Heads up. There will be a large crane and extra construction vehicles temporarily changing traffic flows in Marin City for the next few weeks.

The Pacific Companies is developing a 100% affordable housing project at 825 Drake Ave., consisting of 42 rental units. The five-story building will be constructed using modular methods, with prefabricated units delivered by truck and assembled on site using a crane and scaffolding.

Groundwork is complete. The developer will assemble the modular buildings onsite starting Jan. 22, and anticipates completion by Feb. 13.

The installation phase for the modular structures is expected to last up to three weeks, with as many as four trucks staged along Drake Avenue to support deliveries.

During active construction, street parking along the affected stretch of Drake Avenue will be unavailable from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., though overnight parking will remain permitted. Construction activities are scheduled between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., and nearby residents and businesses should expect daytime noise and dust.

The culmination of years of opposition

The project has been the subject of years of opposition and legal challenges. It was initially approved as a 74-unit development but a compromise by the Marin County Board of Supervisors split the project, reducing the Drake Avenue site to 42 units and shifting the remaining 32 units to a second location in Tamalpais Valley.

The Drake Avenue development includes 25 housing vouchers to support very low- and extremely low-income residents.

Weekly updates will be posted on the county project page and shared via Nextdoor.

For updates, questions, and concerns, please email Immanuel Bereket at the county or email the developer.

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.