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Novato freight house destroyed

Wednesday, September 26, 2007 5:14 PM PDT

Paul Jones, Staff Writer

The freight house at the Novato train depot finally fell Wednesday, Sept. 26, demolished by workers roughly two decades after most of the burned building was reduced to a skeletal frame. Signature properties, working on the Whole Foods/Condominuim project, agreed to destroy the building for the Sonoma Marin Area Rapid Transit, the owners. The Train depot's passenger house, which was not severely burned, remains, and may be renovated as part of a prospective development near the Whole Foods project, according to Bob Lalanne of the Lalanne Group.

The demolition took place in the morning. By 9 a.m., nothing remained of the distinctive black structure except a rectangular plot of charred wood. The station house adjacent to the building has been considered by Book Passage, a Bay Area book retailer, for a Novato location, if it can be renovated. However, architect Tom Stimperd, who examined the building earlier this year, said in an interview several weeks ago that the structure may be getting too weak to salvage.

The demolition of the freight house had been postponed for over a week as permits were sought by Signature Properties. An inspection of the facilities took place Monday, Sept. 17. According to an e-mail by Jerry Peters of the Save the Depot Task Force, the workers were examining the site for asbestos. Peters said in an earlier interview that the city had been unresponsive to previous attempts to deal with the issue. The Task Force has covered the station house with tarp to protect it for years, and also located and preserved a number of historical items from the station.

The freight house was the third built in Novato after a fire destroyed the second less than a year after its construction. The original freight house was moved onto Riechart Ave. in downtown Novato.

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