The Way We Were

Mike Read, a former resident who is the head of the Novato Historical Guild, shared these photos of what the valley looked like before the park was built, and more. You can pick out View Ridge with all the trees on its right side, a little to the left of the center.

1948:

A closeup:

 

From Hamilton Field, 1970.

Flyer for the new park:

Here’s an early lot plan MVMCC_grading_plan. Wonder what happened to that putting green…

And a hearty round of applause to all the loving homeowners over the years who planted the trees and bushes and flowers we enjoy now!

Published articles about the Park

Planners Approve Rezoning Of 120 Acres For Trailer Homes

Sept. 30, 1964 – Novato Advance

Marin County is still in the “Dark Ages” so far as mobile home park construction is concerned. This is the opinion of the half dozen local trailer owners who happily watched the city planning commission recommend the rezoning of 120 acres at the southern city limits for the establishment of a plush mobile home park.

Asking for and getting the rezoning approval by a 6-0 vote was John A Lydden, owner of the property which sprawls through two valleys and over several knolls east of Highway 101 and immediately south of Hamilton Air Force Base.

Lydden told the commissioners that 45 of the property’s acres are proposed for a mobile home park of some 350 units. Also planned for the facility are two swimming pools, two laundry rooms, and a recreational building.

One Of Finest

Saying that the park would not be visible from Highway 101 because of an intervening hill. Lydden described the park plan as “one of the finest mobile home designs in northern California.” He reported that the trailer homes would be placed along 30-foot wide streets in “two primary valleys” on the property. He said that the design would avoid having the trailers “stacked in rows like so many soldiers.”

Henry Arana, representing San Francisco’s Trans American Engineers, designers of the plan, told the commission that the mobile home pads would range from a minimum of 3200 square feet to a maximum of 4200 square feet.

Arana claimed that the park, proposed for adult tenants only, would be the best in design ever made by his company, which has planned mobile home parks for several other California areas.

Support for Lydden and Arana came quickly from the half-dozen mobile home residents.

Earl Head, of 7530 Redwood Highway, who described himself as a longtime mobile home dweller, said, “We need a development like this. It is hard to understand why Marin County is still back in the dark ages so far as mobile home parks are concerned.”

Head claimed that the county is losing the spending power of many trailer owners who must go to Sonoma and Vallejo to find good parks. He concluded, “This is a fine plan, and I would like to see it approved.”

Mrs. A.T. Lambden, also of 7530 Redwood Highway, said “My husband is a construction worker. We have to move around because of his work. It’s discouraging to bring a mobile home to an area and then have no place to put it.”

Mrs. Harry Whittaker, of 7466 Redwood Highway, argued for the rezoning and the proposed park by saying “There should be a means for older people in lower-income brackets to live here in Marin County.”

Lydden and the mobile homeowners got limited support from the commission.

Commissioner Richard Alcorn said, “I think we need a development of this sort in Novato, and I think this will be a fine development.”

Commissioner Al Bellucci said, “I feel the area is acceptable for a mobile home park … I would like to see a real first-class development on the site. It will set the precedent for future mobile home development in the city.”

But the Commissioners, despite these first words of support, held certain doubts about the feasibility of the site for trailer use.

They worried about the steepness of grade of certain of the proposed streets and the roadway entering the park from 101. They wondered about the adequacy of street widths for handling incoming and outgoing trailers. And they called for a second exit for use in emergencies.

Problems

They agreed with Bellucci that these and other problems should be investigated and resolved when a more precise plan of the development is presented to them.

Such a plan, they said, will have to be presented in the wake of an approved rezoning, for city ordinance requires that developers in a mobile home zone obtain a use permit prior to any construction.

The commission – on the motion of Bellucci and with a second from Alcorn – approved the rezoning. Voting in favor of rezoning were Alcorn, Bellucci, Chairman Robert Johnson, and Commissioners Wayne Hathaway, Samuel Young and Frank Valim. Absent from the meeting was Commissioner Dr. Merton Shelton.

