Economy
A Mexican folk dance, an African-American gospel song, a restored World War II era school building, and a happy principal. “There are two things you can give to children, in general: roots and wings,” said Peppina Chang, the principal of the Richmond College Prep Schools. And today her preschoolers are getting their wings in a building whose roots dig deep into the heart of modern American history — although those roots had almost crumbled. After years of fundraising and planning,…
Grand plans for a casino in the city of Richmond have died since both city residents and the City Council voted against building a sprawling shoreline casino at Point Molate in the last year. Yet amidst the anti-casino sentiment, a similar plan in unincorporated North Richmond remains a quiet possibility. Called the Sugar Bowl, the casino would house close to 2,000 slot machines, 55 table games, a dedicated poker room with 16 tables, and an exclusive “high rollers” room. At…
The City Council voted Tuesday to prohibit the sale of live chickens at the Richmond’s Certified Farmer’s Market, igniting an eruption of cheers from animal rights supporters who filled City Hall. The crowd, which consisted mostly of visitors to Richmond, was there on a larger animal-rights agenda, fueled by a recent victory in banning live chicken sales at the Heart of the City Farmer’s Market in San Francisco. Despite the determination of supporters, the ban will affect only one vendor…
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab representatives offered a limited update on their hunt for a second campus site to members of the lab’s Community Advisory Group Thursday. But while lab officials maintained their poker face, members of the CAG and public audience – few of them Richmond residents – were eager to recommend Richmond’s site. Richmond City Councilmember Jeff Ritterman appeared to be the only council member present from the cities vying for the lab, and the only speaker in the…
Dozens of Kaiser employees from the National Union of Healthcare Workers and the California Nurses Association hit the streets Thursday in front of Richmond’s Kaiser location to picket proposed cuts to NUHW employees’ healthcare and retirement benefits.
The City Council will spend $20,000 to lobby for a federal transportation grant to help light-rail company CyberTran develop 13 ultralight rail stations throughout the city — a transit system, in the words of city leaders and CyberTran’s CEO, that would be clean, efficient, and create 20,000 jobs in the next decade. Fittingly, “dream” was an oft-used word in the hour-long discussion before the council voted 4-1 to approve the funding Tuesday night. “I believe this is a dream for…
In a 5,000-gallon fish tank in a 1980s greenhouse off a side street near Fred Jackson Boulevard, about a thousand koi fish, the fish so often found in Japanese garden ponds, are busy growing lettuce. The “tank” is actually an uncovered, blue-tiled, above-ground swimming pool that local organic farmer Pilar Reber purchased at Target about nine months ago. To see the fish clearly, though, you have to walk on tip-toe to the pool’s edge because the koi are, well, coy….
Congressman George Miller flies in and out of the Bay Area on a near weekly basis. When he looks down as he flies over Richmond he sees one of the “last big promising corners in the Bay Area.” “What you see is this huge asset with a lot of developable properties,” he said to a round-table of reporters in Monday afternoon. Richmond, Miller said, has most everything it needs to facilitate major growth: easy transit, innovative businesses, forward-thinking public officials….
At 19 years old, Lela Turner found herself homeless, jobless and struggling. Two years earlier, the San Leandro High School graduate had tried working part-time at McDonald’s and attending Chabot Community College in Hayward. But an unstable family life and unforeseen expenses soon put Turner out on the street with no place to go — until her caseworker told her about RichmondBUILD. The RichmondBUILD Pre-apprenticeship Construction Skills and Green Jobs Training Academy allows Richmond residents to obtain skills like solar…