Park service to host open house in downtown Richmond

By Chris Treadway
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 03/14/2010 05:48:40 PM PDT
Updated: 03/14/2010 05:48:40 PM PDT

When Richmond moved its city offices to the refurbished Civic Center on Macdonald Avenue last summer, a neighbor came along.
The administrative offices of the East Bay unit of the National Park Service have been across the street from the center at 2566 Macdonald Ave. since July, and the space is ready to be shown off to the community.
Signs attached to the brick facade of the building at 26th Street and Macdonald proclaim the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park headquarters, where an open house will be held 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday. The public is welcome to drop by and meet the staff, take a quick tour and have some snacks and refreshments.
"We've been here several months, but it's taken us some time to settle in," said Carla Koop, outreach coordinator for the park service unit. "We just wanted to invite our neighbors and the community to our new digs."
The relocation brings the park offices to a more central and longer-term location than the temporary space it had at Marina Bay, where it shared some of the interim offices used by the city during the Civic Center renovation.
The new offices are in a building formerly used by the city's paratransit program.
While the Macdonald site is farther from the Rosie the Riveter Memorial, it helps give the park unit a higher profile and makes it more accessible to the general public.
"We really wanted to say, 'We're here, we're part of downtown Richmond,' " Koop said. "We want people to know we're here, and they should visit us."
A crew of nine works at the location, which handles administration for four National Park sites in the East Bay: Rosie the Riveter, John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site in Danville and the new Port Chicago Naval Magazine Memorial. Staff from all the sites come to the Richmond headquarters at times.
The building has office space for managers and space to hold meetings that could be made available for community group meetings, Koop said.
The administrative offices are separate from the planned visitor center to the Rosie the Riveter park. The visitor center, still the subject of negotiations, would be located along the city's shoreline near the historic World War II shipyards, Koop said.
The administrative office, which has regular hours of 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays, can be reached at 510-232-5050.
IF You're Going
·  What: Home Front National Historical Park open house
·  When: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday
·  Where: 2566 MacDonald Ave.