Mill Valley investors ditch plan for private club

Oct 31, 2024

The developers who proposed a private club in downtown Mill Valley have changed their plans.

The city received an amended application for the project, called Treehouse MV, on Oct. 10. The update nixes the private club and rooftop deck at 60 Throckmorton Ave. in favor of retail and office space.

Adam Lynch, one of the applicants, said the pivot is intended to make the project more financially feasible at the former bank building. He said the design process revealed expensive complications related to the building, which is more than a century old. The issues included “extensive building code deficiencies,” seismic work associated with the rooftop deck and new utility requirements, he said.

“It was frankly just an unworkable budget,” Lynch said. “But we’ve already invested a huge amount of our time and money to try to make this work, and we think this plan is way more feasible from a cost standpoint and allows us to follow through quickly with our commitment to the community to get this project completed.”

High construction costs also became an issue, with bids of about $5 million to $6 million, according to a project narrative the applicants submitted to the city. Additional costs involved Americans with Disabilities Act requirements and kitchen design.

Lynch and Mike Natenshon, the founders of the Marine Layer clothing company in San Francisco, initially planned to build a membership-based club with a rooftop deck, a restaurant and event space at the former Bank of America building. Last October, the Planning Commission approved the plan despite public concerns about parking availability and community values. Residents filed an appeal, but the City Council upheld the commission’s decision in November.

Jim Welte, the executive director of the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce, said the organization supports the new plan because it still addresses a key problem: having a large, vacant building in the center of downtown, which does not help the area’s vitality.

“We as a chamber were all in on the proposed treehouse for a very specific reason, and that reason is that all the people with deep pockets within our community of Mill Valley looked at that building and largely passed on it because it is old, antiquated and very large and would require some heavy lifting to do anything with it,” Welte said. “Now we are at a different proposal and we still are supportive of what they are doing for the very same reason.”

The new design would lessen the parking demand significantly, according to a parking study by W-Trans, a consulting firm. The private club was expected to need an average of 60 parking spaces per weekday and 66 spaces on the weekend, while the new plan requires 39 spaces during the week and 29 on the weekends.

If the plan is approved, the space could be turned into 1,300 square feet of retail space selling a smaller selection of Marine Layer clothing alongside a space for products from local emerging brands. It would be open to the public every day at similar hours to other businesses downtown.

A second public gallery space could be used for rotating exhibitions relating to art or history. A wall would separate the retail from the rest of the downstairs space, which would be used for office work, meetings, small events and other gatherings.

The new plans include a kitchenette instead of a full kitchen and work to repurpose the bank vault — which is too expensive to remove — as a recording studio. The upstairs area would become private offices for the T.W. Ryan Architecture studio, which is designing the project, and Marine Layer employees living in Mill Valley.

The amended plans would make the space smaller, and events could only support around 50 people. The applicants estimate an average of two to four events per month, and still plan to donate meeting space for local nonprofits. Lynch said the new design still honors the portion of the plan that residents had favored.

“When we first went through this process, there was a huge portion of this community that was very supportive of having a flexible, ‘third place’ that would get folks out of their homes or offices and into downtown,” Lynch said. “We believe that is still the case.”

Lynch said they will meet with stakeholder groups and go through the same process as they did before. He said he hopes the community will embrace the new plans, considering the reduced impacts on noise and parking and the flexible space it offers the community.

“At the end of the day, we took on this project not because we were developers, or to make a lot of money, but because we love this community, we live here, we are raising our kids here, and we believed that building something to bring people together in a beautiful gathering place would enhance our community,” Lynch said in an email.

The applicants plan to break ground in early 2025 if the project is approved. Daisy Allen, a city planner, said the city has 30 days to review the amended proposal, and then it will go to the Planning Commission for consideration.