A new foundation whose mission is to preserve historic downtown properties, support local businesses and sustain the unique culture of Point Reyes Station has purchased the building that houses the Old Western Saloon.
The nonprofit—called the Point Reyes Good Luck Fund—is a private foundation established by Chris Hulls, a 41-year-old tech entrepreneur who grew up in town and graduated from Tomales High School. He is the co-founder and C.E.O. of Life360, a location sharing app for families. He has donated $15 million of his fortune to launch the fund.
“Our mission is to make Point Reyes a place for locals,” according to a statement on the fund’s website. “We will buy, lease, restore, and operate key local businesses and properties to ensure we remain a town that serves the people who live and work here, not just visitors and vacation homeowners.”
The foundation hopes to make further acquisitions in Point Reyes Station and Inverness, where several landmark structures and businesses are either on the market or available for lease, including the Green Barn, the West Marin Pharmacy, the old Station House Café and Vladimir’s.
The fund is talking with other property and business owners and is seeking additional donors and investors.
The impending departure of 12 ranches and dairies from the Point Reyes National Seashore added urgency to the fund’s mission, Mr. Hulls said. The closures could result in dwindling school enrollment and staffing challenges for local businesses, as an estimated 90 ranch residents seek more affordable housing outside West Marin.
“The culture here is changing, and it really feels like we’re at risk of losing our status as a real community,” he said. “It’s almost becoming a world where you’re either a tourist, a second-home owner or part of the servant class that caters to them. When I was growing up, it was a very egalitarian, accessible town.”
He’d like it to remain that way, and preserving the saloon, which was built in the 1800s, seemed like a good place to start. “To my mind, it’s the last true holdout of our blue-collar ranching era,” Mr. Hulls said. “It’s the rough-and-tumble part of Point Reyes, not the fancy one. It’s where the true locals go, and it goes right back to these early days. It was literally a brothel back in the day.”
The building houses a hair salon and a record store next to the bar along with 10 offices upstairs. Mr. Hulls said all the tenants will be allowed to stay and the fund will make only minor changes to the saloon while maintaining its aesthetic, right down to the rose-patterned carpet, the antique cash register and the photographs on the wall. You’ll still be able to shoot a game of pool, watch a Warriors game or dance to The Haggards on the weekend.
“It’s going to stay very much the dive bar we know,” he said. “Basically, it’s going to be a time capsule in many respects, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be some changes.”
Mr. Hulls and his wife, Annika, who is an equal partner in the foundation, have purchased a food truck they plan to station outside the bar with tasty, affordable offerings, most likely Mexican food.
For her part, Michele Hawley-Pelton, the saloon owner, is relieved to have found a buyer who wants to sustain the saloon’s down-home spirit. The place had been on the market for four years, with an initial asking price of $2.2 million. She turned down several offers from suitors whose vision didn’t match her own, including one who wanted to pay in bitcoin, another who wanted to install a rooftop bar and a third who would have converted it into an art gallery.
“I can’t tell you how many people I have refused,” Ms. Hawley-Pelton said. “Every business in town has changed in some way or another, and the fact that somebody takes an interest in keeping it local for the blue-collar workers—it’s wonderful. We have a culture that’s been there for years and years, and we don’t want that to change. We love it. And now we have people visiting from all over who love that old-time feel, too.”
Ms. Hawley-Pelton’s parents bought the saloon in 1972, the year after she was born, and she took over four and a half years ago, after the death of her mother, Judy Borello.
“I grew up in that building, from roller skating in the basement to celebrating my first communion up against that bar,” she said. “In my 20s, it paid for my college education. I did everything from mowing the lawn to cleaning to bartending. It was really important for me to learn all the roles.”
The foundation and Ms. Hawley-Pelton agreed to the terms of the deal last month, but the sale is still in escrow. If all inspections go smoothly, the transaction will be finalized within several weeks.
The ownership or leasing structure of the Good Luck Fund’s future acquisitions may vary by project. Although the foundation is a nonprofit, it may establish for-profit companies that locals can own or invest in, provided they abide by preservation guidelines set by the foundation board, Mr. Hulls said. In the case of the Western, the building will be owned by the foundation, but the bar business will be owned by his family.
In other cases, community members might invest to make a profit while supporting community institutions that keep the towns vibrant. Businesses might be established as limited liability companies, which allow for multiple owners, and in some cases, a business might be owned in whole or in part by its employees.
“Part of our plan is to be more business-oriented than other nonprofits,” he said. “When we buy assets, we might sell them back to the community so that community members can invest and get a return.”
The foundation will be responsible for managing and maintaining the buildings in its portfolio, securing tenants and determining rents, which might be set below market rates in certain instances.
“If it were something essential, like a pharmacy, we might subsidize it,” he said. “If it were a restaurant, we’d likely stick closer to market rates.”
The foundation has hired Heather Mickley, an Inverness resident with extensive nonprofit administrative experience, as the fund’s director of operations. The foundation board has not yet been finalized, but Mr. Hulls said it would be transparent about its management and procedures as they evolve. As the board charts its priorities, it will work closely with local officials and the Point Reyes Station Village Association, where Mr. Hulls is vice president.
“I trust Chris’s instincts,” said Steve Antonaros, the association’s president. “He seems to be really interested in keeping locals involved in the properties he’s looking at buying. I’m being open-hearted about this, because he is, too.”
Mr. Hulls served in the Air Force after high school, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and dropped out of Harvard Business School to pursue his entrepreneurial vision, starting his company with a $275,000 grant as a winner of Google’s 2008 Android Developer Challenge.
Life360 developed the 15th best-selling app on the market. It allows families to track one another’s locations on their smart phones, enabling parents to keep tabs on their kids and sending alerts if a loved one has an accident. The company has a market capitalization of $3 billion and generates about $400 million in annual revenues through subscriptions and advertising.
Mr. Hulls stressed that he is not a billionaire, despite rumors circulating around town, and he only owns a small percentage of company shares. His $15 million contribution to the Good Luck Fund represents a significant portion of his assets, he said.
“I’m very interested in the concept of luck and karma,” Mr. Hulls told the Light. “Life is unpredictable, and much of what happens to us is beyond our control. I got lucky—I didn’t do anything to deserve it—but I hope to create a halo effect where that luck is shared.”
For more information, go to goodluckfund.org or email [email protected].