Skip Vilicich inherited a boat called the Blue Sea from his father when he was a high school senior. After he and his cousin came home from the Coast Guard, he took it apart. He told the Point Reyes Light this fall that he still hasn't put it back together. "There's been a few other projects along the way," he said, a house and a herring boat among them.
The Blue Sea sits in the yard at Marshall Boatworks. That yard is part of the 17 acres on the east shore of Tomales Bay that the Vilicich family listed for $13 million in late September. Most of the coverage has led with the price and the restaurant. Some parts of the property already have a future on paper. The Marshall Store and the post office have lease dates, and the oyster company has 35 years on site. The boat lift has no reported lease, an operator who plans to step back, and the contaminated soil that any new owner has to deal with first.
One family's ground under four daily stops
The property covers four parcels and 2,500 feet of Tomales Bay shoreline. It holds the post office, the Point Reyes Oyster Company, the Marshall Store, Marshall Boatworks with its pier, and four houses. Three of the houses sit on the bluff above the shore and one is across Highway 1. The current owners are three sisters, a brother and their cousin Skip, the third generation of a Croatian family. The family moved across the bay to Marshall in 1927. Before that, Nickola Vilicich and Nickola Cosmi ran a fishing base on leased land at White Gulch on Tomales Point. A 2009 National Park Service historic resource study notes that the two men gathered clams and oysters to sell when the weather was too rough to fish.
Here is where each operation stands, based on what has been reported so far:
- Marshall Store: Shannon Gregory's lease runs through 2027, and he told the Light he hopes to stay. "We generate a lot of the income for the property, and I think we're a benefit to the sale," he said.
- Marshall post office: The Postal Service owns the modular building and leases the ground under it. The Light reports that lease runs through 2028.
- Point Reyes Oyster Company: A wholesale operation that has been on the site for 35 years. A broker marketing the property told the Light it would like to continue.
- Marshall Boatworks: Run by Skip Vilicich and his friend Gene Maffucci. Skip plans to retire after the sale.
None of this means the sale has closed or that any tenant has a guarantee past its lease. It does show that three of the four operations have either a lease date or decades on site behind them.
Why the tenants have leverage
The Press Democrat reported the brokers' own figures. The property brings in less than $400,000 a year in operating revenue, spends about $250,000, and nets about $147,000. One of the listing brokers told the Light that the current tenants provide an appealing income stream for any buyer. "I don't think the restaurant or any of the other tenants are likely to leave after a sale," he said.
The Store also matters well beyond its own lease. The New York Times named it one of the top 50 restaurants in America in October 2021. Gregory took over Route One Bakery & Kitchen in Tomales in 2020, and in 2024 he reopened the former K&A Take Away space as the taco shop Out the Door. His operations reach from the Marshall shoreline up to the Tomales crossroads.
For now, the Store's website lists its address as 19225 State Route 1. Its hours are 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. The site describes the Tuesday and Wednesday "Shuck Your Own Raw Day" as a spring and summer offering, so check before you plan an October visit around it. If you want oysters to take home, the Store's site points to its family farm, Tomales Bay Oyster Company, at 15479 Highway One, about four miles south. That farm sells to the public. It is a different business from the wholesale Point Reyes Oyster Company on the Vilicich property.
The post office gets a new landlord
Marshall's post office is at 19200 Highway 1, according to the USPS location directory. The building belongs to the Postal Service. The ground does not. Whoever buys the property becomes the post office's landlord.
The two news reports describe the lease differently. The Light gives a firm end date of 2028. The Press Democrat says the Postal Service is on a three-year lease, and a broker said it will likely want to stay at least five years. Neither outlet explains how the two accounts fit together. Both agree on the main point. The mail counter has a tenancy that runs past this winter, and a new owner would inherit it.
The boat lift is the piece that could change
Marshall Boatworks is the only place between San Francisco and Fort Bragg with a moveable lift that can raise heavy, deep-keeled boats out of the water. Skip Vilicich also maintains buoys in the bay. He and Gene Maffucci have run the yard since the longtime manager, Jeremy Fisher-Smith, left last year. Skip told the Light he hopes someone else will take it over after the sale.
"It's hard to find anybody to do this kind of work anymore," he said. "Everybody likes to play with a computer and a cell phone, and this is not the place for that."
Most of the land is zoned village commercial-residential. County planner Immanuel Bereket told the Light that this zoning also allows light industrial uses like the boat works. The Vilicich family asked the county for an assessment in 2017. That study strongly endorsed keeping the boat works running. It also listed other possible uses, including a small bed and breakfast and an outdoor education center, and a separate county planning document floated a community center.
The same assessment explains why the boatyard comes before anything else on the site. Years of ship repair and painting left soil in the yard contaminated with arsenic, copper, lead and mercury. That soil has to be cleaned up before any of those other uses can go forward, and the buyer will likely need an environmental assessment to measure the problem. Whitt and Lindsey Strain, co-owners of Point Reyes Oyster Company, told the Press Democrat they hope for a buyer who cares about conservation and the bay's historic aquaculture. "Whoever buys it has a huge job ahead of them," Lindsey Strain said. The Light names Martin Strain as the person running the oyster operation.
So the Store and the post office have lease dates, and the oyster company has 35 years on site. The boatworks has the strongest county endorsement of the four, but it also has the soil problem, an operator planning to retire, and a trade that is hard to hire for.
Where the east shore has a say
Any major change to the businesses would go through state and county development rules that put a premium on environmental protection and public access to the coast. One parcel across Highway 1, about 1.5 acres, is zoned agricultural. That zoning allows farming and farmworker housing.
The local voice in that process is the East Shore Planning Group. It is a nonprofit formed in 1984 and calls itself the main local organization on east shore development issues. Every east shore owner, tenant and resident is automatically a member. In a March 2024 letter to the Board of Supervisors, the group commented on Marshall shoreline sea-level-rise studies, bulkhead vulnerability and coastal repair permits. Those are the same kinds of questions a new owner of 2,500 feet of shoreline will face. The Light reported that residents are waiting on the sale with some anxiety, and also with hope that it brings real improvements to a yard full of sheds, storage containers and boats under repair. So far no outlet has reported a statement on the sale from the planning group.
The Marin Independent Journal carried the Press Democrat's story, which was last updated October 8. No outlet has reported a buyer. Until one appears, the lease dates are the most solid facts available. The Store's lease runs through 2027, the post office ground lease through 2028, and the boat lift runs for as long as Skip Vilicich keeps showing up to work it.
I've spent decades watching West Marin families hand off land they've held for generations, and the Vilicich sale is one of the bigger handoffs on the east shore in a long time. If you have questions about how a sale like this, or a family property of your own, moves from one generation to the next, Terry Donohue is a phone call or text away.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.