23 Jun Richmond Puts Up $3 Million for Harbour 8 Park Project

An artist’s rendering of the Harbour 8 Park site. (Illustration by Maren Van Duyn / Scientific Art Studio; screenshot captured by Samantha Kennedy / The CC Pulse)

By Samantha Kennedy

Richmond is pitching in $3 million of its own money to support the completion of the Harbour 8 Park project by a local nonprofit. 

The Richmond City Council, led by Vice Mayor Cesar Zepeda and council member Jamelia Brown, on June 17 approved the funding for the Iron Triangle park, which will go to the nonprofit Pogo Park.

Richmond’s contribution is only a fraction of the park’s $28 million price tag, which is planned to be completed this summer and include the city’s first Community Resilience Hall. Pogo Park had already raised $22 million of the funding, but came to a roadblock when asked by donors what the city was contributing. 

The funding requires that the nonprofit enter into a Memorandum of Understanding with the city and submit original and revised project budgets, confirmation that grant deadlines can be met, and a meeting between the two agencies to align project roles. If those requirements are not met by Oct. 31, council members can use the $3 million elsewhere. 

“This Harbour 8 project is a force multiplier that is really going to help catapult this part of Richmond,” said Toody Maher, executive director of Pogo Park. “We are almost there. The baby is being born.”

Council members unanimously approved the funding, but council member Doria Robinson expressed concerns alongside one community member that the project was jumping the queue of other projects across the city. 

Robinson specifically pointed to the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center. 

It’s “been 20 years — has it really been 20 years? — since we promised to bring that back. But somehow, every year, we can’t find the will to do it,” said Robinson, who grew up in the Iron Triangle. “But we can find the will for everything else. It’s just painful.” 

She said that while it was a good project, she found it painful and pathetic that the city couldn’t also uphold its promise for the MLK Jr. Center. 

Brown, a fourth-generation Iron Triangle resident, pushed back against Robinson’s comparison between the two projects, saying that it took away from “the essence of what Harbour 8 is going to bring to our community.” 

“It seems to me that when there is something that someone doesn’t like, we tend to find every reason to avoid or oppose it,” she said, noting that all concerns raised by Robinson and council members Sue Wilson and Claudia Jimenez — both of whom asked for more information related to how it would fit in the budget or the partnership between the city and Pogo Park — were addressed in the report. 

Brown also questioned how the council could allocate funding for a separate agenda item, which asked for $1.5 million for a Black Resilience Project and Fund, that already had similar research done by a county-commissioned study. Robinson, Jimenez and Wilson co-sponsored that item, which passed unanimously. 

Israel-Iran conflict prompts emergency resolution

The Richmond City Council approved an emergency resolution on June 17 that calls for an end to hostilities between Israel and Iran and urges the U.S. to avoid “military entanglement.” This, of course, was days before the U.S. bombed three Iranian nuclear sites.

The resolution comes days after the Israeli government launched a military attack on Iran on June 12, according to the resolution co-sponsored by council member Soheila Bana and Mayor Eduardo Martinez. Retaliation by Iran followed, they said. 

“This attack occurred during an active diplomatic process between Iran and the United States aimed at removing U.S. sanctions on Iran in exchange for assurances that Iran would not pursue the armed use of its nuclear capabilities,” the report reads. “The strike has thus not only endangered civilian lives but also disrupted a critical path toward peaceful resolution and non-proliferation.” 

Council members placed the emergency resolution on the consent calendar, which is passed in one vote alongside other non-controversial items without discussion. Only Zepeda abstained during the vote. 

Bana, who is of Iranian descent, first told KTVU ahead of the meeting that she planned to introduce the resolution that included calling on President Donald Trump to support negotiations. 

In the report, Bana and Martinez said the international community, “including local municipalities, has a moral obligation to speak out against violations of international law and advocate for peaceful resolutions.” 

The council most recently passed a proclamation related to international affairs at the June 3 meeting, which called for the U.S. to remove Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. 

And in 2023, became the first city in the country to pass a ceasefire resolution related to the Israel-Palestine conflict during a lengthy and tense meeting that gained national attention.