Though plans are sketchy, and by sketchy I mean super-secret and not ready for prime time, the rumors for what could, might and may happen on the property known to most as the Fireman’s Fund campus are beginning to leak out and the chatter is interesting.
The three-building campus off Highway 101 in Novato was purchased in January from New York hedge fund DW Partners by a joint venture of San Francisco-based Bay West Development and Colorado-based Forum Investment Group. The purchase price for the building has not yet been divulged, though some planning department math puts it under $30 million. The price tag is a bargain considering DW owned the property since it held debt that was in the neighborhood of $113 million.
The campus has essentially been in ghost mode since Fireman’s Fund moved its operations to Petaluma in 2015.
The campus has a lot going for it because it has a green energy platform as well as the SMART Train right next door. But how either of those assets will play out for the 64 acres of land is hard to say because while nothing has been decided by the JV, one thing is for certain: the site will not remain as an office campus because housing is the word of the day.
A conceptual plan submitted to the city of Novato shows Bay West-Forum would like to construct almost 1,100 housing units consisting of homes, townhomes and apartments. A section of the development would include senior housing, a nod to the graying of Marin.
The decision to take a swing at housing certainly makes sense at first blush. The city of Novato, like the rest of the county, is currently being chased around by the state since Marin entities are not providing enough opportunities to construct housing. Once every eight years, the state hands the Association of Bay Area Governments a number of housing units that should be built to keep up with anticipated growth in the region. In turn, ABAG assigns a number of housing units to each city, county and town, though they don’t have to build anything. Instead, the entities must provide for zoning and housing regulations as well as preferred areas for development, and the private market then pursues the opportunities as they see fit.
The cities scream, and then not enough housing is built, and then the exercise is repeated.
ABAG, in its infinite wisdom, states Novato should provide for the chance to build 2,090 housing units between 2023 and 2031. So common sense says the city should at the very least entertain a plan calling for housing on the old campus.
Bay West is led by Ross Resident Bill Poland, a former town councilman and a board member of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Thus far, Ross and Bay West have been judicious with information about the future of North Bay Crossing, the rebranded Fireman’s property. And by judicious, I mean graveyard quiet.
NorthBay biz will be doing a feature in October about North Bay Crossing-Fireman’s Fund-Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost complex. I’ll do my best to see if I get Poland to be a bit more loquacious about his vision for the campus, and how the project will fit into the community.
Failing that, we’ll just make stuff up. (Insert a picture of me winking here.)
You Marin moment
The Marin Economic Forum has been turning out little gems of information on a weekly basis for a while now and a recent offering pointed out at least one way that life may be swinging in a normal manner as we slog through the COVID-19 variant. Citing data from the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District, the MEF concludes that more people are returning to work as transit numbers and bridge crossings have been increasing. Traditionally, the data reflected commutes into San Francisco as the city was the employment center.
But some of the traffic and transit coming into Marin represents employees coming here to earn their paychecks.
It will be interesting to see how Marin employers handle the issue of where employees want to do their work vs. where the businesses want their staff. One lesson that was learned during the lockdown was that in many cases employees were more productive working from home than from the office.
My employer, The Deal, is owned by EuroMoney Plc out of London. Our company has not only said we can work from wherever we prefer, but they have also decided that COVID-19 highlighted how important family and work balance is, so they’ve decided all employees should take every Friday afternoon off.
I don’t know if EuroMoney is an outlier or a leader, but I do think that a new work model is being shaped and Marin has always thought of itself as cutting edge.
So where will people work?
