The owner of the luminous red brick structure in the center of Point Reyes Station is proposing renovating the long-vacant building into a 34-room hotel and 60-seat restaurant.
The 2,532-square-foot space, known as the Grandi Building, would also have a small retail space, according to the proposal first reported in the Marin Independent Journal.
Owner Ken Wilson of Healdsburg purchased the 110-year-old building in 1973. Despite having submitted various renovation proposals over the years, the building has sat unused for decades, serving in the meantime as a local posting board for flyers, posters and other written announcements, not to mention occasional graffiti. From its early days, when the town was still West Marin’s busy train junction, the Mission Revival-style building was a bustling hotel and dance hall. Future U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower was said to have stayed there in 1940. As the age of rail travel transitioned to automobiles, and Point Reyes Station faded as a Marin epicenter of commerce, use of the large building scaled down. It’s been empty since 1978.
A prior proposal to renovate the building into a hotel faced challenges regarding the heavy septic use a hotel and restaurant would involve. Planning consultants working with Wilson believe the new proposal will resolve those wastewater-management questions.
