Only In Marin
Northgate redevelopment—to infinity and beyond! By Bill Meagher
N ovember 18 is the day. On that Monday, the San Rafael City Council will hold a hearing on the redevelopment of the Northgate Mall. San Francisco- based Merlone Geir Partners has been working diligently on its two-phase plan to transform the shopping center into mixed use dominated by housing. By that time, the planning commission will have held its hearings and will forward its recommendation to the council on the surviving version of the project. Up until September, there had been two models being
Deer Creek Village in Petaluma. A mixed-use project, it’s anchored by a Smart & Final grocery and still has a 20% vacancy rate. How Northgate shakes out will be interesting to watch. On the one hand, San Rafael needs all the housing it can lay its municipal hands on. On the other hand, a redeveloped Northgate will forever change the Mission City. Did I mention change is hard?
A rendering of the proposed Northgate project.
Your Marin Moment Al Boro was unlike many elected officials. He was funny, kind and not full of, uh, non-truth. Boro, the former mayor of San Rafael for 20 years, recently passed away at the age of 89. Back when I was covering a myriad of issues for the Pacific Sun , I spoke to Boro on a fairly regular basis and we developed a routine. We would exchange views on the local scene. Then we would do the official interview, then the background stuff. Finally, we would talk sports, mostly baseball. Boro had been a batboy for the San Francisco Seals and went to USF. I had gone to SF State and played ball there as well as semipro in Golden Gate Park at Big Rec. We both loved the game and I always felt lucky when Al would take a few minutes to talk baseball. After Boro had led a years-long effort to bring the downtown back to life, I told him that the project had been so successful that parking and traffic were a mess and folks were beginning to complain. He smiled and nodded. “That’s a bitch isn’t?” he said. We will not see his equal again. Moment Number Dos According to the California Select Committee on Happiness and Public Policy Outcomes, Marin is a very happy place. A report generated by that august body found Marin has a rating of 7.40, a proud number indicating the amount of happiness oozing from our fair county. To give you an indication of just what that number means, if Marin were a country, it would be the seventh happiest country, wedged between Netherlands and Canada. You mean Marin isn’t a country? g
considered. The grander of the proposals had 1,865 housing units, but the final version put forth by the developers includes 1,422 units that Ross Guehring, mouthpiece for Merlone Geir, told the Marin IJ was “the preferred project for all stakeholders.” Judging by the tone and heat of the ongoing debate, Guehring’s choice of the word “all” might be wishful thinking. Guehring’s employer has made a worthy effort to present a project that includes housing, retail and restaurants, but there are a couple of major issues working against it. The first is it represents major change. Change is difficult under the best circumstances, and those circumstances are seldom found in this county. Our denizens are well-educated, and they hold the planning process in the same high regard that Texas holds Republicans or Seattle holds coffee. Hold my beer. The second difficulty is the scale of the project. Not only will the project envelop 45 acres, but one of the buildings will be six stories, which isn’t towering, but in this neighborhood it’s a little like standing Tom Cruise next to Shaq O’Neal. More scale: The redevelopment will stretch into 2040 and beyond. That’s a ways off and who knows what will happen by then. The world has become a strange place; I mean we are just past an election that included Donald Trump retaking the White House after his first disastrous term. Jesus, anything seems possible and maybe that’s the problem. The first phase, if the project gains final approval, would begin construction next year. The second phase would break ground in 2040. The final version includes a bumped-up town square area, swelling from 48,000 square feet up to 57,000 square feet. Critics of the project point out that the needs and issues tied to a mall are different than a housing development, and that the project would generate traffic woes, public safety concerns, as well as challenges for local schools. Fans of the development applaud the new housing and the chance for the community to grow. But redevelopment is second nature for Merlone Geir. Northgate is just one of 10 current redevelopment projects being managed by the firm. And the firm can claim a dozen redeveloped properties in California, including
Bill Meagher is a contributing editor at NorthBay biz and a senior reporter at The Deal, a digital financial outlet based in Manhattan.
November 2024
NorthBaybiz 41
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