The East Bay Regional Park District broke ground Friday on the Tidewater Day Use Area, a 7-acre, $16.9 million addition to Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline that will turn a stretch of former industrial land on the Oakland Estuary into public parkland.
The site sits on East Creek Point, just south of the High Street Bridge and next to the existing Tidewater Boating Center. The district says it should be finished in late summer 2027.
What's being built
Plans call for small and large group picnic areas, a multi-use lawn, restrooms and a nature play area for kids, tied together by walking paths that lead to gathering spots and shoreline viewpoints. The park will also work as a staging area for people riding or walking the San Francisco Bay Trail and for kayakers and other small-craft boaters using the Bay Area Water Trail launch. The project includes stormwater improvements meant to cut runoff into nearby waterways.
A state environmental filing for the project describes more detail, including about half a mile of new internal trails, a new parking lot, boat storage and plantings that are more than 90% native species.
A long time coming
The district bought the parcel in 1979, and a 1977 land-use plan for the shoreline had already pictured trees, picnic space and meadows there. For decades the land was instead leased to a trucking company that stored truck chassis on it. That lease ended in 2017 so the park could move forward, according to the district's project page.
Board member Luana España, whose ward includes the shoreline, said at the groundbreaking that not every East Bay community has had equal access to open space close to home, and that the project brings new shoreline access to Oakland's flatlands. KALW has reported that the site is in a historically redlined neighborhood.
Who's paying
A $2.8 million gift from the late Judge John Sutter and Eloise Sutter to the Regional Parks Foundation is helping fund the work. Sutter, a former Oakland council member and Alameda County judge, served on the park district board from 1996 to 2016 and pushed for the creation of the MLK shoreline park.
Rep. Lateefah Simon secured more than $1 million in federal community project funding for water quality work at the shoreline earlier this year and attended Friday's event. Other money comes from local park measures WW, FF and CC, state Proposition 68, the State Coastal Conservancy, the Wildlife Conservation Board, the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.