California backs Council, developer preference for Zeneca cleanup plan

California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) on Friday announced its selection of a cleanup plan for one of Richmond’s most notorious brownfields: an industrial site located on the city’s south shoreline, once occupied by a succession of corporate tenants including Stauffer Chemical Co. and pharmaceutical company Zeneca Inc. The plan will excavate contaminated soil…

Read More

Tibetan ceremony honors the new Dalai Lama Avenue

A sunset Buddhist ceremony at Richmond’s Huntington Avenue and San Joaquin Street consecrated the renaming of a stretch of Huntington after the Dalai Lama on the 12th anniversary of the spiritual leader’s receipt of the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal. About seventy Tibetan community members, three Buddhist monks and City Councilmember Eduardo Martinez gathered Thursday evening…

Read More

Council votes on Zeneca site clean-up and development

Electrician and two-time cancer survivor Sherry Padgett could throw a baseball from her 49th Street cabling business and hit what Richmond residents call “the Zeneca site:” an eighty-seven-acre property that contains more than a century’s inheritance of hazardous waste from manufacturers including the now-defunct herbicide maker Stauffer Chemical and the European pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca. Padgett…

Read More

City council tightens vaping regulations over health concerns

Richmond’s City Council unanimously approved a ban on the sale of e-cigarettes, including vapes, that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration hasn’t deemed safe. The measure, passed Tuesday night amid mounting nationwide concern over harm to health, will go into effect in 2020. There have been six vaping-related deaths reported in the United States, according…

Read More

From Brown to French, it’s official

Richmond Chief of Police Bisa French was officially appointed in July 2020.

RICHMOND, CA – Interim City Manager Steven Falk named Assistant Police Chief Bisa French as the new interim chief of police for Richmond after announcing at Tuesday’s City Council meeting that Police Chief Allwyn Brown stepped down from his position. French is the city’s first black woman to lead the Richmond Police Department. Interim City…

Read More

Proposed housing developments promise to transform downtown Richmond

A series of recently proposed housing developments along Macdonald Avenue in downtown Richmond could spur a business renaissance in the struggling district if city and local business leaders’ predictions ring true. In a city desperate for affordable housing, the developments reserve only about one quarter of the total number of units for residents making below…

Read More