Point Reyes Light - September 9, 1999
Developer eyes Marshall Tavern for 10-room inn
The Marshall Tavern - one of the most storied buildings in West Marin - has been sold to a Muir Beach woman who said she plans to turn the former general store, soda shop and saloon into a rustic inn reminiscent of the 19th Century.
New owner Stephanie McNair, a real estate developer in San Francisco, said that within the next two years, she hopes to open the decaying tavern as a 10- to 12-room inn. She said she plans to remodel the building's interior no more than necessary to bring out its original qualities, especially its redwood paneling and hardwood floors.
Looking over the property last week, McNair told The Light, "It's mind-boggling to me that no one's run with it."
McNair said that on the north side of the property, where the former Marshall Hotel stood, she would like to build an open structure for dining and community gathering.
McNair described the property last week as having enormous potential and noted that a new business in downtown Marshall will add vitality to the quiescent town.
She said she's exploring the possibility of using solar or wind electricity to power the building. Also, she wants to donate some of her business profits to charity - and provide a free meal to anyone who arrives on horseback.
Long entangled in foreclosure sales and lawsuits, the tavern property was sold to McNair for $335,000 in July. She said the purchase price is "a fraction" of the anticipated cost to remodel the property, however.
The Marshall Tavern went bankrupt under owner Al Ries and has been boarded up since 1982. But those who remember its heyday fondly recall appearances there by artists like Neil Young, Joan Baez, Merl Saunders, and jam sessions with musicians from the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and the Youngbloods. (Rumors of a John Lennon sighting remain apocryphal).
"It was a magical time," said former owner John Vertigan, now of Petaluma, who ran the tavern from 1970 to 1976.
"Musicians really liked playing there," he said. "There was a really good vibe. Sometimes they were trying new material, sometimes they weren't on any mega-tour.... We couldn't pay them much, but we gave them everything we could."
Through publications like Rolling Stone and by word-of-mouth, the tavern earned enough of a reputation that Vertigan said he has been stopped on Madison Avenue in New York by revelers who once visited the legendary roadhouse.
The gasoline crisis put a damper on business, said Point Reyes Station innkeeper Herb Goldberg, a business partner with Al Ries in 1976.
Goldberg said the out-of-the-way tavern in the late 1970s evolved into more of a "community-oriented" honky-tonk.
In Earthquake Bay, his history of the Tomales Bay area, author Jack Mason wrote that the bohemian tavern and its local clientele - whom he called "a disillusioned backwash of young people" - were a good match for each other.
As to the behavior of the locals, Mason wrote, "Wedlock is incidental to them, something called personal awareness [is] everything. The Marshall Tavern is the meeting place, come sundown."
Recognizing that many longtime West Marin residents hold warm memories of the place, owner McNair said she hopes her inn will provide an informal place where townspeople can gather.
She insists the building has an adequate water supply and, despite appearances, is structurally sound. Of course, as with many prospective commercial properties in West Marin, remodeling will likely be controlled by the amount of available parking and septic capacity - something that gets particularly tricky in Marshall, where many buildings sit squeezed on their perch between Highway 1 and Tomales Bay.
One person with no romantic notions about the place is former owner Vertigan. Upon being told this week that the property had sold, he asked, "to a blind person?"
For his part, he maintains that the 1873 structure is a complete loss. "Someone should remodel that building with a bulldozer," he said.