For decades, the Mt. Tam Racquet Club has been a treasured and affordable community resource serving approximately 1,000 people across Southern Marin.

MTRC supports the health, fitness, and social well-being of children, teens, adults, families, and seniors. It offers eight outdoor and five indoor tennis courts, indoor and outdoor swimming, pickleball, fitness and weight equipment, yoga and exercise classes, youth programs, and year-round social connection.  Its location also matters. MTRC is across from the new Larkspur Library and within walking or bicycling distance of several public schools and Larkspur’s Downtown.

MTRC's five indoor tennis courts are the only generally available indoor tennis courts in Marin County. These courts enable many seniors to play tennis into their 70s and 80s (including those with high risk of skin cancer), and provide a vital resource for so many players throughout the long Marin rainy seasons.

The proposed redevelopment by new owners would replace this broad, accessible, multi-generational community facility with a far narrower and more exclusive club centered on eight outdoor clay courts and a small outdoor pool with only 2 or 3 lanes.

It would eliminate indoor tennis, indoor swimming, weight and fitness rooms, and extensive fitness and yoga classes now available to the community. Expected initiation fees of many thousands of dollars and much higher monthly dues typical for clay clubs, would likely exclude most current members.

In practical terms, a treasured community resource would be transformed into an elitist club designed primarily for the benefit of the richest of Marin residents.

That is not an equivalent recreational use. It would reduce access to year-round fitness, displace students, families, and seniors, and weaken an important community gathering place. It could also force people to drive farther for recreation, increase water use for clay-court maintenance (estimated between 1.5 to 3 million gallons per year), and may create drainage, flooding, and construction impacts in an area already prone to flooding -- as climate change impacts continue to accelerate.

Larkspur law requires the Planning Commission to find that a proposed use “will not be detrimental to the general welfare.” This redevelopment is contrary to the public welfare and should not be approved in its present form.

We ask the Planning Commission to:

1.  Delay any decision on project approval to gather and make available adequate, independent reports on the project’s impacts and allow reasonable opportunity for public comment.
2. Keep the public comment period open.
3. Require full information about the proposed club’s facilities, operations, membership  fees, water use, flooding, drainage and environmental impacts, including a full environmental impact report under CEQA.
4. Consider alternatives that preserve meaningful indoor, year-round, and community-serving recreation.
5. Give residents and MTRC members a reasonable opportunity to review the information and be heard.

Once these facilities are demolished, they will be extraordinarily difficult to replace. Please sign this petition urging Larkspur to protect the public welfare and require a better, more inclusive plan.