North Richmond
Fred Casanares got to Point Pinole Park a little before 8 a.m. on Saturday. He fired up the grill at 10 a.m. with almond wood, because it burns cleaner than charcoal. For the next five hours, Casanares cooked hundreds of pounds of burgers, hot dogs, quesadillas, and skirt steak, while smoke wafted around the festival and the persistent long lines in front of the grill. “I can’t even calculate how many people I’ve fed,” he said, wiping the trails of…
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…
North Richmond is no stranger to conflict, but this is a strange conflict for North Richmond. The small community, which straddles the boundary separating the city of Richmond and unincorporated Contra Costa County, has become the site of an acrimonious power struggle between ambitious community leaders.
Last Saturday, Richmond residents and community leaders gathered in North Richmond to call for stronger community relations and an end to gun-violence. The community fair was sponsored by Ground Zero, Operation Richmond, and the McGlothen Temple Evangelist Department. Complete with grilled hot dogs and hamburgers, snow cones, an air castle, housing and employment specialists, and music from the band Redemption, the event drew residents out their homes all afternoon long. Here’s a snippet of the day’s action.
North Richmond’s share of landfill mitigation funding for 2012-2013 is likely to be doled out in proportions roughly similar to previous years, the mitigation committee suggested in a meeting last Friday. County leaders offered an early glimpse at an expenditure plan that would provide the incorporated and unincorporated areas of the community with an estimated $1.13 million over two years. The North Richmond Waste and Recovery Mitigation Fee Joint Expenditure Planning Committee administers these funds, and the Friday meeting was…
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….
Nearly 400 friends, family, dignitaries and well-wishers turned out for the midday service, which was a medley of love and music and anecdotes that all agreed would have induced Jackson’s trademark wide grin.
As one of the dozens of buoyant well-wishers put it Thursday night, these services didn’t have the feel of a funeral – there was too much joy in the room.
It was North Richmond. The little neighborhood that has historically suffered from a lack of leadership was suddenly over-represented. It was a dubious honor.