Most Kentfield mornings, the College of Marin is scenery. You cross Sir Francis Drake, wait behind the fire station, and the Academic Center goes by on your left the way a warehouse might in a less lucky town. It's a place your teenagers might take a summer class, or where you park when Half Day Cafe's lot fills up.
That relationship is quietly being rewritten this year, and the reason isn't a new building or a new restaurant. It's a calendar. College of Marin is one hundred years old in 2026, and the centennial has pushed a season's worth of free, public programming out of the campus and onto the block.
If you live within walking distance of 835 College Ave, the campus you have been treating as background is, for the next several months, the closest thing Kentfield has to a downtown.
What Actually Opened in February
The first sign was a ribbon. On February 4, 2026, the college held the ribbon-cutting for the David Wain Coon Center for Student Success on the Kentfield Campus. The building consolidates advising, the transfer and career center, and student support programs that used to be scattered across the campus into a single address with an atrium on the third floor and a new Professional Learning and Development Center on the first.
For residents, the practical read is simple. The block just picked up a modern, daylit interior with public-facing hours, which changes how the campus feels when you cut through it on foot. It also anchors the visual identity of the centennial year. Spring convocation on January 15, 2026 gathered in the James Dunn Theatre on the Kentfield Campus to honor the college's centennial milestone, and the CSS building has been the physical set for most of what has followed.
The Week to Put on the Calendar
The centerpiece is a week most Kentfield households have not heard of yet. Taking place May 4 to 9 at the Kentfield Campus, the Centennial Showcase is a week-long, college-wide celebration bringing together a cross-disciplinary exhibition of research, projects, and artwork from students, faculty, and staff across the college. The event invites students, employees, alumni, and the broader community to explore ideas, celebrate collaboration, and experience the innovation and creativity that continue to shape COM in its 100th year.
Translation for a resident who does not need a college credit: it is a free walk-through of a campus that is usually closed to you, with programming that runs mid-morning into the evening. A partial sampling from the published event guide:
- The COM Art Gallery hosts a student show organized and installed by the Gallery Design and Installation class, with sculpture, ceramics, drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, architecture, and jewelry, running the entire Showcase week.
- The Multilingual Multicultural Makerspace opens outside AC 109/111 with self-guided maker carts and making tables during ESL Lab hours, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm Monday through Friday and 5:00 to 6:30 pm Monday through Thursday.
- A walking tour built around the photography and design of the late Shook Chung, Senior Creative Designer at the College of Marin, tracing fifteen years of the campus's visual identity.
- Drama Program COMmunity Hour performances of Jaclyn Backhaus's Men on Boats in PA 032, revisiting the 1869 Colorado River expedition.
The Nights the Studio Theatre Is Doing the Work of a Downtown
Kentfield does not have an evening main street. What it has, this spring, is a small campus theater running programming that a larger town would put in a nicer room and charge more for.
Men on Boats returns to the Studio Theatre in the Performing Arts Building on May 16 at 7:30 pm and May 17 at 2:00 pm, staging the true-ish history of an 1869 expedition when a one-armed captain and a crew of loyal volunteers set out to chart the Colorado River. It is a play about ten people in four boats, cast against type, and the Studio is small enough that the front row is inside the argument.
The other centennial anchor is choral. In celebration of the College of Marin's Centennial, Marin Oratorio performs The World Beloved: A Bluegrass Mass with a live bluegrass band. For a household that has debated whether the drive into San Rafael for a concert is worth it on a school night, the answer this season is that the walk down College Ave is shorter.
Marin Shakespeare's summer stagings do sit off the peninsula this year. As You Like It runs at Forest Meadows in San Rafael on dates including July 2, 3, and 4, 2026 at 7:30 pm, with tickets $15 to $49. That is a car trip, not a walk. But it is worth putting on the same page mentally, because the through line of the season is that Kentfield residents suddenly have a lot of live performance within fifteen minutes of the driveway.
The Three Doors Between Your Car and the Campus Gate
The block reorganized itself around the campus this year, in a way you may only have half-noticed. Three addresses on the north side of College Ave are worth naming, because they are what makes a Showcase visit or a Tuesday night play into a normal evening rather than a project.
| Address | What's there | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| 735 College Ave | Woodlands Market | A family-owned upscale grocery since 1986 with prepared foods, a coffee bar, and a deli; recently marked its 38th anniversary |
| 848 College Ave | Half Day Cafe | Sits on College Avenue in Kentfield across the street from the College of Marin, breakfast and lunch, closes mid-afternoon |
| 860 College Ave | Rio Rock Acai Cafe | Reopened in January under new owner Wuilian (Willy) Reyes after a ten-month closure, keeping the açai bowls and adding sandwiches like avocado toast and lox bagel, with boba and espresso drinks coming soon |
The Rio Rock reopening is the most consequential of the three, and the most under-reported. A ten-month dark storefront directly across from the campus is a small vacancy for a downtown but a large one for a two-block commercial strip. Reyes studied at College of Marin and worked at a local Kwik Serv before taking over, which is the kind of provenance that tends to stick. If you want a working morning routine that includes the campus, the sequence is now Woodlands for the pantry list, Half Day for the sit-down breakfast that closes at 2:30, and Rio Rock for the mid-afternoon açai on the way back to a Studio Theatre show.
One October Date Off the Peninsula
The final centennial-year event is not in Kentfield, and you should still know about it. The College of Marin Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2026 is inducted on October 3, 2026 at the Jonas Center on the Indian Valley Campus in Novato, with the event open to the College of Marin community, alumni, supporters, and the broader Marin community. The class is the first group selected following the relaunch of the Hall of Fame during the Centennial Year and includes two historic teams and three individuals whose contributions span more than six decades.
For a Kent Woodlands household that has had a kid pass through Bacich, Kent Middle, then Redwood, then a season at COM before transferring, this is the ceremony that turns a commuter campus into a lineage.
A Centennial-Year Walking Loop
Put together, the season sketches a loop that fits a Kentfield afternoon. Start at Woodlands, cross to the Academic Center at 835 College Ave, drop through the new David Wain Coon CSS building, walk the Showcase exhibitions during the first week of May or the COM Art Gallery on any other week, and end at Rio Rock or Half Day depending on the hour.
None of it requires a ticket. Most of it requires only that you register the campus as somewhere you are allowed to be.
The Take
The neighborhood claim worth holding onto is small and specific: for one calendar year, the block of College Ave that most Kentfield residents treat as a pass-through is doing the work of a cultural district. The centennial makes it free, the Studio Theatre and the CSS atrium make it comfortable, and the three storefronts across the street make it a normal weekday plan rather than a special outing.
If you are thinking about how a house in Kent Woodlands, or a condo near Bon Air, actually fits the rhythm of your family in a given year, this is the kind of local pattern worth tracking. Suzanne Hughes Homes lives in that level of detail, and would rather talk about a Tuesday night walk to the Studio Theatre than a set of general amenities. Elevate your next move — contact Suzanne today.
