E-Mail Express

Name:

Company:

E-mail:

Phone:

Novato’s Pavilions project moves toward reality

AFTER 24 YEARS, BUILDING COULD BEGIN IN SUMMER

NOVATO – After 24 years, different owners, a court battle and multiple redesigns, an office project could be under construction late this summer below the landmark “round house” next to Highway 101.

San Francisco-based Novato Creek Partners LLC is set to submit construction drawings in July for a 30,600-square-foot professional office complex called The Pavilions at 200 Landing Court and hopes to start construction a month or two later, according to managing partner Geoff Wood.

His company, veteran Marin County developer GW Realty Partners, has been involved with the project since 2000, when it was purchased from the Coyne family. That was shortly after the City Council approved the project as a 55,600-square-foot office building called Novato Creek Landing. The master plan originally had been approved in 1984.

Neighbors of the project sued the city shortly after the 2000 approval, alleging Novato’s two-story limit for office buildings on hillsides was violated by the design, which had two stories with two more stories offset up the hillside and connected by a three-story elevator. GW Realty acquired the approved project before a Marin County judge ruled in favor of the residents.

Mr. Wood still disagrees with the judge’s decision, but it turned out to be a good thing in that the project was refined, reduced in size and reconfigured over the next several years to better fit the challenging 3.42-acre site.

“It was a big and modern and boxy office building,” he said of the design approved in 2000.

Last year, Novato architect Bill Kelly, also a member of the city Design Review Commission, redesigned the project as three buildings with four pavilion-style green raised-seam zinc sections of energy-efficient roofing. One single-story building will be on the uphill side next to two buildings atop a rock-faced ground floor set into the hillside at the entrance to the development.

The City Council approved the redesign in May of last year, and the Design Review Commission unanimously approved the final design Feb. 6, with Mr. Kelly recusing himself.

The project is getting interest from medical practitioners such as physical therapists because of the project’s proximity to Novato Community Hospital directly to the east across Highway 101, according to Mr. Wood.

The Pavilions would be ready for tenant improvements nine months after construction begins, or summer of 2009.

For more information, contact GW Realty Partners at 415-921-5577.