Strawberry looked similar to how it does now, but with much less housing. Marin County as a whole has also seen much more development with shopping centers, high-density housing, and more traffic.
In addition to having been protected until recently by a seminary, the nature of Strawberry is such that the large hills and nearby wetlands prevent the construction of a large road, so the nature in the area remains relatively preserved, other than housing development. The biggest change in the past 20 years has been the marked increase in traffic as the Bay Area generally becomes more populated.
Many people walk dogs in this area, play frisbee, or generally come to enjoy the view of the bay and city. People also always try to fly kites on the top of the hill, but they are always met with disappointment.
Most of the things Mari and Rusty do are similar to the things they did in the past; other people's use of the space has increased as fast-food chains have opened nearby, and there has been an influx of lost tourists on bike routes through Marin.
Rusty: Ready.
Interviewer: Okay. Can you tell me a little bit about the place where you live?
Rusty: We live in a house, and the house…we’re fortunate because the house is on a hill and has on one side of it, open land, and across the street from it is some open land and relatively undeveloped land that was formerly a seminary and is now being considered for development for alternative uses. We are not so far from the city.
Mari: First of all, so we live in Mill Valley, Marin County, now such that Golden Gate Bridge, 10 minutes from San Francisco.
Rusty: And a little bit off of Highway 101. So we have pretty good proximity to the city and yet it’s a relatively pastoral environment and a lot of wildlife here, and that sort of thing.
Mari: Yeah, we see the water bay.
Rusty: Yep.
Interviewer: So how did the place look before and how do you think it has changed in the past 20 years?
Rusty: Well, we saw this place as our house was being built and in the immediate vicinity there hasn’t been much change, but changes in the wind, winter is coming, because this is…I mentioned the seminary area, seminary’s been sold to a land developer who is a professional land developer, one of the top, one of the largest land developers in the U.S., North Coast Holdings, headquartered in Texas, and their job is to make money developing land. So something will happen with the area around us, our neighborhood has galvanized and come together to help to try to have input in the development plans, and that’s been a good thing because it’s generated a sense of community and we’ve had meetings in our community center to talk about what might happen here, what sort of community we’d like to have. Everybody knows there will be a development because we’re so close to the city and yet relatively undeveloped. And so I think the community has waited on us and has favored a plan for some single-unit housing, some multi-unit housing, some low-income housing, and preserving this area where there are nice views and vistas and places where people can walk. And a lot of people enjoy this area, they park, they have picnics and that sort of thing, so preserving some of that character while developing it. So this is kind of the direction you can see that things are going. That’s our immediate area.
Mari: So this developing company tried to bring a ransom which is a private school that will have 1,000 students…
Rusty: Commuter school.
Mari: …to 300 of faculty and administration and all Strawberry community fought against that, so just after two to three years of fighting and finally the Brownstone gave up to move here, so that’s a good thing, but we are expecting something else coming, so we are hoping more residents than big, any institution.
Rusty: Yeah. So part of the issue with respect to development in this area is traffic. There’s traffic on 101. So since we’ve lived here, in the last 20 years, there’s been a lot more traffic on 101.
Mari: Especially the last three, four years, it got so much worse.
Rusty: Especially, yeah, recently. And then access to this area is limited by a narrow road, two-lane road, when one side of it is wetlands and the other side is, you know, already housing and development and a hill, and so access to the area is limited by that one thoroughfare. And so that is one of the limiting factors for development, there are good and bad parts of that. And then people were concerned for a period of time about water supply for this area, if you put a lot more people here, what would happen to the water supply, whether there was capacity. I think people aren’t so much worried about that anymore. But in terms of the other changes we’ve seen, we see more trash than 20 years ago because an In-N-Out Burger was put near here, there’s a McDonald’s near here and people come and park and look at the view and eat and throw their trash out, so cups and bags and things like that. I’ve also noticed that one interesting development or reverse development we’ve seen is in front of our house is a small bay off of the main San Francisco Bay, and 20 years ago the area in front of us had a lot of houseboats where people lived, kind of squatters, so to speak. And whoever wanted to put an anchor out and put their boat there and live in the boat, that’s what they did. And some of that group was a pretty rough group, and all of those houseboats are now gone, and so that part has changed.
Interviewer: Do you know if that was a governmental decision or kind of…?
Rusty: Yeah, that was Sausalito, the City Government of Sausalito cleared out those people who were living there. We do have…some of the constants are that we have a fair amount of wildlife still here, a lot of deer, a lot of birds.
Mari: First, it changed last 10 years around here, so one big thing is it got the Marin City Shopping Center, and affordable housing, big buildings, and then also this duplex under the house, the Strawberry cold…
Rusty: So there are more…
Mari: And also, the silver that…
Rusty: There’s a little island here between us and Highway 101, and that’s been developed by, you know, Hype and Multi-Unit Housing.
Mari: Yes. So that it’s being developing and then we’re lucky because when seminary was here, didn’t change much as much as other part.
Rusty: Right. But the land became increasingly valuable and the seminary left, sold the land because they could do so at a great profit, and then they moved the seminary to Southern California. This land prior to the houses that are here now, including our own, was a cow pasture and when the people who owned the seminary bought it, that’s what it was, just these grassy knolls that are cow pastures.
