As almost any Marinite can tell you, Marin is center of the universe. With this universal truth out of the way, we can then say that San Rafael is the center of Marin, at least judging by the myriad very important occurrences going on in the Mission City.
Let’s start with BioMarin Pharmaceutical, the biotech company that’s growing at a rate approximately equal to the popularity of Denver Bronco quarterback and God’s favorite boy, Tim Tebow. The company is moving several hundred employees from Bel Marin Keys in Novato to the very classy and semi-empty San Rafael Corporate Center at 770 Lindaro Street (with some spill over into 790 Lindaro).
It isn’t that BioMarin doesn’t love Novato the way Newt Gingrich loves the truth, er, maybe that didn’t come out right. Marin’s most northern city will still house the company’s laboratory operations, manufacturing and storage. The company has leased space on Digital Drive in two buildings that will expire in 2013. BioMarin will make a decision on what to do with that space later on. The company now has 1,000 employees located in the United States and overseas.
All those transferred employees are going to want something to do at the end of their long day. One option will be to head over to the restaurant formerly known as the Seafood Peddler, a space only slightly smaller than Candlestick Park. The restaurant, owned for 15 years by Al Silvestri, was sold to Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh for an undisclosed sum. Lesh is planning on remodeling the place and calling it Terrapin Crossroads.
Lesh was scorned by Fairfax residents, who felt his plans for a musical venue called Terrapin Station wasn’t in their best interest. A polite, low-key campaign that actually included signs that said “No Terrapin, Please” popped up in Fairfax, forever putting to bed the old joke about Fairfax being Spanish for “hippie retirement home.”
Silvestri closed his restaurant with the trademark raised sailboat at the end of January. He’s scanning a new location in Mill Valley, Sausalito, or…wait for it…San Rafael. The new eatery should be open in a few months. Between that restaurant and Lesh’s operation, all of the 40 employees that called 100 Yacht Club Drive home should be employed.
Lesh plans to transform the eatery and adjacent Palm Ballroom into a facility that includes the Grate Room, a state-of-the-art music venue that will seat 400. Lesh plans on having bands with which he has a personal connection play as well as a weekly schedule that includes big band night and an evening of experimental music.
As for the dining experience, Lesh envisions a menu featuring organic, farm-to-table eats. Very Marin, very green, very Dead. Besides the music venue and restaurant, the Grateful Dead veteran plans on bringing in the community and making his new place a gathering spot for the Canal District. Terrapin Crossroads plans an opening for this month, plenty of time to warm up for the BioMarin crowd.
Perhaps the BioMarinites are looking for something else, another San Rafael destination. They could walk over from their Lindaro Avenue digs and check out the Fenix Supper Club, a new music and dining spot set to open at 919 Fourth Street, the old location of See’s Candies.
Sweet.
The new place will include a bar where one might get a libation if one were thirsty, and, you know, helping to create drugs that battle orphan diseases (read ignored, hard to commercialize) is thirsty work. I’m thirsty right now and the only disease I’m battling is athlete’s foot.
Too much information?
Fenix is being run by Merl Saunders Jr., a veteran of the Bay Area musical community. Saunders was born to music, the son of Merl Saunders Sr., a longtime collaborator with Jerry Garcia and a keyboard wizard in his own right. Saunders Jr. has played with such artists as Michael Jackson and one-time Marin residents Robert Cray and David Crosby; he’s also the founder of Glide Memorial Church’s “Music for People” program and was a director for the Grammy Awards.
He plans to fill the refurbished space with bands and musicians that will play everything from rock to bluegrass, jazz to blues and gospel to Latin. The food will feature “globally inspired” dishes that will, of course, include organic ingredients with some entrées being gluten-free.
The new club also plans on rolling out a youth-oriented nonprofit called Fenix Music Academy to mentor kids playing music in Marin. Saunders hopes the club will give locals a chance to see artists in an intimate venue that’s different than other musical outlets. The new undertaking, which is still looking to nail down an opening, could create as many as 40 new jobs.
In keeping with our theme of talking about new businesses with a link to the Grateful Dead, or the Six Degrees of Mickey Hart, what if the good folks at BioMarin felt the need to get out of San Rafael? Well, they could venture a little south on Highway 101 and end up in Mill Valley, where Dead guitarist Bob Weir has led a group of investors in reopening the Sweetwater Music Hall.
The original Sweetwater was located on Throckmorton Avenue and was famous for being a tiny club where great musicians loved to play. Everybody from Elvis Costello to Bonnie Raitt to John Hiatt took the stage. The 95-seat club had somebody stationed at the front door to keep it closed during songs to keep the neighbors happy. The Sweetwater closed in 2007.
The new place is located across from Mill Valley City Hall in the old Masonic Lodge, which has been seriously remodeled. The restaurant will be supervised by foodie heavyweight Gordon Drysdale, who already runs Pizza Antica in town.
