Project

Meadow Park at Hamilton

Novato, CA, 2003

A master-planned community providing 708 affordable homes at the former air base in southern Novato, California.

For more than 26 years Northbay Family Homes has been directly involved in facilitating the transfer of ownership of the former Hamilton Air Force Base from the government to private-sector homebuilders with the ultimate destination of individual homeowners.

Long after the air base was decommissioned in 1974, proposals for private re-use were finally solicited by the City of Novato in late 1999. It is significant that four out of five finalists submitting proposals named Northbay Family Homes as a nonprofit partner or affordable housing consultant. The winning proposal, submitted by Novato Community Partners, LLC, was made by a limited liability company formed by Shea Homes and Centex Homes with Shea Homes as the Managing Member.

Meadow Park is a 200-acre parcel and master-planned community providing 708 affordable homes at the former air base in southern Novato, California. Under construction are 351 affordable ownership homes in five neighborhoods. With an award from the Federal Home Loan Bank, 75 low-income families are being qualified to receive grants of $8,000 to assist with their down payments and closing costs. Northbay Family Homes also facilitated take-out financing with the only major lender that could meet the City's comprehensive mortgage lending requirements: Bank of America. On the strength of Northbay Family Homes's reputation, Bank of America decided to portfolio up to $100 million worth of mortgages.

Under our contract with Novato Community Partners, Northbay Family Homes has an exclusive agency contract as exclusive broker to sell all 351 affordable workforce townhomes.

Northbay Family Homes also administers a four-part lottery process for Novato Community Partners to meet the City's complex process that attracted 2,640 applicants for these 351 affordable homes and to qualify both low- and moderate-income-eligible lottery applicants to become buyers.

Our contract with Novato Community Partners also requires that we inform every lottery applicant about the City of Novato's affordable housing requirements and resale controls that were agreed to by the United States Navy before turning the land over to the City for development.

Through our affiliate nonprofit group, Suburban Alternatives Land Trust (SALT), we are the Managing General Partner of two limited partnerships (Creekside and Bay Vista). We financed, built and managed these 297 low-income tax-credit-financed apartment projects at Meadow Park.

It is safe to say that the completion of homebuilding at Hamilton will signaled the fruition of Northbay Family Homes founder Clark Blasdell's original 1970s dream: creating a great deal of housing that is affordable for the workforce families of the North Bay.

Our involvement in Meadow Park at Hamilton included the following service from our Seven Points of Entry in real estate development:

Occupancy Activities (getting buyers into ownership units)