Stafford Master Plan

On November 5, 2019, the Marin County Board of Supervisors approved the proposed Mitigated Negative Declaration of Environmental Impact for the Stafford Lake Park Master Plan.

The proposed Stafford Lake Park Master Plan is a comprehensive long-term planning document that, after approval, will be used to guide future development of park facilities, improvements, and programs for at least the next 20 years. It was developed through extensive public engagement with a vision to provide features and programs that would draw diverse populations and activate underutilized areas of the park. The Master Plan includes recommendations to support outdoor recreation, general infrastructure, and circulation improvements and aims to protect natural, cultural, and recreational amenities that currently exist within the park. Specific improvements would be constructed incrementally over the life span of the Master Plan. Funding for implementation of the Master Plan recommendations will come from Measure A..

The Draft Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration was prepared pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). It evaluated the potentially significant environmental impacts that could result from implementing the Master Plan recommendations and recommended mitigation measures to lessen the severity of identified potential impacts to a less-than-significant level. A draft Initial Study was originally circulated for the Master Plan in 2016. Some areas required additional consideration, so the documents were revised. The revised documents were provided for public review October 10 – November 13, 2018.  Changes to the Master Plan and Initial Study include removal of the following three recommendations: swimming lagoon, lake pavilion, and tree camping. Additionally, the biological resources chapter of the Initial Study was revised, including the substitution of mitigation measures, to provide clarification and more protective measures.

• Notice of Public Hearing pdf
• Revised Stafford Lake Master Plan pdf
• Revised Draft Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration pdf
• Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program pdf
• Responses to Comments and Recommendation to Adopt the Mitigated Negative Declaration and Approve the Master Plan pdf

• Draft Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration pdf
• Stafford Lake Master Plan pdf

In late 2013, as part of a county-wide park revisioning effort, Marin County Parks teamed with RHAA Landscape Architects and environmental planning consultants LSA Associates to create the Stafford Lake Park Master Plan. The plan offers a new vision for Stafford Lake Park, which has remained mostly unchanged since its original development as a regional park in the 1970s.

The initial Master Plan brought together over a year's worth of research, outreach, analysis, and design. Public outreach events held between September 2014 and July 2015 gathered community feedback that helped inform the plan. The concepts and recommendations in the plan reflect sustainability in all aspects– ecological, economic, and social.

The Master Plan was updated in November 2017 to incorporate options for more feasible and lower cost alternatives to some of the initial proposals.

As part of the master plan design development effort, RHAA and Marin County Parks held a variety of public outreach events to gather community input that would help guide the design process to best serve the community. These early outreach efforts informed the initial Master plan.Throughout this phase, RHAA presented relevant analysis while community members in turn gave feedback on what aspects of the park they wanted improved or protected.

The outreach efforts were varied in sample size and research method design but were all essential in discerning the diverse set of users and desires for Stafford Lake Park. Public outreach spanned many months, starting in September 2014 and concluding in July 2015. The community input methods were intercept surveys, preferencing exercises at community workshops, an online survey, and focus group meetings.

In addition, the public was invited to offer feedback during comment periods that are a standard part of environmental review.