Love Of Work Drives Affordable Housing Developer

On an afternoon in the Meadow Park neighborhood of Hamilton Field, a few residents might be seen at the park in the center of some 350 homes, all condominiums, in Novato's most recently completed affordable housing project.  Two-levels of grass, lined by paved paths, are a setting for dog walking, biking or relaxing, and there is a small play structure for kids to crawl on.  Occasionally, several people gather under the gazebo, around picnic tables covered in festive foods to celebrate a birthday or even a holiday.  

The park's setting is tranquil and green with a an overhead view of the neighborhood: numerous A-line rooftops, the Mission-style fire station, and the tree-packed hills across the freeway.  

Adding to the soundscape of squawking birds and, maybe, a few voices, are the beeps and engine groans of the construction effort happening at .  The expansion and modernization of the school is taking place, in part, to accommodate the influx of students of the past decade that, via the Hamilton Air Force Base Redevelopment project, now call the former air base "home."  

Off to the side of the park, is a sign that reads "Clark A. Blasdell Park."  Amid the  peace of the setting, one might find enough quiet to wonder, "Who the heck is Clark A. Blasdell?" 

Clark A. Blasdell, the person, sits in an office across the freeway at North Bay Family Homes, a non-profit organization Blasdell founded and chairs that fundraises for the development of affordable housing communities.  What many residents of Hamilton's Meadow Park, Creekside, and Bay Vista don't know is that Clark Blasdell and his associates have, as he describes it, "created the paperwork" for them to live there. 

"I get to be anonymous," says Blasdell.  "I get to do something that's very important to people I haven't yet met, and then I meet them when they move in."  

Bladsell, originally from an area of "country between Gilroy and Morgan Hill," has lived in Novato since 1974.  The son of a railroad switchman father and a farmhand mother, Blasdell learned the value of hard work while growing up as he, along with his mother and siblings, worked long days laboring on farms, picking various crops, and doing chores at their own home, tending to the chickens and milking the cows.  

Blasdell's mother taught him that it was "not free to live in this family,"  and his father, whom Blasdell credits for inspiring a voracious reading habit and love of learning beyond the school day, told him, "You can always find work, if you look hard enough and do something you really don't like."

Blasdell recalls the time of his childhood, right after the war, when "everyone just worked."  He remembers one year when school started three weeks late because the prunes weren't picked.  "Every crop has its time, " he says.

Blasdell, who holds a master's degree in Industrial Engineering Administration from U.C. Berkeley, has a professional resume that, one might say, includes everything but the kitchen sink: promotions manager, car repair shop owner, architect, Native America activist.

His Novato story begins in a fabled, 70's sort of way, with his VW bus breaking down in Berkeley, a call to his mechanic in Novato, Blasdell's buying the shop, and he and his business partner becoming mechanics to the stars. Mickey Hart and Steve Miller were among the Rock-N-Roll clientele.  Blasdell later ran a recording studio, West Wing Sound, in the lot across from the downtown Novato Safeway.

Blasdell became involved in the conversion of Hamilton when he was invited by then Novatan Elizabeth Moody to join the Citizen's Ad Hoc Technical Housing Committee that was created to implement the 1972 general plan.  Blasdell had been attending City Council meetings and was looking for help with his "Hamilton idea."

In 1974, when the closure of the base was announced, Blasdell had the vision to convert the air base, because, he recounts his saying, "This will be fun.  Convert this place and everyone in the world will want to see it."  Blasdell saw it as a great "swords to plowshares story" and he pressed on to see that it took place.

"It seemed like the right thing to do," he says regarding the government's requirement that civilian reuses of military bases be one half affordable housing.  "When you have no poor people, you should have more," he says about Marin's  population.

Blasdell sighs when asked about the success of his mission. "Marin is tough," he says.   "Marin was expected by the year 2000 to be as much as a million people, but, (they said) if we control growth we could keep to 695,000."  According to Google data, Marin's population, as of July 2011, is 255,031.

Thirty-plus years after those early meetings, Blasdell says, "The best projects are the ones that get built….(The Hamilton Reuse Project) was substantially completed with over 2000 units completed between 1996 and 2006."  (Half of the units are affordable and include rehabilitated town-homes, as well as senior homes built in the Pacheco and Ignacio areas, where servicemen of the once active airbase lived.)

But where there is affordable housing there is often opposition, and Novato has been no exception to this reality.  The topic has dominated city council meetings and news forums (like this one).  Detractors claim that affordable housing brings crime to otherwise quiet areas.  As the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) continues to require that bay area cities plan for additional low-income housing options, the often fiery exchange of viewpoints between opponents and supporters continues.  

Blasdell says the dialogue "saddens him" and that he has made attempts to get to know others "to see how the expressed positioning and anger could perhaps be discussed in different way."  He also cited "(his) arrogance" as an obstacle to the discussion:  "It took me long time to get over openly expressing every thought that went through my head."

Overall, Blasdell maintains that he's "pretty happy about most of (the conversion)" and he thinks it's best to "get it 90 percent done and then start fixing it…Don't let the perfect get in the way of the good."  

Blasdell wishes he "argued a little longer and harder about the terms and conditions  imposed," for example the requirements of number of bedrooms connecting to income levels that have resulted, in some cases, larger families living in duplexes and individuals living in triplexes.

Blasdell, who is himself a renter, says he enjoys the work he does and considers himself "a broker between the insecure rich and the insecure poor."  He doesn't like the term affordable housing:  "Housing causes traffic…traffic and angst for the neighbors."  

When asked why he doesn't re-focus his efforts on market-rate developments, he says, "It just seems like it's brain damage for no benefit other than just a bunch of money."  Blasdell says he will continue the work he loves in "trying to achieve more affordable homes for people," and he holds onto "the notion that home is where the heart is."

It is this kind of commitment, perhaps, that Blasdell's colleagues sought to honor by naming a park after him.  "It was Laura's idea," says Blasdell of his North Bay Family Homes associate, Laura Levine.  She surprised him with the unveiling of "The Clark Park," a name Blasdell's brother uses.

I'm pleased to have encountered Novato," says Blasdell who, along with his wife, Kerry, whom he married in the Hamilton Chapel in 1980, has raised two children in Novato, Ben and Nyla.  "I'm pleased that we've finished most of Hamilton." 

Proving that this former farmhand is not done growing communites, he says, "If people have an idea of a place to do something different, call.  I'm not distracted by things that I haven't been able to do."