A long-vacant office building in San Rafael tucked between Highway 101 and a Kentucky Fried Chicken is slated to transform into a 17-story tower of steel and glass.
If built as planned, the project at 700 Irwin St. would replace a dilapidated four-story building in Marin County’s largest city with a residential high rise featuring 200 apartments, floor-to-ceiling windows and a new waterfront promenade.
A 17-story apartment building would not stand out in downtown San Francisco, but the tower would be a radical departure for Marin County, where cities hew closely to valleys and hillsides, and it would become the tallest building in the North Bay – by a large margin. It’s just one in a wave of high-rise proposals that could reshape San Rafael…