Mount Tam Racket Club Redevelopment Clears Planning Commission 5-0 After Hours of Emotional Testimony
The week's biggest fight played out at 1 Larkspur Plaza Drive, where the Planning Commission voted 5-0 to let owner Mark Harris tear down the entire former Mount Tam Racket Club — about 50,000 square feet of buildings and courts — and rebuild it as 14 new structures totaling 10,750 square feet, eight outdoor clay tennis courts, and 77 parking spaces. The project needed five entitlements at once: design review, a height exception for a clubhouse roof reaching 30 feet 3 inches, a fence exception for 12-foot-3-inch vegetative screens, removal of six heritage trees, and a grading permit moving nearly 5,300 cubic yards of earth.
“I even offered to purchase the property myself specifically so that the existing indoor courts and the club could be preserved... he's not interested in selling.”— Gabriel Patino, longtime club member · ▶ Watch this exchange
Staff told commissioners their hands were tied on the club's amenities or membership model — "the commission does not have the discretion to deny or condition the project based on factors outside those required findings" — and warned that if the venture collapses, the site could instead see multi-story high-density housing. Commissioners agreed the legal findings were met and adopted Resolution 01-2026 with a CEQA exemption, while Chair Swisser, herself a club member, said she could still rule objectively.
Hours of public comment split sharply: longtime members like Carol Duke and Gary Brand mourned the loss of indoor tennis and swimming under an all-outdoor, all-clay design — "There's no indoor swimming pool. There's no indoor tennis. It's just his vision," Duke said — while neighbor Debbie Horowitz and commercial owner Tommy Lana called it overdue reinvestment in a tired corner of Larkspur Plaza. Applicant Mark Harris described a bruising process, saying he'd been "yelled at," "called an elitist," and even "spat on." Commissioners encouraged, without requiring, that he consider hard courts, a bigger pool, and saving one heritage redwood.
The approval is final unless appealed to the City Council within 10 days — a real possibility given how many members left the hearing frustrated that, as one put it, an offer to simply buy the property and save the indoor courts went nowhere.