Magnolia Avenue's 2026 Openings All Fit in Small Rooms

Walk Magnolia Avenue from 450 to 570 this fall and the street's year is laid out by address. At 450 the Silver Peso is open again with new floors and a refurbished shuffleboard table. At 455 a coffee cart serves the morning crowd. At 501 there's a bookshop so narrow that its owner stood in the doorway for the newspaper photo. Then come two dark rooms: the French brasserie that opened in Larkspur in 1994, and a 26,344-square-foot grocery building where a closure notice was still posted at the entrance in July, three years after the store shut.

Every opening on the street this year came in a space one local operator could take on. The two spaces that stayed empty are too big for that, and the city's own tools are slowly being aimed at them.

Three Addresses, Three Small Bets

The Silver Peso's reopening was a refresh of a bar with a long history on the street. The Marin Independent Journal reported that Larkspur couple Tommy and Shannon Lamanna bought the landmark building in late 2024 and co-invested in the work. Earlier in 2026, Corte Madera resident Max Perry and Conor Flaherty of Tiburon, the managing partners at Sam's Anchor Cafe in Tiburon, took over the lease from Rebel Lee. Lee had tended bar there for more than a decade before he bought the business in 2015.

The work list was practical: new floors, new bar siding, fresh interior paint, upgraded bathrooms, new pool tables, better televisions and the refurbished shuffleboard table. "It looks and feels exactly the same," Perry told the IJ. The changes show up behind the bar, with taps pouring IPAs and Kolsch-style beers and a chalkboard menu of margaritas, negronis and martinis. The team also planned to keep bringing in food vendors for events and on weekends, starting with the Humble Cheeseburger truck parked outside on reopening day. At the reopening, the posted hours were noon to 2 a.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. on weekends.

Up the block, the Feerma Love cart started pouring in mid-February. The Real Deal Marin listing puts it at 455 Magnolia, open 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily. The cart was introduced as an early taste of Feerma, a planned North African and Mediterranean restaurant. The IJ's February coffee-cart roundup said the restaurant was aiming for a summer opening. Until the restaurant opens, the cart is the part of the project you can actually visit.

Why the Smallest Room on the Street Became a Children's Store

Phoenix Used Bookshop shows most clearly how the size of the room decided the business. Owner Stef Tousignant had planned a used bookstore for adults and had about 15,000 adult titles in storage. Then she found a space at 501 Magnolia that is 5 feet across. The IJ reported that her background in childhood development made her see the narrow room as a kid-sized one.

"It feels right for a kid to be in here, right? They will feel comfortable," she said. "And so I was like, OK, the first store will have to be for kids."

The shop's motto is "books build community." In June, part of one wall was covered in Post-it notes where visitors had written their favorite childhood books. She called this one "the first store," which suggests the adult collection is still waiting for a bigger room.

All three openings on this stretch share that logic. A bar with a known name, a cart and a 5-foot shop each needed an amount of money and staff that one owner or a small partnership could cover. The rooms that stayed dark need far more than that.

The Two Rooms Too Big for a Small Bet

Left Bank was a Larkspur original. The IJ's account of the closure traces the brasserie to 1994, when restaurateur Ed Levine and French chef Roland Passot created its menu and look in Larkspur. Locations in Menlo Park and at Santana Row came later. For decades it was known for its Bastille Day and Beaujolais Nouveau Day parties with costumed servers and live music. In late June, parent company Vine Hospitality shut its restaurant group down. The Larkspur location served diners for two more days and then closed. The state layoff notice listed 54 jobs in Larkspur alone. A restaurant that size is a 54-person payroll, and that is a different decision for a new operator than a shuffleboard refresh or a coffee cart.

The former Lucky at 570 Magnolia is larger still. According to the IJ's July report, the store closed in 2023 after about 40 years. Albertsons owns the building, and Save Mart Companies ran the store. The building covers 26,344 square feet on about 2 acres. It is listed with a commercial broker with no asking price, only "best offer." The 5-foot bookshop and this building stand on the same avenue, and they are about as far apart in scale as two storefronts can be.

The city has already set some terms for the site. Larkspur zoned the property "transitional downtown," which allows residential or commercial development, among other options. Through the housing element, the city also added an incentive that speeds up approvals if a developer includes a grocery store on the property. Mayor Stephanie Andre told the IJ there had been talks with grocery operators about stores at other locations, which she could not discuss while they were ongoing. She also described how far the city's reach goes:

"The Lucky's parcel is a privately owned parcel, so the government only has so many levers it can do. We can't really dictate what goes in that space, although we can try to use the tools we can to encourage a market." Mayor Stephanie Andre, in the Marin Independent Journal

Where the City's Next Lever Points

The newest of those tools is still being studied. At a June 17 workshop, City Attorney Sky Woodruff presented options for taxing vacant property. The IJ reported that such a tax would be a special parcel tax requiring two-thirds voter approval. At that meeting, Mayor Andre named the former Bed Bath & Beyond, the former Lucky's and several empty bank buildings on Sir Francis Drake next to Bon Air as current vacancies. The council also discussed a registry that would charge owners of vacant buildings a fee and set maintenance standards for them. Council members asked staff to come back with more information.

That follow-up came in a City Attorney's informational report dated Oct. 13 and prepared for the Oct. 21, 2026 council meeting. The report says no council action was requested. It lays out four broad classes of property a measure could cover:

1. Residential property
2. Ground-floor commercial storefronts
3. Standalone developed commercial and industrial buildings
4. Undeveloped property

The report also raises a size option. If extended vacancies cause more trouble in large commercial buildings than in small storefronts, it says, the council could apply a tax only to buildings above a set square footage, and it would need to state the policy reason for drawing that line. The report compares two Bay Area precedents. San Francisco's Vacancy Tax, adopted by voters in March 2020, covers vacant ground-floor commercial space along named commercial corridors. Oakland's Vacant Property Tax, approved in November 2018, covers every vacant property type in that city.

On Magnolia, that size option matters. Every 2026 opening on this stretch went into a small room. The empty space Larkspur talks about most is the 26,344-square-foot former grocery. A tax limited to large buildings would leave the storefronts that filled this year alone and fall on the kind of building that has stayed empty. Any vacancy tax would still need its own measure and two-thirds of Larkspur voters before it took effect. This is general information and not legal or tax advice, so property owners should check how any future measure would apply to them with their own attorney or tax professional.

The Season on This Stretch

For now, downtown's draws this season are mostly the small rooms. The Feerma Love cart covers mornings until 2 p.m. at its posted hours. The Silver Peso is open well into the night, and at its reopening the team said food vendors would be parked outside on weekends. Phoenix Used Bookshop, with shelves sized for younger readers, is at 501.

The next holiday date on the city's calendar is off Magnolia, at Piper Park. Hot Cocoa & Train Night at Piper Park runs Friday, Dec. 11, from 5 to 8 p.m. at 250 Doherty Dr.

If you own a downtown Larkspur building or a home nearby and want to talk about what Magnolia Avenue's changes might mean for your property's value, Christina & Karla - Home In Marin can walk through it with you, street by street. Request Your Free Home Valuation and we'll start with your address.