The recommended rezoning now goes before the city council on October 20, for final action.

 

Oct. 1967, Novato Advance

The city planning commission for the second time approved a use permit for a 334-space trailer park on 121 acres located south of Hamilton Air Force Base. The use permit had been originally approved more than two years ago but had lapsed. Developer John A. Lyddon explained that a “financial squeeze” had delayed construction of the trailer park. It is located on the east side of Highway 101 and the trailer park area will be obscured by a hill.

Dec. 1967, Novato Advance

The opposition threw in its big guns to shoot down the proposed 230-unit mobile home park proposed by Paul Sade for a 50-acre parcel on Olive Avenue near Atherton Avenue. By a 3-2 vote the proposal was defeated by the Marin Board of supervisor’s which overrode the planning commission’s 6-1 recommendation for approval of the plan. The county planning staff had recommended denial of the plan and the Novato planning commission, acting only in an advisory capacity earlier split 3-3.

 

Ground Breaking for the Clubhouse

October 24, 1969, Novato Advance

Looking very immobile, this $250,000 recreational complex will become the center of living in the new Marin Valley Mobile County Club located south of Hamilton Air Force Base. Groundbreaking for the center was held on Friday, October 24, 1969. Overlooking San Francisco Bay, the 18,000 square foot community center will have social rooms, card and billiard rooms, a gymnasium, sauna baths, shuffleboard, a putting green and therapeutic and swimming pools for 600 adult families for which the Mobile Country Club is designed. Financed by Bank of America and its venture capital subsidiary, Small Business Enterprises Company, the multi-million dollar project is being developed by Julio V. Dougherty Realty of San Mateo. The contractor is Page Construction Co. of Novato. Settled on 160 hillside acres between two oak-studded valleys away from the highway, the County Club has 170 completed home sites and plans for 430 spaces to be added by next spring. A large selection of mobile homes priced from $11,000 to $35,000 is on display at the park site. Homes are located in angled fashion in separate little neighborhood clusters of five spaces to an acre, all serviced by underground utilities. Landscaping will provide large green areas, shrubs, and expansive lawns to enhance the setting of the mobile home park.

1971, Novato Advance, Mobile Home park Wants Hookups

A form of TV “snow blindness” threatens the eyesight of Marin Valley Mobile Country Club residents because they don’t have cable TV service, their attorney complained to the council last night.

He said occupants of 60 pads in the mobile home park were and had been ready, willing and able to pay for cable TV service for a long time. Without cable TV service, reception is awful, said attorney Thomas C. Moroney of San Mateo. Residents of Marin Valley have been denied such pleasures as seeing all the best football game, he said, and presented a petition with 14 signatures urging the council to instruct G’TEC Cable TV “to proceed immediately with the installation of the necessary coaxial cable to provide TV service to this area.”

Edward H. Fifer, 8 Wild Oak Drive, said a cable TV hook-up is available right outside his mobile home door, but he can’t get the service. He said the mobile home park will have 150 pads occupied by next summer.

Moroney charged that G’TEC has made “unfulfilled representations” to Marin Valley Mobile Country Club and that delays have cost $2000 in forced installations of temporary antennae for each resident.

May 3, 1983, Novato Advance

About 100 Marin Valley Mobile Home Park tenants, hopping mad, overflowed City Council chambers last night and won a promise of attempted mediation for a series of problems. Tenants told the council that rents have been routinely raised by eight percent a year since 1975. In the past, inflation was used as the reason for rental increases, tenant and attorney Walter E. Pose testified. But CPI dropped, rents continued to rise. He characterized the pattern as “gouging the tenants.”

Co-owner Eleanor Sade responded that this year, for the first time in years, she and her husband were “catching up a little bit. We have said that next year is the CPI is down we will certainly consider (changing the rent increase),” she said, to a chorus of disbelieving groans from tenants.

Here’s the history of the Park as lived by one of the oldest residents, Bill Crozier

Mike has pulled together the following info about the park acquisition process so far: Notes_on_process_of_Park_acquisition_by_residents