By Norman La Force

In July, Golden Gate Fields, the horse racing track on the Albany shoreline, announced it would be closing its doors for good sometime within the next year. While this may come as bad news to the dollar hotdog enthusiast, it’s really exciting news for the McLaughlin Eastshore State Park. This area could become more accessible than ever before: we have the opportunity to save this large tract of shoreline to become public open space.

The Sierra Club, along with other environmental groups, has long sought to incorporate this property into the McLaughlin Eastshore State Park, a campaign extending as far back as the 1980s. Many developers have eyed the site of the track, but none have successfully convinced the track owner to close. This moment marks a big turning point.

In the 2010-2011 Voices to Vision Planning process that Albany conducted as a way for residents to produce a future vision for the area, the Sierra Club, Citizens for East Shore State Parks, and Citizens for the Albany Shoreline put together a plan for the site. The plan preserved most of the area as a park while setting aside a small amount for development that would generate tax revenues for the City of Albany.

Now, with the acceleration of sea level rise, it will be even more imperative that we use the area of the old track wisely. With even 2 meters of sea level rise, the track will be fully inundated. This shouldn’t come as a surprise – the area was once a wetland and marsh until it was filled to construct the track in the 1930s. Any proposal for future development would require a massive landfill of the area with between 15 and 20 feet of compacted soil just to keep it above water.

We have the opportunity to protect the site as a park and make it into a resilient shoreline wetland. We can convert the track into open space with ball fields or other public resources that will allow it to become a marsh that could protect Albany and the freeway from flooding as sea levels rise. We can remove the structures and open up Fleming Point as a grand public open space, creating one continuous shoreline park from the Bay Bridge all the way up to Point Isabel. We could even set aside some area that could be developed without landfill for a small amount of commercial development that could generate revenues for both Albany and Berkeley. The possibilities are exciting and expansive.

If you can envision all the potential of this massive shoreline park, we invite you to get involved with the Sierra Club’s East Bay Public Lands Committee. To join in the final effort to save this site and make it a park, please email 
ebpl@sfbaysc.org.

Artist renderings of modern day Golden Gate Fields (left) and a low-density, climate resilient development plan (right) that would generate revenues for Albany and function as a public park. Taken from Citizens for East Shore Parks' 2005 mailer.

Norman La Force is the Chair of the East Bay Public Lands Committee.