Location: The site is located 5 miles north of San Rafael, in Marin County, California (Figure 1 and Figure 2).
Site History: The 107.75-acre site was established on 31 December 1957 and was known as Rafael Village Family Housing Annex (Hamilton AFB) Military Reservation; Rafael Village Area, Hamilton AFB; Portion Annex Ignacio; San Rafael Village Area,and Rafael Village, Inc., Hamilton Air Force Base, CA. The site was used by the Air Force for single family housing and as a flood protection levee for Hamilton AFB.
Three easements totaling less than 0.5 acre were transferred by quitclaim deed to three private parties between 1967 and 1974. On 22 January 1975, the remaining 01.47 easement acre and 107.02 fee acres were transferred to the Department of the Navy.
Closure Date, Planned Reuses, Parcels Transferred: The Navy Public Works Center, San Francisco Bay, which included DoDHF Novato, was closed under the authority of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990. The housing facilities were closed under the 1993 Round of Closure (BRAC III) on September 30, 1996. The Hamilton Reuse Planning Authority (HRPA) developed a reuse plan for DoDHF Novato in October 1995. This plan addressed reuse of both DoDHF Novato and the adjacent Army Airfield. The Hamilton Army Airfield Reuse Plan proposed adaptive reuse of most of the existing housing and other buildings and retention of the existing land uses.
Remaining Disposal Work: On September 22, 2011, the Navy assigned Parcel 1A to the Department of Education (DoEd) for ultimate conveyance to the Novato Unified School District for educational use purposes. Parcel 1A is the last remaining parcel at DoDHF Novato. With the assignment of Parcel 1A to DoEd, the Navy has completed all of its property disposal actions at DoDHF Novato.
