LandWatch Supports Marina Station

Marina Station, located on 320 acres of the Armstrong Ranch, within the city limits of Marina is the best large-scale development ever proposed in Monterey County, and LandWatch is very pleased to endorse this project.

Marina Station will include 1,360 homes and that makes it a very large development. But large developments can have a positive impact on the community, if they are in the right place and if they are well designed.

City-Centered Growth Is Responsible Growth. The location of this project is within an incorporated city, and cities are better prepared to address the long-term needs of maintaining infrastructure and providing public services. If the same project were proposed in an unpopulated area of the unincorporated county it would not be a good idea, because the cost on-going maintenance and the provision of public services would be too expensive. The location of this project is also interesting for LandWatch because we have some history with the Armstrong Ranch.

During the 2000 Update of the Marina General Plan Update, a very different project was proposed on the Armstrong Ranch. Rather than a 320 acre project completely within the city limits, the earlier project was nearly 2,000 acres and most of it was on land to be annexed into the city. LandWatch and the community group Marina 2020 Vision established an Urban Growth Boundary (UGB), which was approved by Marina voters in 2000. The UGB does not allow growth beyond the city limits to the north of Marina until after the year 2020.

Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND). For the last 60 years or so there has been a brand new experiment in urban planning and it has been an absolute disaster. I’m talking about suburban sprawl and the antidote for its many ills is to get back to the way communities have been designed for thousands of years, namely Traditional Neighborhood Development.

We all know that the automobile is here to stay and, of course, our plans for new communities need to accommodate cars. But we don’t have to plan our communities around automobile use to the exclusion of all else. TND is all about planning communities that encourage people to use modes of transportation other than cars. One of the best ways to accomplish this is to plan higher density neighborhoods with mixed uses so that people can accomplish many of their daily needs within walking distance of their homes. TND communities feature apartments above stores and shops and other mixed uses; higher average densities to make the most efficient use of the land; mixed housing types and homes for a mixed range of incomes; narrower streets and traffic calming devices; and they also feature trails and greenbelts that link neighborhoods together and encourage walking and bicycling.

Marina Station is the best example of TND that Monterey County has ever seen. In addition to the three “neighborhood retail centers” it also has a 50 acres dedicated to a light-industrial business park with 12 of the acres for office and 38 acres for light industrial. This kind of planning encourages a real jobs/housing balance that allows people the opportunity of living close to their work.

Environmental Sustainability. Marina Station will be a leading example of sustainable community design with many special features of green-building techniques that include:

1. Every single-family home at Marina Station will be equipped with a 16 photovoltaic panel system that will supply about 70 percent to 80 percent of the electric needs of each home (as long as the subsidy and tax credit program in effect as of January 2006 continues at current levels).
2. Also, every CreekBridge home will meet the LEED’s Gold or Silver rating.
   
   Note: LEED is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design and construction of high-performance green building, and promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.

3. Marina Station also will incorporate “Green Streets,” a more environmentally sustainable disbursed percolation system than the conventional centralized retention pond storm drainage system. With Green Streets, storm runoff is collected close to the source and directed into numerous landscaped, and small, shallow retention areas (rain gardens) placed along both sides of the street.

CreekBridge Homes. It’s not surprising that the builder of this cutting edge project is CreekBridge Homes. This company has led the way promoting TND for a long time. Together, CreekBridge and LandWatch promoted ten policies of Traditional Neighborhood Development that were eventually adopted in the 2002 General Plan for the City of Salinas. Click on this link to read our joint statement.
http://landwatch.org/pages/issuesactions/salinasgp/071702creekbridge.htm

Sensitive Habitat. Planning large-scale developments is never easy and no project of this size is perfect. One of the challenges that faced this project concerned sensitive coastal habitat. LandWatch is very proud of the role it played in brokering a compromise between the Sierra Club, the City, CreekBridge Homes and the Armstrong family. The successful compromise reached concerning the final phases of the project nearest Highway One and the coast has made a very good project even better.

Marina Station is a Model for the Future. LandWatch Monterey County looks forward to working with CreekBridge Homes on its new project in Salinas and on other projects as well. We hope that other developers will follow in their footsteps and use Marina Station as a model for how to build quality projects that are responsible and promote the good sense principles of Traditional Neighborhood Development.

Poste 03.14.08