The story, “The Clock is Ticking at Point Molate” (https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/the-clock-is-ticking-at-point-molate/Content?oid=27944686) sloppily written by Janis Hashe, appeared in the East Bay Express on November 12, where it was quickly posted on social media and roundly praised by members of the small band of Point Molate NIMBY obstructionists.

I found the article replete with errors and misrepresentations from a prejudiced and biased author, and I pointed them out to her in comments inserted in the article below shown in bold-faced red.

Subsequently, Ms. Hashe retracted one of her assertions  regarding  in the comments section of the East Bay Express, “… a similar development in Point Richmond, Waterline, was not selling.”

I'd like to correct one of my quotes in this very thorough and well-researched article. I mentioned a new waterfront development in Pt. Richmond that I implied wasn't selling well. My information came mostly from agent hearsay and I hadn't done a recent market analysis on that development prior to speaking with the reporter. I've since heard from a homeowner there who says their property has increased in price by $400K over the past year and the project is filling up, which is great news for that community. I stand corrected and want to apologize to the homeowners and the developer of Waterline since I seem to have mischaracterized the situation over there. On the other hand, I've had many years to consider all the angles at Pt. Molate, starting with several years sitting on the City of Richmond's Point Molate Citizens Advisory Committee. I stand by my professional opinion that the combination of hazards, climate change exigencies, inaccessible location/lack of amenities and costs for infrastructure (and the opportunity cost of not concentrating development where it's really needed) make Pt. Molate an unsuitable location for housing. The real benefit to the city would be to develop and preserve the land as a community resource as so many Richmond residents have said they want.

Our November 13 story about a proposed Richmond housing development (“The Clock is Ticking at Point Molate”) stated that some critics of the project suspect that Mayor Tom Butt, and architect and contractor, wanted to obtain the contract to restore the historic Winehaven structure. Yet under California law, Butt would be prohibited from bidding on the project as long as he is sitting mayor, through 2022. The story also misquoted the mayor as saying that he had seen “no people of color” at a gathering of project foes, when a recording of the session indicates that he said he had seen “no African Americans, no young people, and very few people of color.” Finally, the story stated that the Richmond City Council rejected the environmental impact report for a proposed casino, when the council actually approved the EIR but rejected the casino plan itself.

• Photo by Paul Haggard
• It could make a nice park — or also nice home sites.

         
Shouts of "lies!" rang out in Richmond's city council chambers on the night of Nov. 5. Councilmember and former mayor Nat Bates had characterized people opposing the city's current plan to develop Point Molate as non-residents who "don't care about Richmond." Yet almost every one of more than 20 people commenting publicly at the meeting identified themselves as Richmond residents. Mayor Tom Butt called for order several times, then threatened to empty the chamber, calling in Richmond police. As at least five squad cars pulled up and uniformed police entered the chamber, the council took a break.

The agenda item noisily being debated concerned amendments to the city's plan to develop Point Molate. And the racket generated by the years-long battle resonates far beyond Richmond. In his book, The Golden Shore, David Helvarg of the Save Point Molate Alliance recounts a friend calling it, "The most beautiful part of the bay no one ever heard of."

Point Molate is a 413-acre headland facing north toward San Francisco Bay and Mount Tamalpais. Part of the San Pablo Peninsula, it is accessible by land solely via Stenmark Drive, the last exit from Interstate 580 before the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge. The narrow, bumpy road winds through coastal grasslands, with sheltered inlets along 1.4 miles of shoreline to the west. Mule deer and wild turkey roam the grasslands among live oak, coyote brush, wild mint, huge toyons, and other native plants. Most of the East Bay has “Mule deer and wild turkey …live oak, coyote brush, wild mint, huge toyons, and other native plants,“ including my home in Richmond. This does not make Point Molate exceptional. More than 160 species of birds are found on the shoreline and surrounding acreage. The small Point Molate Beach Park, reopened in 2014 after extensive toxic clean-up, attracts dog owners and osprey watchers. The peninsula also is home to Winehaven, formerly the world's largest winery, a giant red "castle" complete with parapet and turrets and surrounded by the remnants of the "village" once inhabited by winery workers. To the east rise the Potrero Hills and a 400-foot ridge that hides Point Molate's immediate neighbor — the enormous Chevron Richmond refinery.

The site's beauty, isolation, and million-dollar views isolation have led to the two competing visions for its future, either as preserved primarily for public access and parkland, or redeveloped into a residential community with waterfront homes. The current plan for Point Molate is, “primarily public access and parkland,” in fact, 70 percent of it.

The raging fight over Point Molate's development involves a complex stew of issues being debated not just locally, but also statewide and globally. Gentrification, environmental preservation, wildfire prevention, planning for climate change, and preserving public land vs. economic development for cities in financial crisis are all parts of a complex equation, the solution to which hasn't yet been found.

