housing in Strawberry.

Charles Goodyear, a spokesperson for North Coast, said in a statement to the Chronicle that the company is “proceeding with the environmental review process, and we continue to engage with our neighbors. When completed, the Seminary at Strawberry will represent a significant educational, cultural and residential benefit to southern Marin County.” Goodyear declined an interview request.

The public has until Sept. 16 to submit comments on the environmental report. The Marin County Planning Commission will host a public hearing on the project on Sept. 9. The project ultimately needs approval by the Board of Supervisors.

A series of community meetings was held over several years with considerable input from the residents of Strawberry. Meetings were packed. Ultimately, the Strawberry Design Review Board voted unanimously to reject the project. Not because of the new and renovated housing sites that were to be built, but because North Coast consistently refused to elaborate on the size of the day school that was to be built. North Coast insisted that the 1953 approval of a self-contained seminary allowed it to now build a 1,000 person day school.

The residents of Strawberry noted that virtually none of the hundreds of homes and apartments that now fill Strawberry existed in 1953. Strawberry was mostly empty land. The first homes in Strawberry Point wouldn’t be built for another 20 years. And they pointed out that there were never more than a fraction of Seminary students present and that they mostly lived onsite.

Finally they noted that Strawberry is served by two narrow roads that can’t be widened. Which is something that has been noted as a major problem by the Southern Marin Fire District.
This has never been a NIMBY fight, although North Coast would like to paint it that way.

Rather, it has been neighborhood opposition to a developer who has no real interest in what it leaves behind when the proposed project is finished.

North Coast’s first plan called for Ross-based Branson School to move to the Seminary and triple its enrollment of approximately 300 students, but the community’s opposition to the proposal was vehement from the start, with red “No Branson” signs popping up on lawns throughout the community. North Coast followed up with a plan for a graduate school campus for up to 1,000 students, reconstruction of most of the 211 existing residential units, as well as 93 new units.

In December 2017, the Board of Supervisors rejected North Coast’s appeal to extend the master plan, which dated back to 1984. At that time, Supervisor Kate Sears, whose District 3 includes Strawberry, urged the property owner, nearby residents and other parties “to engage in an honest, open conversation about what’s possible on the property, what’s desirable for a variety of stakeholders, what will benefit the community now and into the future, and what the property owner needs.”