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| I don’t know how Point Molate Park advocates have gained so much traction with the media, which seems to take everything they write as fact without checking it. Below is an extensive opinion piece authored by David Helvarg and published by the LA Times. What does Point Molate have to do with Los Angeles?
Take a look at the following misstatements of fact:
- “Point Molate exemplifies the struggle for environmental justice in under-parked and over-polluted minority communities.”
Fact: there are 3,391 acres of regional parks in Richmond (Miller Knox – 307 acres, Sobrante Ridge – 277 acres, Point Pinole -2,432 acres, and Brooks Island 373 acres) plus another 3,011 acres adjacent to Richmond (Wildcat Canyon – 2,789 acres and Kennedy grove – 222 acres). The City of Richmond has 54 parks. Both the East Bay Regional Parks District are challenged to maintain the parks they. What Richmond needs are better distributed neighborhood parks, not another regional park on the City’s fringe. See Richmonders want more parks. City struggles to maintain the 50 it has; While regional parks are a plus, they don’t supplant need for well-maintained, easily accessible neighborhood green spaces, Richmond residents say.
- “A sliver of beach opened to the public in 2014, and at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a magnet for local families.” Fact: Point Molate Beach Park dates back to at least the 1970s. It was closed for several years in the early 2000s due to lack of funds to maintain it.
- “The city would be required to build and staff a fire and police substation and float a $300-million bond to fund the development’s water, power and sewage infrastructure.” Fact: The bond would be paid for by the developer. As well as the staffing of the fire and police station The City would have no liability.
- “In June 2024, the California Court of Appeals unanimously sided with the community activists’ CEQA suit, ruling that the luxury housing EIR was fatally flawed and had to be rescinded, effectively canceling the city’s obligation to the developers.” Fact: The Court of Appeals upheld all of the challenged EIR components except for two, which could have been easily remedied. Instead, the City Council chose not make the changes and instead abandon the entitlements.
- “The last approval needed, from the California State Coastal Conservancy, is expected by November, when the East Bay Regional Park District can begin to take down miles of fencing and open the park to the public..” Fact: The Transfer of a portion of Point Molate to the East Bay regional parks District has not yet and may never happen. There is no way that in November fences will come down and the park will open to the public. There is no approved plan, no CEQA review and no funding.
- “This was a major step in closing the decades-long battle between environmentalists and developers over the future of the 422-acre, Bay-facing greenspace.” Fact: Point Molate has about 300 acres of land; the rest is underwater.
Helvarg noted that, “Winehaven’s buildings are now on the National Register of Historic Places,” but he had nothing to say about its future. Parks are routinely as much about cultural resources as natural resources. Even the EBRPD website states, “The lands managed by the East Bay Regional Park District have a rich history and diverse cultural background. Cultural resources include archaeological, historical, and scientifically valuable sites, areas, and objects. The District has a responsibility to preserve the legacy and the history of the peoples who occupied this land before the District was established and park properties acquired, as well as to preserve the history of the District itself.”
Recently, Winehaven was nominated to be selected by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of, “America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places of 2025.”
The 35 structures in the Winehaven Historic District totaling some 300,000 square feet are nearly 120 years old and have had almost no maintenance for the past 30 years, and they continue to deteriorate. Currently, the City of Richmond has legal responsibility for securing and maintaining Winehaven, but they are not doing it. This is now the subject of a lawsuit brought by the Winehaven Trust against the City of Richmond.
Prior to Prohibition, Winehaven was the largest winery in the world and the epicenter of the California Wine Industry, which now generates nearly $90 billion in economic activity. Winehaven was constructed only a year after the City of Richmond was chartered.
At the peak of the season, as many as 400 workers, mostly Italian immigrants, lived at Winehaven, and all of the California Wine Association's shipments to foreign, coastal and New York markets sailed from the Winehaven dock, as much as half a million gallons monthly, including 40 ships that sailed annually for New York alone.
The winery was shut down by Prohibition in 1919, and the company sold off its assets to avoid bankruptcy, but Winehaven had a second life in WWII when the Navy converted it into the main fuel depot for the Pacific Fleet, including the 747 ships built in Richmond at the world’s largest shipyard, now commemorated by Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historic park.
The fate of Winehaven is now in the hands of multiple public agencies, including the City of Richmond and the East Bay Regional Parks District. Its historic role in the California Wine Industry is of statewide importance, and Winehaven should be saved for the benefit of future generations.
The endgame for Winehaven, unfortunately, does not look good. The coalition of the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA), the Point Molate Alliance (PMA), the Sierra Club, John Gioia, East Bay Regional Parks District, Senator Nancy Skinner and other out pf towners loke Robert Cheasty, advocating for a regional park have never included a viable Winehaven rehabilitation and adaptive reuse in their plans, although they have typically paid lip service to its preservation – like it could just happen. In fact, those who have spoken out on the subject have expressed either disdain for Winehaven or admitted that it doesn’t fit into their park plans.
City Council member Doria Robinson recently wrote, comparing Winehaven to the fire-destroyed International Hotel:
Winehaven doesn’t have the same multilayer historical resonance, was only operating a few years and is removed from community members.
Jeff Kilbreth, acknowledged by the RPA and PMA as their go-to guru on Point Molate real estate economics recently told the Grandview Independent that Winehaven should be “bulldozed.”
