The Deed Covenant Hiding in Some Alameda Point Titles

A buyer we worked with last year pulled up the preliminary title report on a resale in Site A, the newer stretch of Alameda Point tucked behind the East Gate near Seaplane Lagoon. Buried in the exceptions was a reference to "institutional controls" tied to a specific parcel number. Her natural hazard disclosure had already told her the obvious thing: this was once part of the Alameda Naval Air Station, a federal Superfund site. What it hadn't told her was that the obligation didn't end with a signature on a disclosure form. For some parcels here, it got written into the deed itself, and it doesn't expire when escrow closes.

That distinction is the thing most buyers in this part of the West End never get explained to them, and it's worth understanding before you write an offer.

The Checkbox Everyone Sees, The Clause Almost Nobody Reads

Every Alameda buyer gets a Natural Hazard Disclosure report as part of a standard transaction. Alameda County's own disclosure guidance tells agents and buyers that these reports may flag properties near or within federal Superfund cleanup sites, and recommends buyers ask their NHD provider what maps and information are actually available. For most of Alameda, that's a formality. For Alameda Point, it's the surface of something deeper.

The Alameda Naval Air Station covered roughly 2,800 acres on the western tip of the island before it closed and was renamed Alameda Point. The Environmental Protection Agency placed it on the Superfund program's National Priorities List in 1999. Decades of industrial use left contamination scattered across more than 30 separate cleanup sites, known in Navy documents as Installation Restoration sites. The Navy has reported spending over $500 million cleaning them up, and most are now fully remediated and transferred out of federal hands. A few are not.

Here's what the standard disclosure doesn't spell out: at certain IR sites, the Navy's chosen remedy wasn't to remove every trace of contamination before selling the land. It was to leave permanent restrictions in place instead, restrictions that get recorded directly into the deed and pass to every future owner regardless of whether they know the history exists.

Not Every Parcel Carries the Same Obligation

This is where it gets specific, and where a generic "this was a military base" caveat stops being useful.

Take IR Site 16, a former shipping container storage area near the Seaplane Lagoon shoreline. Groundwater there posed a residual vapor intrusion risk, meaning vapors from contamination below ground could theoretically migrate into a building above it. The Navy's original plan called for short-term institutional controls while active groundwater treatment ran its course. In 2015, that plan changed. The Navy formally revised the remedy to make the controls permanent, to be implemented indefinitely in the deed at the time of transfer, as the long-term protection against vapor intrusion risk rather than a temporary bridge to something else.

The EPA describes institutional controls in plain terms as activity and use limitations, tools that reduce exposure by limiting how land can be used going forward, sometimes through zoning restrictions that prevent uses inconsistent with the level of cleanup actually performed. In practice, that can mean limits on deep excavation, restrictions on drilling wells, or requirements to maintain a vapor mitigation system built into a home's foundation without disturbing it.

The critical point for a buyer: these controls are parcel specific, not a blanket condition across every home at Alameda Point. A unit at Corsair Flats or The Starling, the affordable communities Eden Housing built on Block 8 of Site A, may sit on land with a completely different remediation history than a market-rate townhome two blocks away. You cannot assume anything from the fact that a home is new construction or that the neighborhood looks finished. You have to ask which IR site, if any, sits under or near the specific parcel.

Site A Is Still Being Built, and Not All of It Is in Private Hands Yet

The other thing worth knowing before you buy here: Alameda Point is not a finished neighborhood being sold off the shelf. It's an active handoff from the Navy, happening building by building, on a timeline the Navy doesn't fully control.

On the growth side, the momentum is real. In September 2023, the Alameda City Council approved amendments to the Site A development agreements adding 610 housing units, including 194 affordable and 416 market rate, along with infrastructure for a waterfront performing arts center, a second phase of Waterfront Park with a kayak launch, and a $300,000 contribution toward a future recreation facility. That's a neighborhood still adding pieces, not one that stopped moving the day the first homes closed.

On the other side of that same base, progress has stalled in ways that matter if you're weighing how quickly the surrounding land will fill in. Building 5, where Navy planes were once overhauled on West Tower Avenue, has been stuck since 2019 in a dispute between the Navy and California's health department over what cleanup standard even applies to residual radium-226 contamination. As of February 2026, the two sides remained at an impasse, with the Navy telling the Alameda Post it was still waiting on the state to confirm that its federal cleanup obligations had been satisfied before the building can transfer to the city for redevelopment. A few blocks away, Building 41, the hangar at West Tower Avenue and Ferry Point Road, can't transfer to the city at all until the Navy finishes a separate Record of Decision covering PFAS contamination, a process that has historically taken around five years once it formally begins.

None of this means the homes for sale today are unsafe or that Site A is stalling. It means the base is being released to private ownership unevenly, and a buyer evaluating how the neighborhood around a specific home will develop over the next several years should know that some of what's still labeled "Alameda Point" on a map is, legally, still Navy property tangled in an active regulatory dispute.

What This Means Before You Write an Offer

If you're seriously considering a home in Site A or elsewhere at Alameda Point, a few questions are worth asking before your contingency period runs out, not after.

Ask your agent or title company whether the preliminary title report references any recorded institutional control, land use covenant, or activity and use limitation tied to the parcel. If one exists, ask which IR site it corresponds to and what specifically it restricts, since a vapor intrusion control and a groundwater monitoring restriction impose very different obligations on a homeowner.

If you're looking at a converted structure rather than new construction, such as one of the historic base buildings repurposed for residential use, ask whether the transfer from the Navy included lead-based paint conditions. Properties transferred under the Navy's lease agreements for structures built before 1978 typically require abatement or disclosure of lead-based paint hazards before residential use, a condition attached at the point of transfer rather than something a seller volunteers.

And if a vapor mitigation system is present, ask who is responsible for its ongoing operation and maintenance, and whether that responsibility is disclosed anywhere beyond the standard NHD checkbox.

None of this is a reason to avoid Alameda Point. It's one of the more actively invested corners of the West End, with real parks, a working ferry terminal, and new housing still being approved. But the standard disclosure package treats "former Naval Air Station" as a single fact to check off. The deed itself sometimes tells a longer story, and it's the one that actually governs what you can and can't do with the ground under your home.

A Short FAQ

Does every home at Alameda Point have a deed covenant like this? No. Institutional controls are recorded parcel by parcel, tied to specific former contamination sites. Many parcels, including much of the developed Site A housing, carry no such restriction. The only way to know for a specific address is to check the title report and ask which IR site, if any, applies.

Is Alameda Point still an active Superfund site? Parts of it are. Most of the roughly three dozen original cleanup sites have been fully remediated and transferred, but a handful, including areas tied to radium-226 and PFAS contamination, remain under active Navy cleanup as of 2026.

Do institutional controls ever go away? Some are designed to be reviewed and potentially lifted once cleanup goals are met. Others, like the permanent vapor intrusion controls tied to IR Site 16, were designed to remain in place indefinitely as the long-term protective measure rather than a temporary step toward something else.

If you're weighing a home in this part of the West End, or anywhere else in Alameda, Jill Friedrich and the Friedrich Homes Group can walk the title history with you before you write an offer, not after. Reach out for a conversation about what a specific Alameda Point parcel actually carries with it.