The Marin County Board of Supervisors approved a controversial Point Reyes gas station renovation that will include five new units of housing and a convenience store that is twice the size sought by the project’s opponents.
The renovation, which the board approved 4-0 on Tuesday, includes a 1,700-square-foot convenience store—far larger than the 870-square-foot store approved in April by the county’s Planning Commission. West Marin supervisor Dennis Rodoni, citing state conflict-of-interest laws, recused himself from the vote because he owns property nearby.
The proposed project sets aside two of the apartments for affordable housing, one more than originally proposed by Redwood Oil, the northern California gas station chain that owns the property. Supervisors said the project would help ease West Marin’s acute housing shortage.
“Five units of housing in a small village is significant,” supervisor Mary Sackett said. “If we were talking about downtown L.A., five units wouldn’t be anything, but here it is a significant impact.”
The project has been through various iterations since Redwood Oil first proposed it in April 2023. The company originally proposed a 1,900-square-foot mini-mart, but this week it submitted a modified proposal calling for the 1,700-square-foot store approved by the board.
The original design called for enclosing the front porch to make room for the larger store, but the proposal approved by supervisors includes a new front porch that would maintain the general appearance of the original structure.
Opponents of the project, led by the Point Reyes Station Village Association, argued that the porch was a key historical feature of the building’s architecture. They also objected to a 1,000-gallon commercial propane tank included in the original plan, which was eliminated from the company’s final proposal.
Before voting to approve the project, Supervisor Eric Lucan cited those modifications as praiseworthy signs of compromise. “We’ve seen the sides get closer,” he said.
Steve Antonaros, the village association’s president, said the group is considering whether to appeal the decision to the California Coastal Commission.
“We’re not happy about the way it came out,” he said. “We’re considering our options, and we’ll be talking to our counsel.”
Opponents of the remodel stressed their support for affordable housing. But the convenience store would undermine the town’s community character, they argued.
The group also raised concerns about emissions from the gas station, the convenience store’s proximity to West Marin School and the project’s potential impact on traffic. The gas station is located at the intersections of Highway 1 with Mesa Road and A Street, busy crossings that confuse visitors.
“A large convenience store on a 90-degree turn into town through a four-way intersection that will generate over 500 trips to the store and back into the highway is a safety hazard,” said David Morris, a Point Reyes Station resident.
He said that opponents of the project had reluctantly accepted an 870-square-foot store. “The developers are ignoring the will of the community and asking for a convenience store that is twice the legal limit,” he said. “The community should not be required to make any further concessions.”
Chris Hulls, a homeowner who grew up in Point Reyes Station, said that even the many people he knows in town who could benefit from affordable housing oppose the project. “We’re all very sad that there’s so much pressure for the town to change,” he said. “We’ve avoided the homogeneity that has happened to so much of the country and in the world at large. Point Reyes is a small town. It’s special to us.”
Dana Davidson, owner of the Epicenter clothing store in downtown Point Reyes Station, shared a survey the village association had conducted of local businesses, nearly all of which opposed the project. She read the long list of their familiar names one by one, from Toby’s Feed Barn to Cheda’s Garage to the Palace Market.
“This represents more than 96 percent of the businesses that comprise our village,” she said. “We are against the scope of the proposed gas station expansion.”
Before casting her vote, Supervisor Katie Rice pointed out that the coastal commission had previously approved a plan to expand the gas station’s current 215-square-foot kiosk into a 1,500-square-foot convenience store, a plan that didn’t include any new apartments. That 2019 decision did not generate significant community resistance.
“I’m confused today by the opposition on the part of the town, given that there was a coastal development permit issued for a commercial facility of similar size, without housing, just five years ago,” she said. “I am pleased with the evolution of this project.”
In addition to the new apartments, she said, the project would add two badly needed public restrooms. “That’s huge,” she said. “Point Reyes Station is just in dire need of bathrooms for its visitors.”
The project underlined conflicts between Marin’s coastal development rules and the state’s density bonus law. While the California law is intended to encourage the construction of housing, Marin’s Local Coastal Program limits the size of gas station convenience stores to 15 percent of a building’s total square footage.
In its report to supervisors, the county’s planning staff said officials had the discretion to balance those conflicting mandates as they saw fit.
The Planning Commission gave precedence to the local development rules, which would have restricted the convenience store to 870 square feet. The village association was prepared to accept that outcome but argued that anything more would undermine the town’s historic character.
Richard Drury, an attorney for the village association, said the project required a full environmental assessment to meet the mandates of the California Environmental Quality Act. But county staff said that the project would maintain the building’s original footprint and thus would not have any negative environmental impact.
The supervisors endorsed many of the conditions that the Planning Commission had imposed on the project. Among them were several traffic improvements that must be approved by Caltrans, which has jurisdiction over Highway 1. The developer agreed to seek the agency’s approval for pedestrian ramps, crosswalks, new signage and pedestrian and bicycle striping.
Julie Van Alyea, president of Redwood Oil, said that with the rise of electric vehicles in recent years, gas station business has declined, and the convenience store will help compensate for falling revenues.
“Housing is what the community needs, and a larger market drives the economics of this project,” she said. “The concession to grant a larger market is the component that makes this project economically feasible.”
Only one person at Tuesday’s hearing spoke in favor the project—Jenny Silva, who represented the Marin Environmental Housing Collaborative. “We’re in an affordable housing crisis,” she said. “Affordable housing is the number-one issue that Marin residents want their government to address.”
Concerns about “community character” have killed one housing project after another, she said. “We all have memories of old buildings, but the natural way that communities evolve is that buildings change to accommodate changes in populations,” she said. “Otherwise, you end up in a museum.”