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Novato area properties seeing spurt of activity

NOVATO – Company expansions plus opportunities for more retail opportunities closer to home are bringing a spurt of activity unseen for a few years to areas of Marin County’s northernmost city.

At Fireman’s Fund Insurance Co.’s headquarters campus at the northwest corner of San Marin Drive and Redwood Boulevard, property owner American Assets of San Diego is bouncing ideas off city officials and local groups for repositioning the property for a mixture of uses, according to spokesman Dave Hyams.

Ideas include a 100-room high-end hotel, ancillary shop and restaurant space and three parking structures. Replacing the 1,800-space parking lot would allow for a one-third increase in the current 29 acres of open space on the 65-acre property and possibly a community center.

The San Diego-based company, which purchased the property last year, plans to return with revised design ideas this spring and perhaps submit a project application this summer, according to Mr. Hyams.

Fireman’s Fund in a statement said it intends to remain in the campus.

Meanwhile, San Rafael-based Campus Property Group could have its mixed-use plans gelled by early summer for 45 acres of San Marin Business it owns directly north of Fireman’s Fund, according to principal Robert Upton. A previous plan was a 544,000-square-foot business park with a hotel.

“There is demand in Novato for one more hotel,” Mr. Upton said.

At the south end of Redwood, the Pell family’s 165,000-square-foot Pell Plaza has landed 10,000-square-feet of new tenants – solar power panel integrator iPower and IMSI spinoff Houseplans – filling up one building. The long-vacant 70,000-square-foot former Riverdeep software building has been rehabilitated for multiple tenants, according to listing agent Whitney Strotz of NAI BT Commercial.

Novato leasing is spurred by a $0.75-$1.00 difference in office rents compared with similar properties in central and southern Marin, he said.

At the Hamilton Landing campus on the southeast side of Novato, developer Barker Pacific Group landed Novato-based catalog retailer Republic of Tea in a 4,500-square-foot piece of the 15,000-square-foot vacant Spatialight space in Hangar 5, according to Orion Partners’ Brian Eisberg, who was involved in the deal. Also videogame maker Nihilistic Software just leased 5,000 square of that space in its third expansion.

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