Three Projects, One Field: Reading San Geronimo Commons in August 2026
August 6, 2026
August 6, 2026
If you walked the loop last Sunday and thought the Commons looked pretty much like the Commons, you were half right. The oaks are the same. The old cart paths still cut across the flat where the fairways used to lie. The clubhouse still hosts what it hosts. What has changed, quietly, is that three separate multi-year projects are now running on top of each other on the same 157 acres, each with a different lead agency, a different funding stream, and a different clock.
For anyone who lives in Woodacre, Forest Knolls, San Geronimo, or Lagunitas and treats this park as part of the weekly rhythm, the useful thing to know is which project is happening on which parcel, and what the next six months are actually going to look like from the parking lot at 5800 Sir Francis Drake.
In June 2022, the Marin Open Space Trust acquired a conservation easement from the Trust for Public Land on 135 acres of the San Geronimo Commons. The easement permanently protects land along San Geronimo and Larsen Creeks as wildlife habitats and publicly accessible open space. The protected area does not include the 22 acres around the former golf clubhouse and community garden.
That 135/22 split is the key to reading the place. The larger acreage is under permanent restrictions on development. The 22 acres around the clubhouse is where new construction can happen. Marin County Parks manages the meadow parcels. San Geronimo Commons is managed by the Marin County Fire Department. This includes the clubhouse, community garden, parking lot, and the meadow below. The Commons will be the home of a new fire station, and remains a community hub space. If you have wondered why some signage says Parks and some says Fire, that is why.
The most visible change this fall will be around the clubhouse. Community feedback will continue to shape the project, with ongoing outreach including another Coffee at the Commons event introducing the design team at 9 AM on Saturday, July 25, at the San Geronimo Commons. The county selected McCarthy Building Companies and COAR Design Group as the design-build team, and Phase 1 of the design-build project is expected to begin with the Notice to Proceed in July 2026 and will take approximately five to six months to complete. That places early design and site work squarely inside August, September, October, November, December.
The rationale for centralizing the department here is a five-minute conversation with anyone who has waited on an ambulance in the Valley. "This is a unique opportunity to improve public safety by moving Fire Department headquarters to a more central location where we can better serve residents of the San Geronimo Valley and greater Marin County," said Marin County Fire Chief, Jason Weber. The old firehouse sat off-center for the coverage area it was actually being asked to serve.
Two practical implications for the near term. First, the clubhouse and community garden footprint stays inside the same 22 acres, so the meadow loops you already walk are not going to be a construction site. Second, Phase 1 is design-build startup work, not vertical construction. Do not expect a building this year. Expect surveyors, utility locators, and a design team taking public comment.
The reason a former golf course was worth $4.5 million to a conservation nonprofit is running under your feet.
San Geronimo Creek and Larsen Creek, key tributaries within the Lagunitas Creek Watershed, flow through the property and support one of the largest remaining populations in the state of endangered Central California Coast Coho Salmon and California freshwater shrimp, among other important aquatic species. The property plays a critical role in ongoing and future restoration efforts for both endangered Coho Salmon and threatened Steelhead Trout populations. Put the acreage against the watershed math and it becomes stark: San Geronimo Creek is the largest un-dammed tributary of the Lagunitas Creek watershed and contains roughly 40 percent of the remaining salmon and steelhead spawning habitat in the basin.
That is the number that explains why Trout Unlimited's North Coast Coho Project has staff on the property year-round doing snorkel surveys and stream-flow measurement. It also explains what the restoration work is aiming at. Larsen Creek is the more altered of the two. An ephemeral waterway that connects to San Geronimo Creek downstream of the Commons, Larsen Creek experienced much more alteration as a result of the golf course's operations. A significant segment of the creek "was put into pipes and shunted through a series of irrigation pond features" before being returned to its historic channel downstream, according to restoration design work led by Environmental Science Associates. Undoing that is not one summer's work.
There is also a water-rights piece that will not be visible to you but matters. Water that was diverted from Larsen Creek to irrigate the former golf course will now remain instream to support federal and state-listed Central California coast coho salmon, steelhead trout and California freshwater shrimp. Every gallon that used to feed a fairway is now a gallon that stays with the fish.
Look at a map of West Marin protected land and the Commons is the buckle. Situated in the heart of West Marin, the San Geronimo Commons sits at the nexus of four existing public open space preserves — Roy's Redwoods, French Ranch, Maurice Thorner, and Gary Giacomini Preserve. The ambition, sketched into the Vision Framework, is a continuous multi-use trail linkage that runs from the Golden Gate National Recreation Area through the Valley to the Point Reyes National Seashore.
For now, the connections are partial. There's a paved trail that links up with the Tocaloma bridge area, so accessibility isn't too bad. Trail conditions: Some of the old golf cart paths are still being converted, so expect a few uneven spots. The perimeter loop remains the workhorse. If you have been walking here since the golf course closed, you have watched the old fairway grass slowly cede ground to native cover, one wet winter at a time.
The next six months are a low-visibility phase from a resident's point of view. That does not mean nothing changes.
One of the accidental gifts of the last four years is that the former golf clubhouse never went dark. TPL, in partnership with community groups, hosted COVID-19 testing and vaccination clinics, a drive-through food pantry, public health fairs, salmon walks, youth cross-country races, and even served as basecamp for CalFire firefighters as they battled the 2020 Woodward Fire in Point Reyes National Seashore. The building learned how to be a civic room before anyone drew up plans for what to do with it.
That role is anchored by the San Geronimo Valley Community Center at 6350 Sir Francis Drake Blvd, whose weekly food pantry, gallery programming, and summer camp still operate out of the Lagunitas School campus a couple of miles east. The Center was originally named the San Geronimo Valley Arts Center when founded in 1969, and its long presence is a good part of why the Commons transition has not felt like a top-down project. There was already a community to hand it to.
The thing to hold in your head as you walk this August is that the Commons is not a park being finished. It is three overlapping restoration and construction projects sharing one field, on three different clocks. The Fire HQ is a five-to-six-month Phase 1 that will not produce a building this year. The creek work is a decade-scale hydrology project measured in coho counts and floodplain reconnection. The trail linkage is a Vision Framework that will fill in year by year as easements settle and old cart paths are pulled up or paved.
None of it is finished. All of it is underway. Knowing which is which is what living here looks like right now.
If you own a home in the Valley, or you are thinking about the kind of place West Marin becomes as these projects mature, B.G. Bates has spent decades reading exactly this kind of land-use and conservation context on behalf of buyers and sellers across the San Geronimo Valley and the rest of West Marin. Begin your West Marin story: reach out to talk through what the next chapter here looks like for you.
B.G. is dedicated to her community and continues to be a known resource with a unique and knowledgeable perspective on all aspects of West Marin.
