Point Reyes Station’s Grandi building
may soon be renovated after almost 30 years of slow decay. The building’s
owner, Ken Wilson, has again applied to county planners for permits
to restore the Grandi. County planner Tom Lai said that the initiative
shown by Wilson and his property manager, Marshall Livingston, in preparing
the current application could mean that Wilson is "serious about
going through with [the renovation] this time."
The Grandi was built in 1915 by Swiss immigrant Louis
Grandi and his sons, Reno and Ennio. The Grandis were a merchant family;
Louis' brother, Salvatore, had bought the town's only store in 1887,
and for years was the area's leading businessman.
But in 1898, another merchant, Pietro Scilacci, opened
the Point Reyes Emporium down the street. The Grandis responded by building
a large brick hotel facing the Point Reyes Station railroad depot (now
the post office), with their general store housed downstairs. Then as
now, the building dominated the town’s main street.
The Grandi Company and Point Reyes Hotel operated
into the 1950s, along with Crivelli's, the hotel restaurant. At the
downstairs store, noted the late historian Jack Mason in Earthquake
Bay, "one could buy everything from pianos to cattle feed." After
the hotel closed down, various tenants occupied the rooms upstairs,
including a dentist, Dr. Guthrie, who used a drill driven by a foot
pedal. Periodically, a traveling county judge would hear cases or dispense
driver's licenses in the Grandi dance hall, which was also the setting
for community balls and grammar-school plays.
Today, the arches that once supported the Grandi's
sidewalk arcade are boarded over. Its Italianate brick facade has darkened
through years of wind and rain. Many windows are broken. Inside, the
imposing fireplace and reception counter that once greeted guests in
the lobby of the Point Reyes Hotel gather dust. The doors to the building
are locked, but vandals occasionally manage to get inside, and their
graffiti is the last sign of life in the Grandi's long, dark halls.
A litany of problems
Wilson bought the building – along with
the neighboring Cheda and Sawyer buildings – for $225,000 in 1973
from Inverness rancher Joe Mendoza. Three years later, county supervisors
declared the building "unsafe for human occupancy" and ordered 18 tenants
to vacate their upstairs studios. The last of the building’s downstairs
tenants, a hardware store, moved across the street in 1978. Since then
the Grandi has been empty.
The building was tagged a "public nuisance" in 1989;
soon after, Wilson faced pressure from supervisors to renovate the building
– or at least to reinforce its brick frame for earthquake safety.
Wilson tried without success to sell the Grandi to
developers in the late 80s and early 90s. In 1990 he almost lost the
building at auction because he owed the county $43,825 in back taxes,
but paid up just in time. In the late 90s, county supervisors considered
demolishing the building, which they said could collapse in a sizable
earthquake.
The Grandi wasn't made earthquake-safe until 1998
(at the time, it was the last unreinforced brick building in West Marin).
The same year, county supervisor Steve Kinsey said at a public meeting
that he could "hold up nothing but a litany of problems and citations
that go along with this building."
Signs of change
There are signs, however, that this pattern
of neglect is changing. Livingston said the time and money spent so
far on the application is an indication of Wilson's earnest desire to
restore the building. The basic county fee for the desired permits is
$16,770; that sum doesn't include money spent on private consultants.
"You've put this tremendous investment into receiving
permits, and permits are only good for so long," he noted. The permits
sought by Wilson are good for two years, county planners said, but can
be extended for up to four additional years.
Another good sign, said county planner Tom Lai, is
the application's completeness. Lai said that Wilson had shown diligence,
for example, in obtaining approval for the renovated building's septic
system from the county's Department of Environmental Health – a
process known among local business-owners as time-consuming and difficult
(the system would also serve the neighboring Cheda and Sawyer buildings).
Finally, Lai said, there is Livingston himself. The
Inverness resident was hired by Wilson to manage the Grandi building
in 2002, and since then, Lai said, has worked tirelessly with county
staff to prepare a viable plan for the building. Livingston said that
as a 30-year resident of West Marin, he feels he has a stake in the
Grandi building's restoration. He is the brother of local historian
Dewey Livingston, who has been a vocal proponent of preserving and reviving
the building.
Livingston said that, before he was hired, part of
the reason for delays on the Grandi’s renovation may have been
that Wilson didn't have a local representative to manage the building.
Wilson is a resident of Sonoma County, where he owns a winery and 250-acre
vineyard.
Salvage mission
Livingston said his goal is "to take the building
back to its original configuration." Two wood-frame additions to the
building, on its south and west sides, will be demolished; the arcade
on main street will be reopened. The interior of the Grandi will follow
the building's original plan as closely as possible: a hotel lobby,
restaurant, and stores downstairs, with some 25 hotel rooms upstairs.
Livingston said he hopes many features of the old
building – from the imposing fireplace and reception counter in
the lobby to the transom windows above the upstairs doorways –
can be salvaged. "There is a lot that is recoverable," he said.
"In some places we just have bare brick walls which are beautiful. They
will remain as bare brick walls."
All plaster in the building will need to be replaced,
along with plumbing and electrical wiring. The building's brick exterior
will be patched up and cleaned. All told, basic repairs to the Grandi
will probably cost at least $1 million, Wilson said.
If you build it, they will come
Livingston hasn't yet found tenants to occupy
the building, but said he hopes to do so within the next few months,
provided the county approves Wilson's permits. As a result, the building's
floor plan remains vague. "We don't have tenants yet, and this is
why we aren't definite on the site configuration," Livingston said.
"Tenants could come in and say we need more space or we need less space."
Livingston declined to name any potential tenants,
but said that neither he nor Wilson would like to rent the space to
any chain hotels, restaurants, or retailers.
At least one difference between the renovated building
and the Grandi of yesteryear will be obvious: parking. The new building
would have a parking lot with 88 spaces off main street (22 on-street
spaces will also be set aside).
Neighbors welcome news
At a community meeting on the Grandi building in 1998,
Point Reyes Station residents expressed overwhelming support for the
building's restoration. Suggestions for the Grandi's new incarnation
were numerous, varying from a park overshadowed by the building's streetside
facade to a community swimming pool.
This week, the Grandi's neighbors welcomed the news
that the old hotel might be renovated.
"I'd like to see the place operating as a hotel and
restaurant again, if someone can make some money at it," said Al Crivelli,
who works at Cheda's Garage, a few doors down from the Grandi.
Crivelli's father, David, and stepmother, Evelyn,
ran the Point Reyes Hotel and Crivelli's restaurant until 1953, when
the price of heating the old building and maintaining its plumbing system
forced them to close. Before that, Crivelli said, he remembered the
hotel being only half-full most of the time.
"The renovation and restoration of that beautiful
structure would be good for the whole community," said Sheryl Cahill,
who owns the Station House Café across the street. Cahill added
that while pleased at the prospect of the Grandi being renovated to
mirror its past appearance, she "wouldn't be for it if it was brand-new
development." Cahill said that her customers are routinely "intrigued"
by the old building, which they study over their meals through the café
windows. Sarah Hart, who works in the café, said everyone asks
why the building isn't being used.