The three-building campus on San Marin Drive in Novato, 700,000 square feet of offices set among lawns west of US 101, was for three decades the headquarters of the Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, and in September 2025 the demolition crews arrived to turn it into about 1,300 homes. Fireman's Fund was founded in San Francisco in 1863 by William Holdredge to insure property against fire, with ten percent of its net profits promised to a retirement fund for the city's firemen, which is where the name came from. It moved a thousand employees out from San Francisco to the new Novato campus in 1982, and the German insurer Allianz bought the company in January 1991 for more than three billion dollars. In 2015 Allianz sold the personal-insurance business to ACE for 365 million dollars and folded the commercial side into its own operations, retiring the Fireman's Fund name after 152 years, and that December the last 550 staff moved to offices in Petaluma. The campus then sat empty for about ten years while the city and a series of owners argued over what should replace it. The developer Bay West began demolition in September 2025 for a plan of roughly 1,300 homes, with 130 for very-low-income households, 130 for low-income households and about 1,040 at moderate income.
Getting there
38.1211, -122.5796
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