Part of the problem of moving toward a resolution is an illusion that Winehaven can be turned into a successful development and cover renovation costs, said Jeff Kilbreth. “I honestly suspect that the best thing that could happen would be if we bulldozed Winehaven and made it all a park. Call me crazy, but I actually think that it’s so deteriorated and so expensive to make that place work as any kind of normal development,” Kilbreth said. Opinion
Opinion: A 20-year struggle for environmental justice — and a public park — in one California city 
Point Molate, with the Winehaven area in the distance, is the “most beautiful part of the Bay Area no one’s ever heard of.”
(Jane Tyska/East Bay Times via Getty Images )
By David Helvarg
Sept. 20, 2024 3 AM PT
Just up the road from Oakland and Berkeley, the city of Richmond is a minority and low-income community of 115,500 people — mainly Latino, Black and Asian American — with a major Chevron refinery whose pollution has been an ongoing source of conflict (the city just reached a $550-million settlement with Chevron to mitigate health and lifestyle effects of the refinery). It’s also home to an active port and soon — finally — a world-class park.
Point Molate exemplifies the struggle for environmental justice in under-parked and over-polluted minority communities. Political support in Sacramento and Washington helps, but the battle to guarantee the future of 413 acres of city-owned headlands relied on bottom-up organizing and determined citizen engagement that encompassed protests, local candidacies, ballot initiatives, neighborhood meetings, bilingual mailings, public testimony, photo and art exhibits, billboards, site tours and, of course, lawsuits. Democracy, in other words.
The headlands site, Point Molate, a former World War II Navy fuel depot largely reclaimed by nature since its closure in 1995, lies just north of the Richmond Bridge. It deserves its tagline: “The most beautiful part of the Bay Area no one’s ever heard of.” Yet it was almost lost to various development schemes until this summer, when the Richmond City Council voted to approve a $40-million deal to establish it as a fully protected park. The state will provide $36 million (in part through Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 30x30 initiative, which like national and global efforts aims to protect 30% of the state’s lands and waters by 2030), with the balance coming from the East Bay Regional Park District.
Richmond got possession of Point Molate from the Navy in 2003 for $1, and the city quickly began bargaining over development rights to the site. A sliver of beach opened to the public in 2014, and at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a magnet for local families. For more than two decades, Richmonders fought for the other 97% of the fenced-off site to become a public park.
Point Molate, originally Ohlone land, is home to sea hares, bat rays, leopard sharks and river otters in its offshore eelgrass beds, one of the last healthy nurseries for herring and Dungeness crab in the San Francisco Bay estuary. Its native grasses and forested hillsides host nesting ospreys and more than 200 other bird species, along with mule deer, wild turkeys, coyotes and the rare pipevine swallowtail butterfly. Before the Navy arrived, Point Molate was famed for Winehaven, a red-brick winery, worker housing and a shipping port constructed to keep California wine flowing after the 1906 earthquake destroyed much of San Francisco. Winehaven’s buildings are now on the National Register of Historic Places.
Developers, in collaboration with a band of Pomo Indians from Mendocino County, first proposed a mega-casino for the site, with 4,000 slot machines and Las Vegas-style amenities, including a convention center, a high-rise parking structure and a ferry. Despite the promise of thousands of jobs and significant annual revenues, Richmond residents feared that the project would generate crime, encourage problem gambling and create constant traffic jams. In 2010, the city’s voters rejected the casino proposal 58% to 42%.
With the casino defeated, another development plan emerged: a luxury housing estate — as many as 1,450 homes and condos with price tags in the $1.2-million range, for buyers with incomes around $250,000. The median income for Richmond’s residents is just under $80,000. The city would be required to build and staff a fire and police substation and float a $300-million bond to fund the development’s water, power and sewage infrastructure.
Once again, the community rallied. Housing advocates objected to the city’s making a hefty, ongoing investment at Point Molate; they wanted affordable, mixed-use units built downtown, where infrastructure is already in place and housing is desperately needed. Richmonders, environmental groups and others — including commercial fishermen — joined together in the Point Molate Alliance (full disclosure: I’m a member), which took the lead in the effort.
The coalition held community meetings, testified at City Council meetings and, with pro-bono legal help, filed a California Environmental Quality Act lawsuit arguing that the developer’s environmental impact report failed to account for the consequences of building on a sensitive site, with no provision for protecting Ohlone sacred sites and no evacuation plan for an area the state classified as a “High Fire Hazard Severity Zone.”
In June 2024, the California Court of Appeals unanimously sided with the community activists’ CEQA suit, ruling that the luxury housing EIR was fatally flawed and had to be rescinded, effectively canceling the city’s obligation to the developers.
Except for the claim of the Guidiville Rancheria Pomo, who had been part of the original casino plan. In July, the tribe and its developer partner agreed to the $40-million settlement offer from the city, state and park district.
“Point Molate Park Now!” T-shirts have gone from protest gear to collectibles. The last approval needed, from the California State Coastal Conservancy, is expected by November, when the East Bay Regional Park District can begin to take down miles of fencing and open the park to the public. Community members plan to work with the district to see soccer fields, hiking trails and a home for the annual Richmond Powwow established there in the near future.
When the people lead, the leaders follow. Stubborn, vigilant community activism won a tangible victory at Point Molate that can be repeated in other under-parked communities. Remember: River otters and herring can’t sign petitions. Butterflies can’t vote and mule deer can’t testify at City Council meetings. It’s up to us humans.
David Helvarg is a Richmond resident; executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy group; and co-host of “Rising Tide: The Ocean Podcast.” |
