Golden Gate Fields shortly before its closure in 2024. Credit: Ximena Natera, Berkeleyside/Catchlight
The plan to buy the former Golden Gate Fields race track and turn it into a huge new waterfront park cleared a key hurdle Tuesday, as lawmakers in Sacramento approved a plan to put $125 million from a state parks and climate bond toward the purchase.
The allocation was part of budget legislation that passed out of the state Senate and Assembly Tuesday and is now headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is expected to sign it — he included the earmark in his budget proposal this spring.
The Trust for Public Land, a San Francisco nonprofit, announced in March that it had secured a deal to buy the horse racing track, which closed in 2024, for $175 million, then transfer the property straddling the Berkeley-Albany border to the East Bay Regional Park District. The district has set aside another $20 million for the purchase, and the trust, which has until the end of the year to exercise its option to buy the site, is also raising money through private philanthropy.
Some environmental groups raised concerns about Newsom’s proposal to dedicate funding from Proposition 4, the $10 billion bond voters approved in 2024, to the Golden Gate Fields purchase, since the allocation would leave less money for other projects around the region and state.
But local officials advocated for the funding as a way to restore the bayshore ecosystem and give residents in Berkeley and Albany more access to nature. State Sen. Jesse Arreguín cheered the plan in a press release Saturday, after the funding was included in a trailer bill for the state budget.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reclaim 161 acres of East Bay waterfront for the public, and we are seizing it,” said Arreguín, the former Berkeley mayor. “For years, our community fought for a future where this land belongs to everyone — not behind fences, but open to families, cyclists, pedestrians and future generations. I’m proud to have championed that fight, and we’re not stopping until the vision is complete.”
The Stronach Group, a Canadian firm that owns the property, has agreed to demolish Golden Gate Fields’ grandstands and other structures on the site as part of the purchase agreement. The park district has said it will undertake a public process to shape the planned new park.
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