How much open space is enough?
Go to Manhattan and talk to somebody about open space and they’ll point to a parking space next to a tree—maybe even use their middle finger to do the pointing. Head to Missoula, Montana, and you’ll quickly find the natives don’t consider it open space unless it’s thousands of acres and you can fish it. Here in the North Bay, open space certainly isn’t in short supply. But it comes in all shapes and sizes, and it means something slightly different depending on where you’re standing.
In Marin, the acquisition and preservation of open space land is something akin to religion. It’s a deeply held belief, and there are organizations dedicated to its practice. Also, there’s tithing.
Napa has a newly formed open space district that’s still finding its legs. But the district isn’t going to be buying up land anytime soon. Instead, it’s looking to win grants that will let it work with existing agencies to preserve land and add user-friendly features.
Sonoma is at a crossroads, having been in the open space business since 1989. The Sonoma Open Space District is generating annual tax revenues of $18 million. And while that would wipe out almost all of my credit card debt, it simply doesn’t go that far when you’re buying open space property in a valley where the wine business is king.
Traditionally, the business community has viewed the preservation of open space land via tax revenues with something less than unbridled enthusiasm. To be fair about it, nobody really likes paying taxes, so that isn’t something peculiar to those who own or run businesses. But the setting aside of land has always concerned those in the commerce game. After all, as Mark Twain once pointed out, there’s a finite supply of land, making it a wise investment. But if you start setting aside land that can’t be developed, there’s less land that can be developed—and buildable land will be more costly. When things cost more, business is less profitable, jobs are lost and the GNP drops. Pretty soon, people are using the “R” word, the Fed is making Wall Street nervous and the guys on MSNBC are positively apoplectic.
OK, Twain was pithier. But he never touched on such things as opportunity cost, affordable housing or a commute that would make Dale Carnegie invest in gun ammo futures and mount an Uzi on his side view mirror. Besides, Twain’s most famous commute took place on a Mississippi riverboat.
These days, most businesspeople in the North Bay accept and enjoy open space. CEOs and corner office types talk about recruiting talent from across the country by selling the beauty of Mount Tamalpais or the peaceful quiet of a rolling hillside vineyard at twilight. (In the spirit of full disclosure, my wife, cat and I live in a Marin condo the size of a throw rug that backs up onto open space. I frequently look out my window and see deer, jackrabbits or even coyotes. I’m not a CEO, however, and the last time I hired somebody from across the country, it was in a vain hope of getting him to pay off on a $200 Super Bowl bet.)
Academically speaking…
Dr. Rocky Rohwedder teaches in the Department of Environmental Studies and Planning at Sonoma State University, so he’s more than a little familiar with how open space land impacts a community. “One of the things that comes out of this is more new urbanism,” he says, “which means stores on the street and housing up above, similar to what’s happening in Windsor or in many older cities designed before the extensive availability of oil.”
Rohwedder also sees more public transit in addition to mixed-use planning. “You want to promote transit to cut down on the carbon footprint and to provide mobility and access without requiring an automobile.”
The professor says the preservation of open space land carries with it an economic value for society at large, but also means the land that’s not preserved must be used wisely to meet a variety of needs. “The notion that development shouldn’t take place because it’s bad for the environment isn’t necessarily true. In fact, if you want to preserve and protect land, you must have sustainable economic development.”
Bill Kortum has been working on open space issues in the North Bay for more than 40 years. The 80-year-old Petaluma native can site chapter and verse regarding his efforts to preserve land in its most natural state. He worked to keep Bodega Head free from a nuclear power plant in the 1960s, and has fought the good fight. But for him, the need for open space exists on a more human level. “All of us tend to take care of our own gardens, our own back yards. You look out your window, and you want to see something pretty,” he says. “We want a pleasant scene, but it’s more than wanting a landscape. It’s about walking the land, about the sense of freedom.”
Marin: feelings just below the surface
Head to a chamber mixer in Marin and work the room a bit. It’s only matter of time before you’ll hear the number 85. It’ll be surrounded by a phrase dealing with open space and parks land, and it may be followed by a question of just how much open space is required to be set aside. You see, 85 percent of the land in Marin is made up of either agricultural land; federal, state, county or municipal parks; and public or private open space. And if that figure doesn’t jump off the page at you, you aren’t paying close enough attention.
Consider this: Marin is home to the Point Reyes National Seashore and Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Mount Tamalpais State Park, Samuel P. Taylor State Park, Olompali State Park, the Marin Municipal Water District watershed, Ring Mountain, Tomales State Park, China Camp and Angel Island. Then there are the smaller state beaches in West Marin as well as open space holdings of cities and towns.
