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Marsh (Or Homes) Imminent
The fight to save one of the last stretches of privately owned salt marsh along San Pablo Bay may finally be coming to an end. The East Bay Regional Park District has offered to buy the land that has been at the center of a longstanding struggle between the District, local residents, and environmental groups, who want to preserve the property as open space, and the owners, who want to develop it.
The 240-acre parcel- known as Breuner Marsh after its previous owner, Gerald Breuner of the furniture chain-is connected on its north side to Pt. Pinole Regional Park in North Richmond. On the south side, the land is bordered by Rheem Creek. The entire property-recommended in the Habitat Goals Report as a prime restoration site-is home to many wildlife species, including the endangered California clapper rail, black rail, and salt marsh harvest mouse.
The marsh is also a retreat for residents of Parchester Village and others in North Richmond, says Whitney Dotson, a longtime resident of the community and founder of the North Richmond Shoreline Open Space Alliance. Dotson's father, a minister, helped recruit church members to buy homes in Parchester Village, which was built in the 1940s and was the first place in the Bay Area where African Americans could own their own homes. He says residents were promised that the land would one day be dedicated as a park.
Instead, residents have been fighting proposals to build everything from an airport to a technology park on the land since the 1970s. The most recent proposal-a roughly 1,050-unit housing community that would be built on 45 acres-has prompted renewed efforts to permanently preserve the property.
Since the development plan was first floated nearly two years ago, opponents have held community outreach meetings, spoken at city council meetings, and even sponsored an open space festival with a barbecue and live music. "We're basically just making sure that through some direct efforts, people are aware of what's going on and know how critical this is," says Dotson. "Almost everybody that I've talked to ... wants this whole area to remain exactly how it is. All of the development that's happened all around-enough is enough. So basically what we're doing is drawing a line in the sand."
Their efforts seem to be paying off. The East Bay Regional Park District, which offered to buy the land in May 2005, began publicly considering whether to exercise its power of eminent domain after the owners rejected the offer a few months later. At that time, the District's Nancy Wenninger said, "It was time to save this property while it was still possible to do so."
The move exacerbated the already-tense relationship between the District and the city of Richmond, which has not approved or rejected the proposed development but could see an increase in property tax revenues if it is built. At the time the use of eminent domain was proposed, the Richmond city council held a meeting during which many council members said they were insulted by the District's move, which they considered to be a presumptuous exercise of authority over land in the city's jurisdiction.
The District postponed a meeting to discuss acquiring the land last September after owners of the marsh, Bay Area Wetlands, LLC-a wetlands bank developer-and Don Carr, complained that they were not given enough notice of the meeting to properly prepare a response. Since then, the District has reopened negotiations with the owners and, through a series of meetings, patched up its relationship with the city of Richmond, Wenninger says. The meetings led to another offer from the District-only this time, it is offering to buy only the portion of the property that was deemed undevelopable by the 1993 North Richmond Shoreline Specific Plan. Much of the community participated in the Plan's zoning process, which protected a majority of the site as open space but zoned about 20 acres of upland area as light industrial. According to Wenninger, the District submitted the offer in late January, and the owners have until mid- to late February to respond.
In the meantime, the owners are moving forward with the development plan, and the city of Richmond is holding a public scoping meeting to get community input on what issues it should look at in its environmental impact report on the project. Wenninger could not say whether the District would pursue eminent domain if its offer is rejected, but said the District is committed to acquiring the sensitive portions of the site. If the District's board of directors does choose to use that power, the process will go rather quickly, Wenninger says. Once the District files its eminent domain action, the District is given possession of the land, although the actual title wouldn't change hands until the District buys the land. If the parties can't agree on a purchase price, the case would have to be brought before a jury within a year of the filing.
Dotson and his alliance of community members and environmental groups are looking to the District to not only stop development on the land but also to connect the Bay Trail through the property to Pt. Pinole and work with the Natural Heritage Institute to restore Rheem Creek. The Institute has worked with the community all along the creek-which starts in El Sobrante and empties into San Pablo Bay at Breuner Marsh-to develop a restoration plan to increase residents' access to the water and improve the viability of the stream for salmon, steelhead, and birdlife, says the Institute's Rich Walkling. The plan would also allow the creek to meander across the property as it did before a flood control project in the 1960s redirected it.
Although there is no set date for the District's acquisition of the property- through a willing sale or the possible exercise of eminent domain-Dotson says the campaign is a successful example of community members, environmental groups, and the government working to protect the shoreline "for people and for wildlife-to save the ecosystem."
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