A Town That Can’t Escape Specter of Prison

San Quentin Village, a cluster of quaint cottages along San Quentin prison’s main gate, has the feel of a small town. Neighbors visit over picket fences. Children ride their bikes in the street. An orange cat dozes in an arbor. The sweet scent of baking cookies drifts on the breeze. It’s like Mayberry with prison guards.

The walls of one of California’s most notorious prisons rise where Main Street ends, but no one seems to care. Residents call San Quentin a good neighbor. They cherish the unobstructed views of San Pablo Bay, quiet beach and low crime rate. Sure, the pizza guy does a double take when you phone in an order, and maybe the Fed Ex driver looks at you funny, but that’s really no big deal, residents say.

“It takes perhaps a different type of person to live here,” said Postmaster Greg Goodwin, who reigns over the tiny facility that serves inmates, workers and villagers. He greets residents, workers and pets by name. “You do see the prison no matter where you go.”

About 75 people live in the 40 or so homes in the village, an unincorporated part of Marin County near San Rafael. Houses range from 19th-century bungalows with wide porches and gingerbread trim to a group of sleek, modern condominiums precisely angled to avoid direct views of the swinging black gates that open on the prison’s turreted, fortress-like walls.

What villagers can’t escape is the bedlam that accompanies an execution at San Quentin. They are bracing for June 9, when inmate Horace Kelly is scheduled to die by lethal injection for three Inland Empire murders.

With each execution, death penalty supporters and opponents clog the narrow streets, chanting and carrying signs. Reporters interview anyone willing to talk. Local and national television crews, based in homes rented from residents, light up the night as they record the vigil leading up to an execution.

“I just put a black wreath in my window, take my check for $4,500 and leave,” said one homeowner.

The town outside the prison walls was built by the guards and support staff that served San Quentin. It is now home to an eclectic populace, including a ballroom dance teacher, the retired editor of a national magazine, a nurse, several artists, a fashion designer, a photographer and a stockbroker.

The prison was built on 440 seaside acres in 1852. Initially planned for no more than 50 inmates, San Quentin now houses 5,861, including 490 on death row.

“Every time we get a group going through here, they want to know about San Quentin Village,” said Paul Ouellette, curator of the San Quentin Museum. “They can’t get over the idea there’s a community right outside the prison walls.”

Many visitors are curious about escapes from the high-security facility or the prison’s low-security ranch, which is adjacent to San Quentin.

The most recent escapes were in 1997, when two inmates walked away from the ranch and were captured several days later, miles away. Two attempted escapes in the 1970s were foiled, while a third breakout ended with the deaths of three guards and five prisoners on prison grounds, Ouellette said.

But many villagers say they worry more about parking--at a premium as the prison has grown--and about stormy weather obscuring their ocean views.

Houses in San Quentin Village rarely go up for sale, real estate agents say. When they do, the address frightens off potential buyers.

“We hardly have any sales out there at all; the houses don’t go on the market that often,” said Tom Gioseffi, a real estate broker. “And when they do, 80% of people, when they hear where the house is located, refuse to even go see it.”

A small two-bedroom house with a prison view was on the market for six months before selling for $265,000 in 1997, this during Marin County’s real estate boom, Gioseffi said.

The same home just a block away would bring about $50,000 more. Put it in Tiburon, a neighboring community of waterfront homes, and it would sell for about $400,000, he said.

“The prices are a bit lower than if the same house were somewhere else,” Gioseffi said “But that’s understandable.”

Not to Don Zubler, who has lived 50 of his 79 years in San Quentin Village.

Zubler said his father was a guard and that his uncle served as warden in the 1940s. His sister was born on prison grounds, and the Zubler children attended a small school that was near where the post office now stands.

“When I was a child, we had a cook, a gardener, a houseboy, all prisoners,” Zubler recalled. “We had a guy just to keep the car clean. It was a 1937 Buick four-door sedan, and that thing shone like a silver dollar.

“It’s a wonderful place to live, and it was a wonderful place to grow up,” he said. “I always say I have a lousy parole officer--I just keep coming back.”

Zubler’s grandparents came to San Quentin in 1895 and bought the house in which he lives. Set on a hillside, the front rooms have panoramic bay and prison views. He inherited the home when his grandparents died.

Unlike the rest of Marin County, which has been transformed in the past decade from a rural enclave to a string of growing suburbs, little has changed in San Quentin Village.

“Those condominiums are the only new development in a long time,” Zubler said. “Things don’t change here very fast or very often.”

One thing that has changed is the guards, now called officers, who staff the prison gate and watch over work crews, Zubler said.

“The guards used to watch over those work gangs holding 30-30 carbines; Now they’ve got cell phones,” he said. “And it was all hangings in those days. I never saw one, but everyone in town knew when it was happening.”

Executions resumed at San Quentin in 1992 and occasionally disrupt life here.

Four prisoners have have been put to death since then and as another execution date approaches, many residents refuse to even talk about the subject.

“When it’s over, everything is quiet again,” said one villager who declined to give his name. “And then we’re back where we started, San Quentin, Small Town USA.”