The Albany Bulb is human-made land. Love the Bulb, the volunteer group devoted to the site, says it was a construction debris landfill from 1963 to 1983. The City of Albany says landfill operations ended in 1984. Afterward, the Regional Water Quality Control Board worked with the city and residents to close the landfill and turn it into a public park.
An uncurated art park
The California Institute for Community, Art & Nature calls the Bulb a peninsula that sticks out a mile into San Francisco Bay. For decades it "flourished as a user-designed park." Discarded rebar, rubble and driftwood drew sculptors, graffiti artists and muralists, who left "a remarkable body of uncurated art" across its 31 hilly acres. Love the Bulb was founded by Susan Moffat of UC Berkeley's Global Urban Humanities Initiative to protect those artistic traditions.
Who runs it
The city owns and manages the Bulb, the westernmost and most island-like part of the waterfront. Albany Beach and the Plateau next to it are part of McLaughlin Eastshore State Park and are managed by the East Bay Regional Park District. The city says its portion is ultimately meant to become part of the state park. The Bulb is next to the former Golden Gate Fields racetrack property.
What about the radiation reports?
In 2024, the regional water board asked Albany to check whether industrial waste containing alum mud had been dumped at the old landfill. The city says its 2025 subsurface investigation found no radioactivity tied to alum mud. The highest potential dose rates were about the same as a 200-mile commercial flight, and the results do not suggest any need to restrict use or access.
Getting there
There is limited free parking at 1 Buchanan Street, plus plenty of bike racks. An off-street bike and pedestrian path along Buchanan runs under the freeway to the Bulb, and the Bay Trail reaches it from the north. The park is closed from 10 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., and the city bans overnight camping.