McLaughlin Eastshore State Park is a state park and wildlife refuge along the

San Francisco Bay San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. San Francisco Bay drains water f ...

shoreline of the

East Bay The East Bay is the eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area and includes cities along the eastern shores of the San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay. The region has grown to include inland communities in Alameda and Contra Costa counties ...

between the cities of

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, Californi ...

, Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, and

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay ...

. It encompasses

remnant Remnant or remnants may refer to: Religion * Remnant (Bible), a recurring theme in the Bible * Remnant (Seventh-day Adventist belief), the remnant theme in the Seventh-day Adventist Church * ''The Remnant'' (newspaper), a traditional Catholic n ...

natural

wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (Anoxic waters, anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in t ...

s, restored wetlands, as well as landfill west of the

Eastshore Freeway Interstate 80 (I-80) is a transcontinental Interstate Highway in the United States, stretching from San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey. The segment of I-80 in California runs east from San Francisco across the San Francisco ...

. Its shoreline is long, and its total area is , which includes both tidelands and uplands." McLaughlin Eastshore State Park improvements." ''Santa Cruz Sentinel''. March 21, 2016.
Accessed June 10, 2017. Originally named just Eastshore State Park, it was renamed in October 2012 to honor the late

Save the Bay Save The Bay is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving San Francisco Bay and its related estuarine habitat areas. Founded by Catherine Kerr, Sylvia McLaughlin, and Esther Gulick in 1961, the organization grew into a body that not on ...

founder Sylvia McLaughlin, who, along with the late Dwight Steele of Citizens for Eastshore Park (now Citizens for East Shore Parks), drove the establishment of the park. Prior to 2013, it was jointly managed by the

California State Parks The California Department of Parks and Recreation, more commonly known as California State Parks, manages the California state parks system. The system administers 279 separate park units on 1.4 million acres (570,000 hectares), with over 280 ...

and

East Bay Regional Park District The East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD) is a special district operating in Alameda County and Contra Costa County, California, within the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay Area. It maintains and operates a system of regional parks which ...

(EBRPD). The state agency and EBRPD executed a 30-year agreement for EBRPD to manage the park. "Berkeley Voice community briefs: Regional parks contract at Eastshore extended; arrests in smartphone thefts; University Village project discussion." ''Mercury News''. June 5, 2013.
Accessed June 10, 2017.

History

During the 1960s, it became obvious that the East Shore of the

was suffering from rapid commercial development and the accumulation of trash. In particular, a tract north of the Bay Bridge that extended between the cities of Emeryville and Richmond attracted the attention of commercial developers and environmental activists alike, though for different reasons. The waterfront property, primarily owned by

Catellus Development Corporation Catellus Development Corporation is an Oakland, California based real estate developer founded in 1984 to be the real estate division of Santa Fe Pacific Corporation, as part of the Santa Fe–Southern Pacific merger. It was spun off into its o ...

—a subsidiary of the

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, and ...

(Santa Fe for short)—was already worth many millions of dollars, and would be worth far more if developed with shopping centers and high-rise hotels. Sylvia McLaughlin, a local housewife turned environmental activist, was alarmed enough by the situation to recruit friends and associates to form the non-profit Save San Francisco Bay Association, later renamed as

. The newly formed association leaped into action, forming a shoreline park committee that began discussing how to raise funds for a small park in Berkeley in 1963. However, Save the Bay leaders soon realized that halting the dumping of material into the bay was a more urgent problem. In 1969 the state's Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) went from being an interim agency to a permanent state planning and regulatory entity. BCDC backed the idea that the state park system should buy the land. However California State Parks, which had little experience managing urban land and little interest in the complicated challenges of this particular polluted parcel, showed no interest in taking on the property. EBRPD, which was already operating eight urban shoreline parks, thought Cal Parks should be the lead agency. Furthermore, Santa Fe's owners felt certain that their property would become much more valuable if it remained in their hands. Santa Fe had a temporary setback in 1972, when the Berkeley City Council voted against allowing a proposed regional shopping center to be built atop a

landfill A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the wast ...

