In 1992, a group of Marin County investors led by Catherine Munson put a public-private partnership together that saw the county let the group build and operate an executive golf course, driving range, batting cage, miniature golf course and restaurant on park land that’s county-owned and known as McInnis Park, on Smith Ranch Road in San Rafael.
Fast forward to 2011. After surviving the dot-com bust and the crash in 2007, Munson is asking the county to forego rent payments over the next three years and then cut the payments in half after that. Currently, the county pulls in about $400,000 per year in rent on the property, so Munson’s plan would be asking the county to kiss off $1.2 million in revenues, then walk away from another $200,000 a year after 2014.
To say the county is less than enthusiastic about Munson’s proposal is a little like saying 49ers fans don’t see Alex Smith as the second coming of Joe Montana.
Munson says the investors have been covering the county not out of cash flow but their own equity and, so far, the investors have seen just $1.6 million in profits. Moreover, the investors also have to pay mortgages and expenses. Munson says the county has seen $6 million in rent over the years, though the investors are $420,000 into the county’s pocket, rent-wise, right now.
The county says the existing contract is valid. Moreover, the county looks like it doesn’t think much of Munson and company’s leverage. According to the agreement between the county and Munson, the county retains ownership of the facility. Should the investors decide to stop paying, the county shops for another operator and Munson and company could be on the outside looking in. County counsel has already made plans to begin a process that could end in taking over the asset.
No doubt it isn’t nearly that simple and, should Marin and Munson split the sheets, a slew of lawyers would suit up and create an entertaining (and very messy) public spectacle. After all, the filing of lawsuits is one of the favorite pursuits in the land of organic milk and fair-trade honey.
While it’s easy to understand how the shifting of economic winds has left Munson and investors in the tall rough looking for their ball, the idea that Marin is going to let them take a drop without a penalty seems as thick as Tiger Woods getting back together with his ex-wife.
Let me outta here!
Loyal readers of this fine periodical, and you know who you are, will recall the sad affair of one Mark Anderson, a resident of Sausalito, who pled guilty in 2009 to 19 criminal counts connected to embezzlement, fraud, tax evasion and arson. The 2005 Vallejo blaze destroyed more than $200 million worth of wine in storage from 92 different vintners and almost 50 collectors. For a far more detailed account of the fire and Anderson’s activities, read “Don’t Go in the Cellar” (Oct. 2008).
But two years after Anderson pled out; he’s asked the feds to set aside the plea and order up a new trial in U.S. District Court.
Mark Christian Anderson was always quite the colorful fellow and apparently, being a guest of the feds hasn’t slowed him down. He owned Sausalito Cellars, storing wine for folks who collected wine but didn’t have proper facilities for aging the grape in what was termed “Protected Solitude.” Trouble was, Anderson had a penchant for selling some of that wine, and some 8,000 bottles disappeared. This wasn’t the kind of behavior his clients had hoped for, and soon the Sausalito gendarmes were running down leads. While an investigation ensued, he moved his business, such as it was, to Vallejo’s Wine Central, a warehouse at Mare Island. But he was given the boot for failing to make rent payments. Arson investigators later found a propane torch and gas-soaked rags in the space leased to Anderson.
Anderson was defended by Mark Reichel, a Sacramento criminal defense attorney who’s now the target of Anderson’s anger. The man who once wrote a column in a Sausalito newspaper under the nom de plume “Joe Sausalito” has put the plea squarely on Reichel. Anderson now claims he never sold his clients’ wines; rather they were stolen or not delivered, or delivered and then picked up or, possibly, drunk by rodents that ran amok in the Vallejo warehouse.
OK, I made the rat thing up. But you get the idea. It’s the classic “I didn’t do it, but I can’t really explain it” defense. Perhaps not as effective as the “Some other dude did it” defense, but not every story is an episode of “Law and Order.”
In a brief that Anderson filed with the court, he maintains that his business records, which could shed light on what really happened, were destroyed in a few water-related “catastrophes.” He also says Reichel failed to make use of a witness who’s now dead as well as other witnesses, who could have testified that the first witness existed—except they’re dead too.
In a brief to the federal court, Reichel characterized Anderson as “a narcissistic liar” and that representing him was a bizarre experience. The capitol city attorney said his client frequently changed his story and offered up witnesses that didn’t exist.
In the interest of full disclosure, Anderson and I wrote for the same newspaper for a while and I met him a handful of times. He was a larger-than-life personality and even then was given to tales that seemed to have something less than a nodding acquaintance with the truth. Tales from Anderson included managing the rock group Iron Butterfly, sumo wrestling in Japan and helping invent voicemail.
Ironically, Anderson now has plenty of “Protected Solitude.”
Bill Meagher is contributing editor at NorthBay biz. While he’s occasionally beaten some range balls at McInnis and partaken of the fare at “The Club at McInnis Park,” perhaps it wasn’t enough. You can reach him at bmeagher@northbaybiz.com.
