Past the bronze horse at the edge of Blackie's Pasture, the shoreline was scheduled to be a work zone this fall. The Town said in August that construction equipment and trucks would cross parts of the pasture to reach the water. The contract for Greenwood Beach and Brunini Beach calls for removing old asphalt and grading back the steep, eroded face of the shore, then rebuilding it with sand, gravel, cobble and logs.
The Town of Tiburon's target for finishing construction is Nov. 20, later this month. But this project is designed so that the bay does part of the work. On the day the trucks leave, the beach at Blackie's will be at its starting point. Over the following months, waves and wind will push the new material into its final shape.
Material the tides are supposed to move
Shorelines like this one are often protected with riprap, a wall of large boulders, or with a seawall. Tiburon chose something different. According to the Marin Independent Journal, the project is a "living shoreline." Coarse beach sediment is placed along the water's edge, and waves spread it into a natural beach profile.
David Eshoo, engineering manager for the Town's Public Works Department, described it to The Ark this way:
"We're installing a living shoreline, meaning that the material that's being installed here at this beach, the wave action will pull the material out and push it back in so that it doesn't erode any of the areas along Blackie's Pasture."
The design still has some structure to keep the sediment in place. The California State Coastal Conservancy's staff report calls for drift sills made of cobble and salt marsh, set at right angles to the shore. These sills are semi-permeable, so they hold sediment without stopping it from moving entirely. Behind the beach, the backshore is regraded to a gentler slope. The Ark's account of the construction contract describes two rock sills on Brunini Beach and a log backstop on Greenwood Beach.
When the Town Council approved the contract, Councilmember Alice Fredericks asked whether this approach was "considered superior to boulders and rocks." Eshoo answered, "Absolutely, that is correct," as reported by the Marin IJ.
The fill under the old beach
The project was needed because Greenwood Beach was partly built on fill, and the bay had been washing it out. The Conservancy reports that the shoreline contained earthen fill from before the 1960s, along with asphalt, concrete and debris, and that erosion was exposing more of it over time. Clearing out that material is part of the contract.
The Conservancy chose Greenwood as a demonstration site for three reasons:
- it is open to the public, so anyone can see the results
- its ecology before development could support a complete beach system
- its conditions are common around San Francisco Bay, so lessons learned here can apply elsewhere
The project covers roughly 600 feet of shoreline. The Conservancy's staff recommendation breaks it down like this:
| Habitat type | Approximate area |
|---|---|
| Beach | 0.65 acre |
| Wetland | 0.2 acre |
| Transitional habitat | 0.25 acre |
| Planted with native wetland and backshore vegetation | 0.4 acre |
The planting list includes gumplant, pickleweed and California sea-blite. The staff report identifies sea-blite as endangered. The Ark reports a larger total footprint of about 1.4 acres for Greenwood and Brunini together. That figure measures the whole work area, while the table above counts each habitat type separately.
The design team named in the Conservancy's report includes coastal engineer Roger Leventhal, coastal ecologist Peter Baye and wetland scientist Dan Gillenwater. An earlier preliminary design report from April 2021 lists Leventhal and Baye along with Mark Lorang and San Francisco Estuary Institute staff Julie Beagle, Jeremy Lowe and Ellen Plane. The Conservancy also notes that bay beaches like this one can give shorebirds places to feed and to roost at high tide.
Nov. 20 ends construction and starts the establishment period
The work has happened in two phases. The Marin IJ reported that the first phase started in March and mostly involved installing the drift sills and bringing in sediment. The Town Council voted 3-0 on Aug. 19 to give the second phase to Livermore-based Goodfellow Bros. for $468,983. The council also authorized the town manager to approve change orders of up to 15 percent, which would bring the maximum cost to $539,330. The Marin IJ reported that the grant the town received from the Coastal Conservancy in 2024 will fully reimburse the contract. Reports in August gave slightly different start dates for the second phase. The IJ said Sept. 1, and The Ark said Sept. 8, the day after Labor Day.
Eshoo gave Nov. 20 as the expected end of construction and said "additional establishment periods, monitoring and maintenance work" would follow. On a beach designed to shift, this matters. The plantings need time to take root, and the sediment needs time and tides to settle into its profile. The beach walkers see in late November will keep changing after that.
Until then, the construction areas on the beaches stay closed. The Town has said it intends "to maintain public access to as much of Blackie's Pasture and the surrounding trail system as practical, while restricting access to the active construction and staging areas," per Eshoo's email to the Marin IJ. The Town announced the start of work on its News Flash page, and that is the best place to check current access before walking a dog down to the water.
The project also matters beyond these two beaches. Eshoo told the IJ that Greenwood will be a pilot program, and that the town may use the same approach on other parts of its shoreline. How well this beach holds up over the next few winters could shape how other parts of the Tiburon shoreline are handled.
A pasture named for a horse
Blackie's Pasture is a good place to try a slower, more natural approach because the place has changed in small steps for decades. The Marin History Museum's account of Blackie traces the horse's arrival in California to 1926 or 1927. He became a fixture in the pasture around 1938 and lived there until Feb. 26, 1966. The life-size statue that walkers pass today went up in 1995, almost 30 years after he died.
Several of the town's best-known open spaces connect here. Destination Tiburon describes the Old Rail Trail, also signed as the Tiburon Historical Trail, as a flat walking and biking route from downtown to Blackie's Pasture. It has historical photographs along the way and views across Richardson Bay. A Town newsletter describes Lineal Park as running from Blackie's Pasture to just south of Knoll Park. The park includes McKegney Green and the Old Rail Trail.
Richardson Bay Audubon Center & Sanctuary is a short way along the same shore at 376 Greenwood Beach Road, the street named for the beach under construction. According to Audubon's visitor page, the center is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., is closed on weekends, and has a half-mile trail through oak woodland. The Marin Audubon Society describes Richardson Bay as having extensive tidal marsh and shallow intertidal habitat, with the National Audubon sanctuary along the Tiburon shore. The new Greenwood and Brunini beaches will add plantings and a beach profile designed for that same habitat.
After Nov. 20, the most useful view of the project is to watch how the beach changes over the winter tides. Check where the gravel settles against the sills, where the gumplant and pickleweed take hold, and how far the log backstop at Greenwood stays above the waterline.
If you walk Blackie's Pasture every week, you'll see how this shoreline changes before most people do. That kind of everyday knowledge of a place shapes how the Kristie Martinelli Team works with neighbors across the Tiburon Peninsula. If you have questions about Tiburon, we'd be glad to talk them through with you.
