Martha belongs to Marin: Land deal complete as 110-acre Tiburon Ridge parcel now open space preserve
After a half-century of preservation efforts, 110 acres of land on the southern Tiburon Ridge is now public to all as open space.
Marin County, the San Francisco-based nonprofit Trust for Public Land and local grassroots group Tiburon Open Space announced Sept. 5 they have completed the $42.1-million deal to buy Easton Point, known as the Martha property, from the locally owned Martha Co. It has been folded into the 122-acre Old St. Hilary’s Open Space Preserve, creating a 232-acre parcel with hiking trails, rare species and panoramic views from the Richmond Bridge and San Francisco skyline to the Golden Gate Bridge, Sausalito and Mount Tamalpais.
A public celebration is scheduled for Oct. 26, with details not yet announced, though visitors may access the Easton Point annex immediately. The main trail is the Ridge Fire Road off Ridge Road, which creates an eastern trailhead for the roughly 5-mile Tiburon Ridge Trail. It now formally connects with the Heathcliff Fire Road to the west and continues on through residential subdivisions and the Lois Mae Moody, Middle Ridge, Ring Mountain and La Cresta open space preserves to the Via Los Altos trailhead.
Another direct access point is from Spanish Trail Road, with the Spanish Trail running north to connect with the Paradise Tank Fire Road off Paradise Drive.
The trust’s senior project manager, Erica Williams of Tiburon, said one post-mounted “private property: no trespassing” sign that rattled activists when it was discovered in 2016 — installed by drilling a hole into the Founders Rock landmark — has already been removed. She said Marin County Parks will create trailheads after removing other signs and fences, obstacles long ignored by hikers, dog walkers and sightseers who’d sometimes cut locks and chain link to access the land. Many were then run off by the local family members who owned it.
Hiker Craig Loeffelholz, who was out on the original Old St. Hilary trails Sept. 5 during a visit from Oklahoma, said he had hiked there a few times before and saw others ignore the signs at the Martha property. He said the land acquisition was good not just for the environment but for the community as a place to exercise and enjoy the views. Loeffelholz added that there are times when people support the concept of public space — until the wrong word gets used, whether it’s political or personal.
“To know that we can share something and be nice and civil about it in a positive way is a good thing,” he said.
Tiburon Open Space President Jerry Riessen said in an interview that the acquisition was “glorious, great news” for everyone involved, adding that many people deserve credit.
“I consistently say to people that it is a great result, creating open space for everyone, forever,” Riessen said. “And that’s how it’s come together — as a community effort.”
Riessen has been a leader of the group for decades, including its former iteration as the Last Chance Committee, which in the 1990s led the effort to preserve and purchase the two parcels that created the original Old St. Hilary’s preserve. Acquiring Easton Point helps fulfill his vision of the southern ridge as an undeveloped regional conservation zone managed by Marin County Parks, which also includes the 24-acre Tiburon Uplands Nature Preserve just uphill from the original Old St. Hilary’s land.
Though his group and others are calling the collective area the Tiburon Ridge, the county already has a 15-acre Tiburon Ridge Preserve across town near Highway 101, north of Tiburon Boulevard, in Strawberry.
The terms of the three-way deal to buy the property, established in June 2022, required the land trust to purchase it from the Martha Co. for $42.1 million, with $12.9 million of that coming from grants and private fundraising. Tiburon gave $1 million and Belvedere $125,000.
The trust then sold the land to Marin for the county’s share, $29.2 million. The deal closed Aug. 29.
Most of Marin’s share is coming from Belvedere and southern Tiburon taxpayers, who in November 2022 voted nearly 79% in favor of a 30-year, $335-per-parcel Measure M parcel tax to fund a bond sale. Some $23.2 million comes from that bond and two 1990s bonds used to buy the Old St. Hilary’s land. Another $6 million is from the county’s Measure A sales tax that supports parks and open space.
“It’s been a privilege to work alongside such dedicated public, private and community partners to help realize this historic win-win for the community,” Williams said.
Some housing advocates have criticized the preservation efforts, saying that about 85% of Marin is protected for open space or agricultural uses as officials then assert it’s too “built out” to accommodate California’s regional assessment of some 14,405 new housing units countywide by 2031.
Jenny Silva of Sausalito, a volunteer pro-housing watchdog who's been monitoring the creation of housing elements in Marin, said she couldn’t comment on the Easton Point annex’s suitability for development but said there’s a housing crisis, not an open-space crisis. She noted that 31% of respondents to the county’s 2023 Community Survey said housing should be the No. 1 priority, some 19 points higher than the No. 2 priorities, a tie between services for the unhoused and other vulnerable populations and addressing climate change. Silva called it “frustrating” that Marin’s latest budget then dedicated more than twice as much to open-space expenditures than to its affordable-housing trust: $11.23 million versus $5 million.