. Santa Fe sued the city but lost the case in 1980, when the

Supreme Court of California The Supreme Court of California is the Supreme court, highest and final court of appeals in the judiciary of California, courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly h ...

rejected the planned construction. A second setback had already occurred when the BCDC rejected Santa Fe's plan to build several high-rise buildings over wetlands in Emeryville. The Emeryville project became known by local people as "stilt city". Soon after the Supreme Court ruling, the California State Park and Recreation Commission put the shoreline park on its list of priority projects to fund and issued an official East Bay Shoreline Report recommending establishment of an East Bay shoreline park and identified key lands for inclusion. Further progress on the park stopped when Republican

George Deukmejian Courken George Deukmejian Jr. (; June 6, 1928 – May 8, 2018) was an American politician who served as the 35th governor of California from 1983 to 1991. Of Armenian descent, Deukmejian was a member of the Republican Party and he also served ...

was elected Governor in 1983. Santa Fe continued its strategy of promoting large-scale development projects along the shorelines of Emeryville, Berkeley, and Albany. Its real estate subsidiary, Catellus Development Company, lost more court battles in the three cities before giving up in 1990. In 1998, with the state's finances recovering, voters approved two bond issues, one state and one regional, raising $40 million for purchasing land for the new Eastshore park. Also, a 1998 act in the

California State Legislature The California State Legislature is a bicameral state legislature consisting of a lower house, the California State Assembly, with 80 members; and an upper house, the California State Senate, with 40 members. Both houses of the Legislatu ...

authorized EBRPD to act for the state and use state funds to buy land for and operate the new Eastshore park. EBRPD had bought properties known as the Emeryville Crescent, Albany Mudflats, and part of Hoffman Marsh by 1992. By 1998 it had also purchased the Berkeley Meadow, Brickyard Cove, and the North Basin Strip (together considered of greater value than the narrow shoreline parcels). Catellus wanted $80 million for the former Santa Fe tract, but ultimately settled for $27.5 million after EBRPD threatened to employ

eminent domain Eminent domain (United States, Philippines), land acquisition (India, Malaysia, Singapore), compulsory purchase/acquisition (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, United Kingdom), resumption (Hong Kong, Uganda), resumption/compulsory acquisition (Austr ...

to acquire the property. In addition to the complicated process of buying parcels of land and landfill that would become the future state park, how areas were to be used was and remains controversial. The City of Berkeley was to have contributed its former landfill to become one of the larger areas of "upland" (dry land) for the park but held it back, apparently out of concerns that recreation would be overly restricted. (That 90 acres or so of capped landfill is now Cesar Chavez Park.) Albany's former landfill, the Albany Bulb, was hotly disputed—on one end of the spectrum, some wanted it to be entirely a conservation area that did not allow people; on the other, park users wanted continued access and recreation—and set aside to be transferred at some later point into the state park. (As of 2020, that has not happened.) North Point Isabel, a toxic landfill that was remediated and capped in the mid-1980s, had been popular for recreation, including off-leash dog walking. Sierra Club, Citizens for East Shore Parks, Golden Gate Audubon Society and others worked to restrict recreation on that spit of land and require dogs to be on-leash-only. In response to tremendous public support, state park planners authorized the continued use of North Point Isabel for off-leash recreation. Sierra Club opposed that.

Improvement projects funded in 2016

In March 2016, EBRPD announced that it would spend $2 million to extend the

San Francisco Bay Trail The San Francisco Bay Trail is a bicycle and pedestrian trail that when finished will allow continuous travel around the shoreline of San Francisco Bay. As of 2020, of the trail have been completed. When finished, the trail will be over of p ...

, remove debris, toxic soil and invasive plants from two sections of the park, and remove the high dirt pile that has been considered an eyesore for more than ten years. The height of the pile will be lowered by grading, using the dirt to create small hills that would act as a buffer between the park and the adjacent freeway. The hills are to be seeded with native grasses, adding or improving habitat for shorebirds and other wildlife. A second contract will simultaneously complete the previously-approved restoration of Albany Beach, which includes "... beach and dune enhancements, a non-motorized boat launch, restroom, parking and about a mile of the Bay Trail west of Golden Gate Fields."

Adjacent parks

* Aquatic Park *

Cesar Chavez Park Cesar, César or Cèsar may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''César'' (film), a 1936 film directed by Marcel Pagnol * ''César'' (play), a play by Marcel Pagnolt * César Award, a French film award Places * Cesar, Portugal * Ces ...

Point Isabel Regional Shoreline Point Isabel Regional Shoreline in Richmond, California, is operated by East Bay Regional Park District, and is a multi-use park for joggers, windsurfers, kayakers, photographers, picnickers, and people walking dogs. It has access for pedestrians ...

Albany Bulb The Albany Bulb (also simply known as The Bulb) is a former landfill largely owned by the City of Albany, in California. The Bulb is the west end of a landfill peninsula jutting west from the east shore of San Francisco Bay. The term "Bulb" is ...

Notes

References

External links