Development
Whole Foods Market said it expects to complete a 117,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse in Richmond and to begin hiring up to 40 workers for the new distribution center within the month. The new Richmond distribution center will serve over forty Whole Foods Market in Northern California by the end of the year. In a city with unemployment at just over 13 percent, the new jobs will be highly coveted. Most of the employees at the center are expected to transfer to…
Last week, BART officials launched a five-day pilot program to see if bikes and people could fit comfortably onto its trains at all times. Now they are asking the public to complete an online survey that seeks to measure whether the experiment was a success.
Shweta Narayan, one of India’s leading environmentalists, paid the Bay Area a visit last week and presented information about the importance of environmental monitoring when it comes to toxic disasters. For the past nine years, Narayan, and Global Community Monitor, a group based in El Cerrito, have collaborated on air pollution awareness campaigns in India, where she coordinates Community Environmental Monitoring. Narayan spoke at the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco and Center for Environmental Health in Oakland. “It’s…
Five years of abandonment left the house at 127 Chanslor Avenue in Richmond in terrible condition. It caught fire twice from squatters taking advantage of its neglect. (You can read Zach St. George’s previous story on the history of the property here.) As part of a plan to demolish such properties, Richmond’s Code Enforcement Department secured a warrant through the court to tear it down. The city’s Code Enforcement Manager Tim Higares has a list of four other homes he…
Before Tuesday night’s city council meeting, more than 20 people gathered on the chamber steps holding signs—“Richmond needs accountability,” “Investigate little luxuries in Richmond,” and “Richmond United Against Corruption”—in reference to assistant city manager Leslie Knight, who heads the human resources department. The results of a city-funded investigation released last week showed that she had violated city policy by accepting a monthly car allowance while driving a city vehicle, and by using city equipment, space, and employees’ time for things…
A yellow cat runs up the steps of the house on 127 Chanslor Avenue, hopping over the weeds sprouting from the charred wood. It stops in the entryway and turns, shutting its eyes against the sun streaming down through the hole where the roof used to be. The house, on the corner of 2nd Street and Chanslor, in Richmond’s Iron Triangle neighborhood, is abandoned. It’s caught fire—twice. The entire roof is gone. The siding above the windows and doors is…
The SS Red Oak Victory has a long history of carrying cargo. After being commissioned in 1944, it transported ammunition during three wars. The Richmond Museum Association took ownership of the vessel in 1998, and now the ship is being restored in the same port where she was built: the Richmond Kaiser Shipyards. A group of faithful volunteers is getting the ship prepped to take passengers on cruises across the San Francisco Bay four to six times a year. Click on…
After weeks of intense back and forth between political players in Richmond and Concord the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors announced Tuesday that neither city would play host to a state call center—and its 200 plus jobs—because the county could not settle a contract with a local union. The call center would have been one of three statewide centers set up by the California Health Benefits Exchange to help Californians with health insurance questions under the new federal Affordable…
Chevron is worried that James Giacoma, Art Walenta and Clark Wallace might be holding a grudge. That’s one argument the oil company made in legal documents filed in January asking that the three be removed from the county tax appeals board–the most recent maneuver in Chevron’s nearly decade-long battle with Contra Costa County over the property taxes it pays on its Richmond refinery. The three men are civilians appointed by the county Board of Supervisors to handle property tax disputes….