Millworks Sold to Peninsula Company

The Millworks building in Old Town Novato has new owners as of this week: The Matteson Companies of San Mateo.

Signature Development Group of Oakland confirmed the sale Friday for an undisclosed amount to Matteson. A Signature executive told the Marin Independent Journal that the sale price was $67 million.

The building, at Reichert and De Long avenues, was designed and erected for $80 million in 2008-09 by Signature Properties, then based in Pleasanton.

E&S Ring Management Company, based in Southern California, is the new management firm for the property.

Realtor Kevin McGinnis, who operated the domain name  www.novatomillworks.com, told Novato Patch about the deal.

Matteson, established in 1964, owns 10 commercial real estate properties in the Bay Area and 11 retail complexes, according to its website. Its portfolio includes several dozen properties all around the West.

According to its website, E&S Ring has developed apartment complexes for more than 50 years, mostly in Southern California and mostly of the "garden community" variety with "resort-caliber amenities." It runs 12 other complexes in the Bay Area, all in the East Bay or South Bay.

Millworks, known by some as (and some derogatory names because of its massive size compared to the surrounding area), had its ribbon-cutting ceremony in April 2009 and residents began moving in that summer. It contains a location for the 38,000-square-foot grocery store chain, opened in April 2010, on the bottom two floors plus public and private parking. Many of the apartments on the top floors have great views of Mount Burdell to the north.

The structure was conceived to have condominiums, but slow sales in the first few year — at prices from the low $400,000s to the high $500,000s — prompted Signature to switch to leases. The building is 98 percent occupied, according the the Marin IJ.

At nearly 431,000 square feet, the structure designed by HKIT Architects dwarfs everything around it and created a storm of negative comments — including from some elected officials — when it was being built on the site of a long-shuttered mill. A scale model was not shared with the public before the Novato City Council City approved the plans in 2005.