But there’s a sizable disconnect between the amount of land set aside and the ability of business to thrive and grow. Through the years, Marin has been home to very few businesses that required large amounts of land normally associated with manufacturing. In fact, the most land-intensive uses have been dairy and agricultural in nature.
But that truth has never slowed businesses in Marin from linking land use, zoning and challenges facing business growth with open space. The argument goes this way: if there wasn’t so much open space, there’d be more land for business and for economic growth. In truth, restrictive zoning has been a much larger burr in the side of business. And even then, sometimes business has been able to work either through or around the system. For proof, let me introduce you to Skywalker Ranch and Big Rock Ranch, both George Lucas properties, he of the large wallet and significant political influence. He also had enough common sense to deed huge chunks of land on the two developments for open space.
I suspect that if Marin businesspeople were to be honest about land challenges, the fact that the environment, and thus environmental advocates, have ruled the day is a much larger issue.
They have victory envy. Though this is simply an educated guess on my part, it has to be hard to watch businesses in Marin grow to a certain level and leave for digs that are larger or cheaper someplace else.
The preservation of open space land in Marin is an undeniable cultural value. It’s been fueled not just by the embarrassment of natural resources in the county just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, but by residents’ desire to see to it that the natural beauty remain uncompromised by development. Another factor in setting aside land in Marin has been a general distrust of development, no matter what the flavor or scale. One of the primary hurdles that the SMART train project still must deal with effectively is the notion in Marin that the train will inevitably bring more development.
Historically, organizations like the Marin Conservation League (MCL) and the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) have been pioneers in seeing to it that much of Marin remains free of strip malls.
The MCL was founded in the mid-1930s by a quartet of women who feared the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge would make Marin more accessible to those with cars, and the natural beauty would be overrun. Helen Van Pelt, Caroline Livermore, Sephia Evers and Portia Forbes founded the Citizens Survey Committee on $2,500. It commissioned the county’s first set of planning maps, as well as a report on how Marin might grow in the future. And this sort of romance with planning is still in full bloom, as any developer can tell you. The MCL was also instrumental in the creation of Mount Tamalpais State Park as well as keeping Angel Island from commercial development and keeping logging interests out of West Marin.
MALT is dedicated to keeping agricultural land in production and saving properties from urban encroachment. It’s permanently protected almost 40,000 acres of agricultural land since it was founded (in 1980) by biologist Phyllis Faber of Mill Valley and the late Ellen Straus of Straus Family Dairy.
Clearly, open space has a historical hold in Marin. Moreover, the bedroom relationship that Marin has with San Francisco, a major employment center, has more or less ensured manufacturing business would locate in the city. It’s only been over the last decade that Marin has emerged as more of an employment center unto itself.
In 1972, the Marin County General Plan provided for three specific areas, each with a separate focus. It’s assured most business would be located in the city-centered corridor. The historic plan did, however, have some unintended consequences that have made life harder on Marin businesses.
Open space in places like Fairfax Cascade Canyon or in Mill Valley’s Alto Bowl have meant that less housing has been built. Less Marin housing has driven prices higher and pushed housing needs north to Sonoma County. In turn, the commute has grown worse as employees who can’t afford inflated Marin housing prices drive south for work each day.
The grinding commute has made recruiting and retaining employees much more difficult. And efforts to build more affordable housing in Marin have largely failed, in part because of high land and construction costs, and in part because of a nasty case of NIMBY.
The pitched battle over the plot of land known as St. Vincent-Silveria in Marin may be the best last example of trying to fix a problem at least partially connected to open space. On the one side is the Catholic Youth Organization and the Silveria family, seeking to do what they wish with the lands they own. On the other side are environmental activists and workforce housing fans, each wanting a different outcome. And then there’s the County of Marin, to a degree, refereeing the fight and fixing it at the same time.
There are 1,230 acres in all, sitting between Highway 101 and the San Pablo Bay. It isn’t classic open space land, though it certainly provides view corridors and wildlife habitat. Dairy cows graze and deer are visible in the early morning. At one time, it was thought that thousands of housing units as well as some commercial uses might be located on the land. But the reality is that the new Marin General Plan allows for 221 housing units as well as a senior complex. The size of the senior development will be limited by its impact on the traffic flow on Highway 101.
