Overview

• Constructed in 1964 for McGraw-Hill, the 166,000-square-foot campus features a 123,000-square-foot warehouse and a 43,000-square-foot concrete office building now part of the $36 million deal.
• The museum will center on Charles and Ray Eames’s 40,000-artifact archive while hosting rotating exhibitions and partnerships with other institutions.
• Adaptive-reuse plans include exhibition halls, makerspaces, educational workshops, retail and culinary venues linked by sculpture gardens and public plazas.
• Novato planners are reviewing zoning under Marin County’s cultural-destination goals as the institute targets 200,000 annual visitors.
• Strong public demand at the Richmond Eames Archives—where visitor waitlists exceed 1,000—underscores the need for expanded design programming in the North Bay.