Point Molate
Richmond’s city council received a report on Tuesday about discretionary pay increases for city workers, and honored Michael Davenport as well as the Point Molate Friends group for their contributions to the city. The Rent Program presented its annual report.
No one knows what to do with Point Molate, a 290-acre bayside property acquired by Richmond in 1995. The point, called a “jewel” by some, is on land previously owned by the US Navy and footsteps away from the Chevron refinery. The Point Molate Citizens Advisory Committee was supposed to help the city and Richmond residents manage the area and figure out how to develop it in the future, but earlier this year it was disbanded suddenly by the mayor.
Richmond is a record breaker. Known for many years to host the largest oil refinery in the country and as the most productive World War II shipyard, Richmond also once hosted the biggest winery in the world. The city’s historical legacy has been recognized in some respects. The transformation of a 1930s Ford assembly plant, a beacon of the industrial age, into a conference center and museum complex is one example. However, there are still some major historic assets in Richmond standing idle — or even crumbling into disrepair.
More than 1,200 people gathered on a sun-splashed Point Pinole for the eleventh annual North Richmond Shoreline Festival Saturday.
In the words of environmental activist David Helvarg, Point Molate “is the most beautiful part of the bay nobody’s ever heard of.”
Point Molate Beach Park reopens more than a decade after budgetary woes forced city officials to close its gates. The city spent $115,000 on minor improvements to the park to meet public safety and ADA requirements.
Political differences were—mostly—set aside Tuesday night during the celebratory swearing-in of re-elected city council members Nat Bates and Tom Butt. But beneath the congratulatory speeches for Bates and Butt, and the appreciative acknowledgments of outgoing councilmember Jeff Ritterman, were concerns for councilmember-elect Gary Bell and worries about the council’s potential make-up now that Bell’s seat is formally vacant. Bell was hospitalized in early November and underwent two neurosurgeries for complications caused by a bacterial sinus infection, his family wrote in a…
On Tuesday, the city council approved funding that it will re-open Point Molate beach—the city’s only public beach. The beach closed in 2004 due to budget cuts and then was slammed in 2007 by the Cosco Busan fuel spill. The public space has been under lock and key ever since. In anticipation of the beach’s re-opening, we thought it would be fun to see what the area looks like today.
Richmond’s City Council decided yesterday to nix plans for a casino at Point Molate in a 5-to-2 vote, ending the six-year debate.