Hamilton Airfield to Emerge on a New Plane
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What many aviators consider the finest airfield in the San Francisco Bay area is on its way to becoming an office park. Hamilton Airfield, part of the former Hamilton Air Force Base, has been bought by Barker Pacific Group Inc. (415-495-7900), which plans to spend $100 million turning the hangars into 520,000 square feet of two-story office space and adding 30,000 square feet of convenience retail.

Mike Baskauskas said Barker Pacific is "in the middle of putting together all the planning items... The existing hangars, former military hangers built in the 30s, have a clearance of 28 feet minimum, so we decided to build a second floor so they become two-story buildings. There’s a lot of tarmac, so it’s easy to figure out that that’s parking lot, and it becomes a very functional suburban business park layout."

The retail component will probably be as an amenity or support to the project and the community surrounding it, Baskauskas said. "The entire base has transitioned from government to public and private people. Four homebuilders are building 950 homes on the surrounding land in phase one, plus 400 to 500 in phase two. The existing military housing is being renovated too, so it ends up being 2,000 units of housing. It doesn’t make sense for us to become retail center."

Baskauskas envisions the retail section will include a restaurant, a dry cleaner, an exercise facility and some other small retail shops designed to serve the immediate needs of the 2,000 families along with the 2,000 office employees who will be on site during the day. With no nearby population center and no freeway visibility, he said, that’s all that Barker Pacific believes the site will support.

"We’re also talking to two separate companies, retail businesses, looking to relocate their headquarters here. If so, they would locate outlet stores or seconds stores, maybe an additional 10,000 to 15,000 square feet (of retail), but only if they locate here. We have one under letter of intent, and we’re expecting to sign that lease by February 1." Baskauskas declined to name the prospective tenant, saying that was specifically prohibited by the letter of intent.

Marin County is the most exclusive county in the bay area, in terms of median income and average home price, including such towns as Mill Valley, Ross and Tivaron, Baskauskas said. Novato is the city in which Hamilton Airfield is located, and is the northernmost city in Marin County on the way to Sonoma and Napa. "It’s way out in the suburbs to San Francisco," he said, "15 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge." Novato never became a blue-chip town because it was dominated by the military base.

But some companies are beginning to discover Novato and the rest of northern Marin County. Several software companies have moved into Novato, firms such as Brightware, Broderbund (The Learning Co.) and Sonic Solutions, because it is the least expensive place in Marin County. San Raphael, the next town south, has been transformed in recent years by George Lucas’ companies, Industrial Light and Magic, Lucas Arts and THX (digital sound production ). "It’s only two miles away, and it’s become a very desirable location because of George Lucas," Baskauskas said.

"This addition of 500,000 square feet will allow some companies to stay in Marin County. I’m looking forward to making these hangars into a pretty cool place to locate your business. This was a military base, built in the 30s, expanded in the 40s, and was probably the best airfield in area, a lot of people said it’s because it is positioned better than other airports. It was a prime airfield. But Marin County is such a tree hugging county they looked at this as an opportunity to eliminate the airport, and they did. If you talk to the aviation people, this would have been a perfect place for a third airport serving the bay area at an extremely low cost," Baskauskas said.

That option soon will be gone forever, he said. "The runway was oriented toward the bay, so they’re going to breach a levy at the bay and create wetlands over the west end of runway."