The Marin Parks and Open Space District spends most of its annual $6 million budget on maintaining the 14,675 acres of land that are already set aside. There’s talk of an open space tax being placed on the 2008 ballot. With the SMART commuter rail angling for a spot on the same ballot, an open space measure could politically harm both causes as voters are asked to double dip on sales tax—and like it.
Now in Napa…
Napa’s newly minted County and Open Space District has hit the ground running, identifying 14 different projects and writing a dozen different grants to help pay for them, according to Dave Finigan, who represents Ward Four at the district. “We’re not going to be buying big pieces of property, we have a small budget and we’re not really set up for that,” he says. “What we will be doing is working with existing [park] land to improve it for the public.”
Napa voters approved the new district last November. The fledgling agency has no taxing power, and a budget of just $600,000, with $350,000 derived from the transit occupancy tax. It has only one full-time employee, general manager John Woodbury, whose principal duty is to avoid writer’s block as he’s working toward the $6 million in grants the district is hoping to secure.
A 10-year master plan is presently in development, as they say in Hollywood. The plan will be a blueprint for how the small agency can work with other agencies, from the feds to local cities, to ensure the public can use the open space that’s already on the books.
The district benefits from the longtime land preservation expertise of the Land Trust of Napa County. Since 1976, the nonprofit land trust has successfully protected more than 50,000 acres via land transfers, conservation easements, acquisitions and gifts. The land trust has been the biggest open space player in the valley for better than three decades. It boasts not only top-notch management, but also an advisory council that’s devastating when it comes to being connected and writing checks. Its members include Michael Mondavi, Dede Wilsey and Robert Redford.
Napa Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Kate King says open space is a great fit for the valley’s businesses. “A lot of our businesses—namely vineyards and wineries—actually look a lot like open space,” she says. “Actually, when it comes to open space, I think sometimes the business community gets a bad rap. The business community is made up of people who live right next door to you, and we all love open space, too.”
That said, King also acknowledges that open space land can impact the community by setting aside land and making the construction of housing more difficult. “ABAG [the Association of Bay Area Governments] and the state have standards each community has to meet in terms of supplying housing opportunities. To meet them, we may need to look at buildings that are four, five or six stories high.”
Over in the other valley…
King’s compatriot in Sonoma is Jennifer Yankovich, executive director of the Sonoma Valley Chamber of Commerce. For Yankovich, the issue of open space is integral to Sonoma’s bread and butter: tourism and the wine business. “But open space is just a part of the bigger, more important issue of land use,” she says. “If we’re going to preserve open space someplace in our community, we also must realize we have to make room for business and housing someplace else.”
But Yankovich sees a basic disconnect between open space and business. “It isn’t either/or. It isn’t open space or growing business. It’s about how we decide to plan for land use,” she says. “Every community needs balance. We need economic drivers and jobs, but we also need accountability.”
She’s also for the community having vision when it comes to land use and open space. “We need to be able to look to the future and know what we want,” Yankovich says. She points to the proposed Graton Rancheria casino off Highway 37 as an example of the public’s vision of what open space and land use could be. “Nobody ever thought of that land as anything other than open space. Then the casino was proposed, and the public realized the land needed to remain as open space.”
Andrea Mackenzie is in the open space business as general manager of the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District. Her organization finds itself at a crossroads. Over the past 17 years, the district has acquired or preserved 72,000 acres. But now its conservation work is evolving a bit, in response to environmental changes, to emphasize public-private partnerships for such divergent needs as protecting water quality and watersheds, protecting open space from urban encroachment and mitigating the impacts of global warming.
Voters gave Mackenzie and the district a new lease on life in 2006, voting to continue a quarter-cent sales tax for open space by a whopping 76 percent. “We have revenues of $18 million a year now, but by 2031, it’ll be $30 million,” Mackenzie says. Some of the voter-approved sales tax will be directed to a matching grant program the district has created to directly benefit urban areas and foster healthy communities.
But the bigger picture for Mackenzie is how to continue the district’s mission even as the public’s open space focus changes. “We work with our partners to protect working farms and ranches, greenbelts around cities, water and wildlife, while also providing recreation opportunities,” she says. “The Distrcit works to identify which lands and natural resources are the highest priorities for protection and then works with its public and private partners to meet those conservation targets. By working in partnership, we can increase the capacity for conservation in the region.”
In the end, open space isn’t putting pressure on businesses as it might in other parts of the country. To be sure, preserving open space means other land use decisions are more difficult and complex. But a look around Marin, Napa and Sonoma counties shows that open space is valued, and that businesses have responded to land use challenges by becoming creative.
You might even call the approach entrepreneurial.
