Dear Friends and Neighbors,
On Monday night, over strong opposition, the Mill Valley City Council voted unanimously to declare the land currently in use for parking, restrooms and a charging station at 1 Hamilton Drive as exempt surplus land , and authorized the start of negotiations with an affordable housing developer (the only developer who responded to the RFQ).
The result was not unexpected, but despite the outcome we believe all of your letters and comments, along with formal submissions by our attorney, made a very strong showing. We achieved our goal of putting the developer on notice that the community will continue to aggressively pursue a down-sizing of this project and that its collective views on the project must be taken into consideration. We support 1 Hamilton being part of the affordable housing solution for Mill Valley -- but want a development that is the appropriate size and density for the lot and our neighborhood.
Thank you to all who donated, wrote letters, attended the meeting and spoke up. We need to keep up this level of engagement in order to have influence, and we very much appreciate your efforts!
We are currently planning our next steps, which will likely involve retaining experts to support our view about the effects this over-sized project would have on Hauke Park and the surrounding neighborhood, including traffic, parking, safety and environmental concerns. We will be back to you soon with more news. Please remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and we cannot allow frustration with our elected officials to deter us from having a say in our own neighborhood.
Friends of Hauke Park Advisory Committee
Gary Batroff (President), David Wygant (Secretary), Grant Morris (Treasurer),
Eric Bindelglass, Pei Chin Chiang, Jim Devitt, Lisa Edson, Rod Eshelman, David Evans,
CS Heyder, Carlos Montalvan, Jeralyn Seiling, Gabrielle Tierney, Paula Weaver