Point Molate's adjacency to the Chevron Corporation's refinery and tank farm, which experienced major explosions and fires in 1989, 1999, and 2012, and continues to be plagued by flaring and emissions, is further complicated by the site's lack of access and egress. Stenmark Drive, directly next to the bridge tollbooths, is often heavily congested, creating possible nightmare scenarios for potential residents in the case of a wildfire or refinery accident. Stenmark Drive is not “heavily congested.” In fact, it has almost no traffic at all. According to Caltrans (https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/programs/design/documents/hdm-complete-14dec2018.pdf) , the capacity of a two-lane road is 1,000 to 2,400 vehicles per lane per hour (or 2,800 to 4,800 vehicles for the two-lane street (Stenmark Drive), more than enough to handle even the highest estimate of potential Point Molate development. It is true that there is congestion at the toll booth, westbound, in the morning commute hours, but there is never congestion eastbound. The congestion is no worse than that at most other Bay Area bridges at rush hour. If anyone had to leave Point Molate in a hurry, why would they head for the bridge when I-580 eastbound has clear sailing? Furthermore, RM3 has $75 million committed to multiple measures to reduce or eliminate the westbound congestion – it is not a permanent state of affairs. It is worth further noting that on the weekend of November 16-17, 5,000 people crossed the Richmond-San Rafael bridge on bicycles or on foot.

Yet as many as 4,000 residents could be living at Point Molate in a few years under the plan approved in April by the Richmond City Council. Developer SunCal's plan calls for approximately 1,500 units outside the historic area and 624,572 square feet of commercial space or 1,080 residential units, or a mix of the two, in the historic area. SunCal Senior Vice President David Soyka said in an email that the project will offer "market-rate townhomes" on 3,000-4,000 square-foot lots. "We will also be committed to building affordable housing to provide quality of life for working families." At least 70 percent of the 270 dry land acres would remain as open space, Soyka added, with an enhanced shoreline park and Bay Trail improvement and a "rehabilitated and energized Winehaven historic district with commercial amenities."

The appeal of such a development to cash-strapped Richmond is obvious. "This development will generate a new ongoing source of revenues to the city's general fund derived from property taxes, and sales taxes collected from new commercial uses at Point Molate," Soyka noted. Those revenues, he added, could then be used to pay for public services, city equipment, and public works anywhere throughout the City of Richmond, with the revenue stream helping alleviate the city's budget deficit. The city's financial pressures are very real. California State Auditor Elaine Howe recently released data showing that Richmond is high on a list of cities most at risk for financial distress, due to debt burdens, low level of general funds, and high risk for current and future pension obligations.

Meanwhile, a reopened Winehaven would attract visitors from all over the Bay Area and potentially all over the world. Richmond currently spends approximately $500,000 annually to maintain the Winehaven buildings and security for the site.

But members of the Save Point Molate Alliance have major objections to SunCal's proposal. "Point Molate should be a model of what we should see in the future, not a throwback to the 1970s," Alliance cofounder Pam Stello said. An alternate "Community Plan" put forward in 2018 by the alliance calls for restoration of Winehaven and its village, including a hotel and conference center, restaurants, an education facility, and "other business and job generators." It also calls for a park, playing fields and other recreational opportunities, the public beach to be fully restored, and preservation of the area's natural habitat including its offshore eelgrass beds. The Point Molate Alliance has never provided a plan for financing their dream project. They just assume it will magically happen because they want it.

"This concept can work for Richmond," said Richmond City Councilmember Eduardo Martinez, pointing to the success of San Francisco's Presidio and Crissy Field projects. "We can have Point Molate in a public land trust." This is not a fair comparison. The Presidio Trust was established in 1996 and only became self-sustaining in 2013 after the Federal government subsidized it with millions for nearly two decades. It also had, unlike Point Molate, complete functional infrastructure and high property values comparable to anywhere in the world due to its location in San Francisco. Point Molate has almost no infrastructure, no federal subsidy and is located in a city with the lowest property values in the inner Bay Area.

The Alliance maintains that community meetings and surveys have repeatedly revealed that the majority of Richmond residents do not want a major housing development at Point Molate, and that safety, concerns about infrastructure costs, and potential ecological damage to the site are being ignored. This is not true. There is no credible survey that verifies this claim.

The dispute over the proposed development is also fascinating for the ways that in has jumbled traditional Richmond political alliances. The progressive and environmental opponents of housing at Point Molate find themselves in uneasy tacit agreement with Chevron, which made an $80 million offer for the property in 2004 that was rejected by the city. The $80 million offer was rejected because Chevron refused to commit to a future use of the property.

"Chevron does not want to be in contact with immediate residential neighbors," said Robert Cheasty, executive director of Citizens for East Shore Parks and former mayor of Albany. His group supported the Chevron proposal, which would have preserved Winehaven and created park space, and a business incubator. Chevron no longer has a dog in this fight.

