Dick Spotswood: Lots of fingerpointing over large Corte Madera apartment complex

November 26, 2013

There’s a silver lining in the dark cloud that's over the 180-unit high-density apartment complex being built in Corte Madera. The 40 units-per-acre project adjacent to Highway 101 presents an easy-to-understand model of what most Marinites don't want replicated.

If success has many fathers and failure is an orphan, then the Tamal Vista Apartments, mostly market-rate housing on the site of the old WinCup factory, is parentless.

No one seems to claim that they had anything to do with it.

The town of Corte Madera blames the Association of Bay Area Governments and its supporters on the Board of Supervisors. The supervisors point their fingers at the Town Council, while ABAG has no idea what the fuss is about.

Now a developer is proposing another 40-units-per-acre development in south Corte Madera along the freeway on the site of the old low-rise Casa Buena Drive garden apartments.

Even its developer denies any similarity to the Tamal Vista building. This new project with major traffic implications will be a hard sell.

While many see the new Corte Madera apartment block as the wrong building in the wrong place, it serves a useful purpose. Supervisors and planners now should understand that the public has seen one vision of the future and they don't like it.

Norman Solomon, the West Marin progressive who missed making the 2012 congressional runoff election by only 174 votes, tells me that he has "no plans to run for Congress in 2014." That ends speculation that Solomon will challenge Rep. Jared Huffman for a rematch next June.

In the June 2012 first-round election for Marin's seat in Congress, Solomon appeared headed for a November face-off against then-Assemblyman Huffman. He was achieving national attention on the left as the candidate most likely to follow in the super-liberal footsteps of the retiring Petaluma Democrat, Rep. Lynn Woolsey.

His dilemma was that eight Democrats were in the race. They divided the progressive vote, allowing Tiburon moderate Republican Dan Roberts to surprisingly win the coveted second spot against the liberal Huffman under California's new top-two electoral system.

Every candidate understands the lifelong frustration that comes from losing by 174 votes out of 173,000 cast.

Ever since falling short in 2012, some thought Solomon would try again and run against Huffman in 2014.

Such an effort was always a long shot. Solomon, an Inverness author and activist, is now recognizing the reality that it's almost impossible to develop necessary resources to challenge a popular incumbent congressman from your own party who is free from even a whiff of scandal.

Huffman never seemed particularly worried about a challenge next year.

The San Rafael Democrat is now unlikely to face anyone who has even Solomon's level of name recognition and visibility.

Contra Costa's Democratic Rep. George Miller famously said, "In Washington you're not elected until you are re-elected." The implication is that anyone can win once in a fluke election.

If Miller's saying is true, then Huffman will be "elected" in 2014. That should set him up for a long tenure representing the North Bay/North Coast's 2nd Congressional District.


Source: By Dick Spotswood