Sixteen years after Naval Air Station-Alameda ceased operations, the City of Alameda will officially accept 1,400 acres of the former naval base at the May 21, 2013 city council meeting. The city's original application for the land in 1997 was for a no-cost conveyance of the land. The no-cost agreement was shelved for more than a decade as the city pursued master developers to purchase the land from the Navy and construct a complete residential and commercial subdivision.

Following failure with the last master developer in 2010, the city decided to manage the environmental review, zoning, infrastructure planning, and waterfront development planning on its own.

During the city's bid for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Second Campus in 2011, the Navy revived the no-cost agreement, and the city and the Navy agreed to a free transfer of land in phases. According to the May 21, 2013 city staff report, "Pursuant to these agreements, phase 1 conveyance of approximately 1,379 acres, including 509 acres of land and 870 acres of submerged land of the Alameda Point property is now scheduled to be transferred from the Navy to the City at the end of May or early June 2013."

This first phase encompasses the majority of land that the city is slated to receive, and will allow the city to begin next year to solicit investors to develop a new Seaplane Lagoon waterfront and mixed-use town center, as well as nearby residential. The final land transfer will occur in 2019 when environmental cleanup is completed.

Separately, the Navy will be conveying 624 acres of the former airfield to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in late 2013 or early 2014.