The new beaches at Blackie's Pasture are built to give up sand and take it back. If the town's engineers are right, the shoreline you walk past in January will not match the one crews hand back this fall, and the difference will mean the project is working.
The Greenwood Beach Restoration Project covers about 1.4 acres of Richardson Bay shoreline at one of the most-walked stretches of waterfront in town. The town is using sand, gravel and logs in place of the concrete seawalls and riprap that line much of the bay. That makes the beach at the foot of Blackie's Pasture Road a live demonstration of how the material behaves when the water pushes back, and this winter looks likely to push hard.
What Crews Are Putting on Greenwood and Brunini
The work covers two beaches, Greenwood and Brunini. According to The Ark, the Town Council voted 3-0 on Aug. 19 to award the construction contract to Livermore-based Goodfellow Bros. for $468,983. The vote also lets the town manager approve change orders of up to $70,347, for a maximum of $539,330. The project as a whole is budgeted at $1.5 million in the town's adopted FY2026-27 Capital Improvement Program, with grant funding from the California State Coastal Conservancy.
This fall's phase follows an earlier one. In March, crews installed the drift sills and brought in sediment. The current contract finishes the rest:
- Grading back the scarp. That is the steep, cut-away face where the beach has eroded.
- Removing asphalt and debris from the shoreline.
- Two rock sills at Brunini Beach and a log backstop at Greenwood Beach.
- A mixed sand-and-gravel beach, plus native beach and backshore plants, large woody debris, and low cobble salt-marsh drift sills.
- Restored wetland and transitional habitat behind the beach.
A project drawing The Ark published shows the finished layout. The beachface and backshore are in tan, the cobble-armored salt marsh and drift sills are in green, and vegetation is expected to take hold along the edges.
Why the Sand Is Supposed to Leave
The design expects the shoreline to shift with every storm. David Eshoo, the town Public Works Department's engineering manager, explained the idea to The Ark:
"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 Marin Independent Journal, citing a 2024 Coastal Conservancy report, described coarse sediment placed along the shoreline for waves to redistribute into a natural beach profile. The drift sills are meant to hold sediment in place without stopping it from moving. In other words, the shape crews leave behind is a starting point. The waves are expected to finish the grading.
That changes how a walker should read the beach after a storm. Sand pulled down the beachface, or a slope that looks flatter than it did in November, is the system doing its job. The real thing to watch is whether the material comes back between storms and whether the marsh behind the beach holds. According to the Southern Marin Ledger, the beach is meant to absorb wave energy and provide habitat for estuarine organisms, and the town wants it to show that bay beaches built this way can last as an alternative to hardening the shore.
A lot rides on that answer beyond Blackie's. When the contract came before the council, Councilmember Alice Fredericks asked whether the approach was "considered superior to boulders and rocks." Eshoo answered, "Absolutely, that is correct," according to the Marin IJ. He also said the project will serve as a pilot the town could repeat in other areas. Tiburon is separately writing a shoreline adaptation plan, funded by a nearly $600,000 grant from the California Ocean Protection Council and expected to wrap up by January 2028. How Greenwood and Brunini handle the next few months is the first local evidence that plan will have to work with.
A Winter Built to Push Back
The beach's first season looks like a hard one. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center discussion of Oct. 8, 2026, listed an El Niño Advisory and said a strong-to-very-strong El Niño was likely through January to March 2027, with greater than 83 percent probability. The next update is scheduled for Nov. 12.
The California Coastal Commission's September 2026 memo on El Niño describes how strong El Niño winters can stack higher sea levels, more wave energy and storms. The memo covers the whole state and makes no forecast for Richardson Bay. Closer to home, The Ark reported elevated NOAA odds of above-normal California rainfall from November through January. It also reported Marin County emergency director Steven Torrence's observation that actual high tides had been running 6 inches to 1 foot above predictions.
For the beach, that means water reaching higher up the new beachface than the tide tables alone would suggest. This is exactly the kind of energy the gravel, cobble and logs were placed to take.
The Dates to Put on Your Walking Calendar
Construction and the season's highest tides land close together. Expect the beach to get its first hard workout within days of construction ending.
| Date | What's happening |
|---|---|
| Nov. 12, 2026 | NOAA's next scheduled ENSO discussion |
| By Nov. 20, 2026 | Expected end of construction, followed by plant establishment, monitoring and maintenance |
| Nov. 24–26, 2026 | King tides, statewide dates |
| Dec. 23–25, 2026 | King tides, statewide dates |
| Jan. 21–22, 2027 | King tides, statewide dates |
The Nov. 20 finish is the date Eshoo gave the Marin IJ in August. He noted that establishment, monitoring and maintenance work would follow. The California King Tides Project notes that Northern California may also see king tides on Dec. 22, Jan. 20 or Jan. 23. Its dates come from astronomical predictions and leave out storm surge and El Niño effects. With local tides already running above prediction, a king tide that lines up with a storm is the scenario this design was built for.
What to Look For on the Walk
The County of Marin already has a way to track sand moving on this shoreline. Before construction, according to the Southern Marin Ledger, the county placed fluorescent-dyed sand tracers at four spots on the site to follow sediment during storms. The town says the dye is environmentally safe. In the county's earlier reference-beach study, surveys usually took place three to five days after a monitored storm.
A regular walker can track the same story by eye:
- The log backstop at Greenwood. It marks the back of the beach. Watch whether storm water reaches it, and whether sand builds up against it or gets pulled away.
- The two rock sills at Brunini. They are there to hold sediment. Watch how sand collects around them between storms.
- The planted edges. The project drawing shows vegetation expected along the margins. These are new plantings in their establishment period.
- The slope of the beachface. Compare it after a king tide with how it looked the week before.
The Audubon project page asks visitors not to walk on or take material from the earlier drift sill. The beach can only rebuild itself if the material stays where the waves can reach it.
Getting There While Crews Finish
Until the work wraps, the beach construction areas stay closed, and trucks and equipment will cross parts of Blackie's Pasture to reach them. Eshoo told the Marin IJ that "the Town's intent is 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."
Dog walkers should know that on the Old Rail Trail, the paved path that starts at Blackie's Pasture Road and runs toward Cove Road and Tiburon Boulevard, the town's dog code requires a leash "of sufficiently short length to enable such person to maintain constant control over such dog."
The one fixture that will not change this winter is Blackie himself. The meadow is named for a former Presidio cavalry horse that grazed there for 28 years. Albert Guibara's bronze of him has stood on the site since 1995 and can be seen from Tiburon Boulevard along the waterfront path.
Shoreline projects like this one become part of how the Tiburon waterfront is understood for years afterward, and the McArthur Love Team follows them closely. If you have questions about how the town's shoreline work relates to a home along Richardson Bay, we're glad to talk it through. Contact Us.
