This Marin County Post Office Is Slated For Mixed-Use Revamp

A small Marin County post office is at the center of a back-and-forth over housing, but a new development proposal looks to keep the building in the same place.

Paul Thompson, founder and president of Novato-based Thompson Builders, bought the 34,720-square-foot lot at 15 Calle Del Mar in Stinson Beach for an undisclosed price and filed a preliminary application to build six residences at the site, the Marin Independent Journal reported.

The property is currently home to a 9,000-square-foot parking lot and a 3,392-square-foot commercial building, which houses the Stinson Beach post office, a catering company and a cleaning company. Thompson is looking to demolish the building and replace it with a mixed-use residential and commercial building on one corner of the property and four two-story detached condominiums in another. The post office would move to a new 1,250-square-foot space on the ground floor of the mixed-use building.

The four proposed condos would be sold at market-rate prices and range in size from about 1,700 square feet to 2,200 square feet with two- and three-bedroom floorplans. Another two residences would each span about 775 square feet on the second floor of the commercial building for a total of six units on site.

Marin County might be known as a NIMBY stronghold, but officials are “happy to see an increase to the housing supply” at the site, Sarah Jones, director of the Marin County Community Development Agency, said.

Thompson’s team is preparing to lean on California’s density bonus law, not in order to build more units than zoning would allow, but to secure setback waivers tied to the surrounding wetlands and Eskoot Creek. Because the parcel sits in a coastal zone, the development would need a coastal permit and sign-off that it complies with Marin’s local coastal program. That includes meeting creek and riparian setbacks that can exceed 100 feet. Septic will be another hurdle, as Stinson Beach isn’t under county authority for wastewater, and its water district requires a 100-foot buffer from waterways unless a variance is granted.— Chris Malone Méndez