Mari: It is 1950s, ’60s and up to…
Rusty: Yeah, it was purchased in 1950s, I believe something like that.
Mari: 1980 was amendment.
Rusty: Prior to that it was just grassy knolls. So we still have a lot of wildlife, we have birds, we have red-tail Hawks, we have turkey vultures, they’re beautiful to watch on the air currents, ugly if you’re up too close.
Mari: A lot of geese and egrets.
Rusty: Yeah, we have a lot of…So there’s a wetlands I mentioned before that’s near here and as a result there are a lot of birds, migratory birds, in this area, so a lot of birdwatchers come here to see those. And that’s interesting for us too. So we’re lucky to have this wildlife.
Mari: Including coyotes…
Rusty: We have coyotes, and raccoons, rabbits.
Mari: Squirrels.
Interviewer: So you mentioned that a lot of people use this space to walk and etc. Do you think the use of the space has changed over the past 20 years?
Rusty: I think the recreational use of the space, walking, running, cycling immediately adjacent to us it hasn’t changed, you know, we used to play frisbee across the street, people always try to fly kites there because it looks like a place you could fly kites on a hill, but you can’t. What has changed though, just on the street below us is this tremendous influx of cyclists on tours, they’re these bike tours that you can recognize them because they have these telltale maps on the front of their bikes and there’s a place here that rents out the bikes and tourism people. This is on the route of the map.
Mari: No, this is not a tours, but it’s a…
Rusty: Well, it’s a path, that’s a bike…It’s on their map, has a self-guided tour, and it goes by here, so we see large number of people doing that, some of them get lost. That’s changed.
Mari: I forgot to mention that the Strawberry Point, that strip over there of new big houses was also in the last 10 years.
Rusty: So there was an area of landfill near here. That landfill had been…the land had been filled in for 20 years or so, and then finally they built that big houses on this landfill.
Interviewer: Do you know what the original intention of the landfill was?
Rusty: It was for development, for real estate development, so real estate developers had bought the land or the water in the land, water rights. Around here, there are places where there is zoned, some of the shallow water is actually zoned for potential building. Except for that area, it hasn’t really happened.
Mari: That part, so the Strawberry Point has a big green part and then there was a pass, so a lot of people and…
Rusty: It’s used recreationally by a lot of people for dog walking and…
Mari: And dogs walking.
Rusty: …walking, people walking. Yeah.
Interviewer: Go ahead.
Rusty: Okay. A couple other observations, first of all, with respect to the plant life here, this area, you know, in aerial photos from many years ago and from records was mostly grassy knolls with a few trees here and there. But it’s been…there are a lot of Monterey Pines and non-indigenous trees here now, and those are beginning to have trouble. That generation of Monterey Pines that were planted, I guess some of them…they weren’t all planted I think, but there’s some self-propagation. But anyway, those are beginning to die. We have these big storms, some of them are blown over actually pretty close to us. Some of them are dying spontaneously due to, I guess, some plant disease. So that’s become an issue for this area, so that I think there will be some kind of…somebody needs to address that at some point, the evolution of plant life here. It is a very good place for some plants to thrive and so, you know, plants grow well here, we put a tree and it just really loves the place and grows like weeds. The other thing I’ve noticed is we…I’m looking right now, at the San Francisco skyline, and that, of course, has changed dramatically. So instead of the very graceful Transamerica Pyramid, we now have this big fat ugly salesforce.com building of somewhat questionable taste, and so, you know, that’s another observation, maybe not important for this assignment, but…
Interviewer: Very neutral observation. All right. Well, great. If you don’t have any other observations or things that…
Mari: So the traffic is, really I think everybody living Marin has failed, not only around here. So 101 is always congested, so 2:30 or 3:00 every single day afternoon start to…
Rusty: People going to work.
Mari: …yeah, going north, and then in the morning coming down to the city is so much more than a few years ago, and so they are trying to make a smart train, Sonoma-Marin train up to Larkspur Landing for now, but I don’t know how much…
Rusty: But that doesn’t address the traffic from here to San Francisco, which is, of course, Golden Gate Bridge, and that’s the limitation.
Mari: Getting on the Golden Gate Bridge because of a FasTrak, it got better.
Rusty: That did get better. Actually, that part of traffic is better than it was 20 years ago because of FasTrak Lanes. I crossed the city every day, going from the work, and of course, in 20 years, that traffic crossing the city every direction I can take, every route I can take, is much worse, so it’s much heavier everywhere I go. That’s dramatically changed in the last 20 years in the city.
Mari: Inside San Francisco, there is so much construction.
Interviewer: All right. Well, thank you so much, that was incredibly helpful.
Mari: Oh, one more thing we forgot to mention about the people are conscious here about trash, they started in last 10 years, they did compost and recycling, and so…
Rusty: We’re among the most conscientious people about that.
Interviewer: I believe it.
Mari: So that part, I think the people care about it.
Rusty: People do care about it.
Mari: Yeah, and…
Rusty: Especially here, this area, people really care about the environment and the natural beauty.
Mari: Yeah, and then keeping nature and…yeah.
Interviewer: Great. Right.
Mari: And also, food, try to eat the local food and more healthier food, so good.
Rusty: Okay.
Interviewer: Awesome.
Rusty: Thank you.
Interviewer: Thank you so much.
Mari: Anything else?
Interviewer: No, I think that’s it.