The Marin City location of CVS Pharmacy has closed its doors. The shuttering of the store is part of a major move by CVS to shut down 900 stores across the country. The company said it would make an effort to move employees to other local locations.
The corporate machinations of the pharmacy company aside, the closure is a blow to the Marin City community. While CVS said it would transfer prescriptions to its location inside the Marin City Target, most CVS products are not a part of that location.
Closing the doors on CVS is yet another in the ongoing series of stores shutting down in the Marin Gateway Shopping Center. The center was opened with great fanfare in 1997, replacing the much-beloved Marin City Flea Market, which was held on weekends on the property.
The center was part of the Marin City USA economic development project, which was aimed at producing local jobs while bringing in businesses that would serve the Marin City community. While the project was well-intentioned, the promise and the delivery were miles apart. A parade of stores has come and gone and the center itself has been sold as well, with Southern California-based Gerrity Group LLC, the current owner.
According to a Gerrity leasing brochure, the center currently has a dozen available spaces, and ironically list Tesla charging stations as a feature of the mall. Its anchor stores are Target, Ross Dress for Less and West Marine. Gerrity owns 20 centers in the western U.S., the majority in California.
The wheels grind slowly…
Reneson Hotels, the owner of the Corte Madera Best Western Inn, has been trying to renovate the property since 2014. It now appears there may be some light at the end of the tunnel that isn’t an oncoming train.
Reneson has wanted to change out the hotel and originally wanted two separate hotels and planned to fill in a flood control pong that was utilized by ducks and other birds.
The Marin Audubon society cried “fowl” over the pond’s possible disappearance and the town registered its reservations about the hotel project as well.
Please insert your own pun here.
The project has been scaled back to 149 rooms and now calls for a teardown of the existing hotel. If approved, the new hotel would be reflagged as a Marriot Residence Inn.
Reneson also owns the Novato Oaks Inn up the road in Novato.
Full disclosure, in a previous life, I was employed at the Corte Madera hotel and was known to have an adult beverage at the neighboring Peppermill Restaurant and Bar. The ’60s homage to casinos and the Vegas Rat Pack featured a substantial fireplace known to the locals as the “Lava Pit of Love,” with cleavage-baring servers slinging high balls.
The Peppermill was replaced by Max’s, a deli-on-steroids with a bakery, that could give you diabetes via a cake-and-cookie-filled display case. That said, the pastrami sandwich was amazing, and the bar was not the worst place in the world to take in a 49er game.
Max’s also departed, and a barbecue joint took up residence for a time.
Your Marin moment
Gary Tobin is old school, and I mean that in the best possible way. Tobin is a long-time Marin resident and PR guru who is now a book editor and agent with the publication of Rosa Parks: Beyond the Bus by H.H. Leonards, which is scheduled for release in February.
Unlike most of the folks practicing the PR arts these days, Gary has always believed in making his clients available to the media rather than acting as a gatekeeper. He is also a gifted writer and good with people, talents that don’t always translate into the world of corporate communications.
The book takes the reader into the life of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, and as the title states, goes far beyond that fateful day in 1955 in Montgomery, Ala., when Parks displayed amazing courage with her decision to not ride in the back of the bus.
Leonards, with Tobin’s fine editing hand, shows Parks as a person with a full heart and a love of learning. There is a spiritual flavor to the book as Leonards recounts the time she shared with Parks, who was a resident in Leonard’s O Street Mansion in Washington D.C.
The book is published by R.H. Boyd Inc., the largest publisher of books by African American authors in the country.
Leonards and Tobin are not resting on their laurels. A second book, focusing on Parks’ lessons for life, is in the discussion stages. While Tobin now has a book agent on his resume, he continues to work with a select group of Bay Area clients.
Bill Meagher is a contributing editor at NorthBay biz. He is also a senior editor at The Deal, a digital financial news outlet based in Manhattan and owned by Euromoney PLC out of London. He covers small cap equity, SPACs, and alternative investments.
