An interesting story from today’s San Francisco Chronicle, forwarded by a colleague. In Bolinas oceanfront parcel $3.9 million, no building, Peter Fimrite reports on a 47 acre parcel of land in the notoriously I-got-mine Marin County, California community of Bolinas:
Kidson bought the land for $250,000 from the Smadbecks’ heir Louis Smadbeck and Howard Sloane in 2004, according to county records. But, this uniquely insular town opposes virtually all development and closely guards its long-standing moratorium on water meter hookups.
So neighbors were horrified when Kidson immediately began building trails to the beach, drilling exploratory wells and making plans for a three-story barn house.
“I told him, ‘You might want to talk to the neighbors,’ and he immediately got angry, saying he had a right to build,” said Polla Pratt, 46, who lives on Ocean Parkway overlooking the spot Kidson had chosen for his home. “It became very real very quickly that this guy had a lot of money and he was just going to mow through and put up a house with no respect for anybody else or for the environment. People were really upset.”
. . . .
“He sought to build a home, we told him no, and then he sued us,” said David Zaltsman, Marin’s deputy county counsel. “Our position is that the 47-acre beach and park parcel was not a developable parcel and that it was intended by the subdivision map to be a park for the other owners.”
And here’s what a local elected official thinks are the economically beneficial uses for the land:
“That property was intended to be a park in the original plan, and it is going to continue to be a park as long as Bolinas is a town,” said Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey. “He’s trying to sell it to some overzealous dreamer, but the dream doesn’t exist. The only thing you can do with that land is stand there and watch the earth go back into the sea.”
Another angle on the story is reported in For sale: A mile of Marin County coastline (Marin Independent Journal).