Mallard Pointe Project is Just a Trojan Horse to Build Pricey Housing

Letter to the Editor
Published in The Ark
February 9, 2022

Thank you for including a discussion of some of the issues and concerns raised by Belvedere Residents for Intelligent Growth in opposition to the proposed Mallard Pointe project ("Developer submits final plans," Feb. 2, front page).

There's a saying that "the devil is in the details," and that is certainly the case with this development. Per the developer's final plans, the total floor area of the project—a mixture of six lagoon-fronting single-family homes, five lagoon-fronting duplexes, and a two-story, 23-unit apartment building—would be 90,940 square feet, with a net livable square footage of 61,332 square feet. Of this entire project, the developer would provide only two very-low-income one-bedroom apartments and only two moderate-income one-bedroom apartments. Each would have a net rentable area of 678 square feet and, collectively, they would represent but a minute fraction of the net livable square footage of the overall project.

Because the developer is providing two very-low-income one-bedroom apartments, it claims that it is automatically entitled to all the waivers it needs from the city to build the project as presented—e.g., waivers from Belvedere's restrictions on parking, height, side setbacks, lot area/unit and lot coverage on a per-lot basis and Belvedere’s prohibition on apartment houses in R-2 zones. The resultant single-family homes would then be very profitably sold off out of compliance with planning codes.

In other words, by providing the absolute bare minimum of two 678-square-foot very-low-income one-bedroom apartments, the developer claims it has the right to reduce Belvedere's approval process to that of a rubber stamp. These are waivers that no Belvedere resident who wanted to build a home would be entitled to as a matter of right.

Bottom line: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck. That's called abductive reasoning. The proposed project is not a project designed to help with affordable housing. Rather, it is a project designed to enable an opportunistic developer to do an end-run around city requirements just to build more multimillion-dollar housing.