Mayor Butt said Chevron doesn't have an opinion about the current proposal. "They have accepted at this point that this project is going to happen," he said.

Meanwhile, Butt and former mayor Bates — who have so often clashed on a variety of issues over the years — oddly find themselves united in support of the proposal. They see the SunCal proposal as the resolution of years of lawsuits, including one that stemmed from an unsuccessful attempt to develop a casino on the property. Failure to finalize some new development agreement by April 2020 could force the city to sell the land back to the would-be casino developers for just $300.

Point Molate's known human history began as home to the Native American tribes Ohlone and Miwok. The early 1800s saw the arrival of padres from Mission Dolores, and in 1871, Chinese immigrants established a shrimp-fishing camp there. After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, the California Wine Association built Winehaven, which at its height could ship 500,000 gallons of wine annually. But Prohibition shuttered Winehaven in 1919; the "castle" and surrounding 35 buildings are now on the National Register of Historic Places.

By 1902, neighbor Standard Oil (now Chevron) had already established itself, then as now using wharves to unload crude oil and reload refinery products for shipment on tankers. From 1942 until 1995, the U.S. Navy used Point Molate as a fuel and storage facility, building numerous houses for its officers there. With passage in 1990 of the U.S. Department of Defense Realignment and Closure Act, Naval operations ceased in 1995.

Community disagreements about what to do with the property started almost immediately, culminating in a 1997 "Reuse Plan." The Navy sold 218 acres of the land to the city of Richmond for one dollar in 2003. The rest of the land was transferred to the city in March 2010 and now consists of approximately 413 total acres, of which 270 acres are "dry upland acres" and the remainder off-shore acreage.

In 2004, developer Jim Levine and the city reached a deal for his company Upstream Point Molate LLC to build a casino and hotel on the property, based on the contention that the Mendocino Guidiville Rancheria Pomo Indians once had fishing rights there. The city council ultimately chose Levine's casino proposal over an alternative one submitted by Chevron, with Butt, Bates, and four other council members favoring the casino, and then-mayor Irma Anderson abstaining. In a telephone interview, Bates insisted that most people do not remember that the U.S Navy's 2003 transfer of the property to the city was contingent on its use including economic development and jobs creation. "The casino would have generated 10,000 jobs and millions of dollars in revenue," he said.

Years passed, the council's makeup changed, and the new councilmembers rejected the project's environmental impact report. This is not true. The City Council certified the EIR but rejected the casino plan. The Point Molate Citizens Advisory Committee developed a questionnaire and held meetings to find out what Richmond residents actually wanted. "Maybe six people we surveyed wanted housing out there," said former member Jim Hite, who served on the committee until ejected by Mayor Butt.

Richmond residents definitely voted "no" on a 2010 ballot measure about the proposed casino. "We made a mistake by placing it on the ballot," Bates said. The following year, the casino plan was rejected by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which ruled that the Guidiville Band of the Pomo had no claim whatsoever to Point Molate. The BIA rejected the Indian Lands claim after the City had rejected the casino.

Levine and the Guidiville Band sued Richmond. In fact, the developer repeatedly sued the city for either the right to build on the property or to retrieve the $17 million that his company paid to the city as a nonrefundable deposit toward a $50 million purchase price.

By 2016, Levine was back, touting a new plan that included 400 units of senior housing, 1,100 residential units, a 150-room hotel with an additional 29 hotel cottages, a 5,000-square-foot ferry terminal, and 100,000 square feet of office space. "Advocates for open space and small-scale development at Point Molate have grown furious because city officials have been holding closed-door discussions with Jim Levine about his proposed large-scale multiuse project at the site," an article in Oakland magazine stated. "City officials claim that discussions are preliminary, but according to Planning Department emails, Levine has paid the city $24,520 for a biological resource survey and traffic studies at the site." This is not true. Levine paid the cost of the EIR, which included a biological resource study, but the study was contracted by the city. Developers normally pay the entire cost of EIRs. The discussions between the City Council and Levine were the subject of closed sessions, which are allowed by the Brown Act as litigation actions.

The new plan also went nowhere. And on April 12, 2018, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that no casino would be built and that the city did not have to pay damages to Levine's company, Upstream Point Molate.

You skipped a major development here. The City prevailed in Federal District Court, but Upstream and the Tribe appealed to the Ninth Circuit, which remanded the case back to the District Court, finding a plausible claim that Mayor McLaughlin had inappropriately tried to influence public policy and “breached the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.”

We therefore conclude that the TAC states a plausible claim that, by preventing the occurrence of the condition precedent and relying partially on the non-occurrence to deny the casino project and avoid carrying out the purpose of the LDA, the City breached the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing when it promulgated Resolution 23-11 and discontinued consideration of a casino use for Point Molate. (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1869961.html).