“I think there’s a lot of people questioning the amount of money on open space — and there’s a lot of people who aren’t willing to say it because it’s a third rail,” Silva said.
Pro-housing groups like the Oakland-based Greenbelt Alliance promote “climate-smart growth” and fight against urban sprawl by backing infill development and the preservation of green spaces. That organization formally supported the acquisition of the Martha property.
“(It) not only protects this valuable and pristine open space but also reduces the risk of fire to local communities and prevents further traffic congestion within the community,” it wrote in 2022. “Additionally, it ensures that we preserve this land for wildlife habitat.”
That habitat features special-status plants like the threatened Marin dwarf flax and vulnerable serpentine reed grass, as well as serpentine bunchgrass designated a “sensitive natural community,” according to a 2013 environmental-impact report for a 43-unit luxury-home development proposed by the Martha Co. It said the California red-legged frog, a threatened species known to breed near Keil Pond, also could have been significantly impacted by the development.
Max Korten, general manager of Marin County Parks, said that while it’s unlikely visitors will see these species without a nature guide, his agency is excited that the property is now open space and part of the countywide network.
He said there will be a community-engagement process to make improvements to the trails after initial work on trailheads.
“For us, now it’s our responsibility to take care of it and steward it and make sure this place is accessible for people,” Korten said.
District 3 Marin Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters, who represents the Tiburon Peninsula, congratulated Riessen and the broader community “for their vision and their tenacity to bring this many-year project to fruition,” along with Williams, Korten and their respective organizations for facilitating the deal.
Martha Co. President Mark E. Reed of Tiburon, whose family has owned the property since the 1920s, said he was thankful the community supported the bond issue.
He said parts of his family on the side of his late father, Edgar Reed, held a farewell gathering for the property Aug. 24. He didn’t comment further about the party, but police responding to neighbors’ calls said the gathering included about 100 people who turned out for a food truck and live band, with some staying overnight, according to incident logs.
Reed called the land trust “professional” and said it “was very easy to work with and very responsive.”
“Had other local groups in Tiburon not been involved, this deal could have easily been done five years ago,” he said.
The Reed family won the legal right in 1976 to build a subdivision of at least 43 single-family homes, which was reaffirmed by the courts in 2007, but battles with the county, town of Tiburon, Tiburon Fire Protection District and activist groups — as well as long periods of inactivity — stalled movement for the next 45 years. That includes more recent suits filed in 2017, one by Tiburon-Belvedere Residents United to Support the Trails, which lost its argument that hikers had established a de facto public easement with years of continuous use of the private property’s trails, and a failed effort by Tiburon Open Space and the town of Tiburon to challenge the adequacy of an environmental impact report for development.
Tiburon resident Richard Wodehouse, who was a leading figure in the trails group, said in an interview that the acquisition means residents and visitors can “get a sense of freedom and peacefulness you don’t get when you’re inside a city.”
“The bottom line is that there are some places that should never be built on,” Wodehouse said. “That is one of them.”
Tiburon attorney Bill Lukens, who co-founded the Marin chapter of the Sierra Club and was a legal adviser to the trails group, said getting the Martha Co. to the table was an arduous process that eventually led to that suit. He called the view from the plot one of the best overlooks in the Bay Area.
“I feel really good, really happy and can finally relax and not worry about it anymore,” Lukens said. “I’m just very appreciative of everybody’s efforts, and I think when the community comes together — it takes a village — it shows we can get things done.”
While those cases were in court, the family in 2018 put the property up for sale for $110 million, reducing it to $95 million the next year and $63 million by 2020 as it negotiated with the preservation groups.
Tiburon Mayor Alice Fredericks has been a champion of preserving the property and has said it motivated her foray into local government. She’s the longest-serving councilmember, joining the board in 2001.
In an email, she thanked the Reed family for its stewardship while adding that mere thanks to Riessen and Tiburon Open Space “are inadequate for their 30 years of public education, unrelenting work and negotiations.”
“The process of acquiring the Martha (property) in itself provided so many opportunities, not only for recreation but also for public education about the natural resources in the (peninsula’s) open spaces,” she said.
In a news release, Fredericks said preserving Easton Point as open space provides recreation alternatives and more “at a time when there is pressure to urbanize our informal open spaces into parks with built amenities.”
“It is a rededication by our community to preservation of natural resources, reminding us to lighten our footprint on this earth and remember the greater systems that we can sustain, so they can continue to sustain us,” she said.
Note: This article was updated Sept. 6 to reflect additional reporting for the Sept. 11 print edition.
Reach Tiburon reporter Francisco Martinez at 415-944-4634. Support local journalism by SUBSCRIBING NOW for home delivery and access to the digital replica.
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