The Sausalito City Council has denied a request by the owner of Bridgeway Marina to lease tidelands under neighboring Pelican Harbour.<\/p>\n
The 4-0 vote at a special council meeting Thursday came after live-aboard residents and mariners at Pelican Harbour and other community leaders opposed plans by Bridgeway Marina owner Cameron Razavi to purchase Pelican Harbour.<\/p>\n
The decision to reject the tidelands lease prevents the $13.4 million sale from closing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a pure commercial transaction,\u201d Mayor Steven Woodside said Friday. \u201cWe have an obligation in the public interest to public health, public safety and quality of life. And obligations under the tidelands trust to be a faithful steward of the land that is the subject of the lease.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t the right decision but I understand the council\u2019s difficult position \u2013 that\u2019s the bottom line,\u201d Razavi said Friday. \u201cLet\u2019s put it this way \u2014 hundreds of their constituents versus a businessman who already manages one marina but wants another.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cImagine if they vote for me \u2014 the backlash would be unbelievable to them, right?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Pelican Harbour and Bridgeway Marina sit about a quarter-mile apart, separated by open water. Sara Flynn, whose family has owned Pelican Harbour for decades, asked the city to transfer the\u00a0tidelands lease to a new limited liability corporation owned by Razavi\u2019s wife, Christina Suh.<\/p>\n
As word of the sale became known in April, a handful of Pelican Harbour residents urged the council to intervene until another buyer was found. Opponents said Razavi\u2019s record as the proprietor of Bridgeway Marina should be disqualifying.<\/p>\n
The council scheduled a special meeting for Thursday. Assistant City Manager Brendan Phipps, City Attorney Sergio Rudin and city building inspectors prepared a detailed staff report that was released Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The report included a section on Razavi\u2019s \u201cqualifications and suitability\u201d that listed government enforcement actions or lawsuits for housing and safety code violations at properties in San Francisco, Sacramento County and Yolo County.<\/p>\n
The cases included a 2016 guilty plea for \u201csubstandard\u201d apartments in Carmichael, the report said. It said a judge later put Razavi in jail for failing to make required corrections and missing mandatory court appearances.<\/p>\n
The report also details a\u00a0\u201clong and documented history of code enforcement issues spanning multiple decades\u201d at Bridgeway Marina.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese issues have included, among other things, multiple expired building permits that never received final inspections, years of illegal construction through unpermitted work, the addition of illegal floating docks, unapproved off-street parking and storage of cargo\/vehicles, as well as inadequate wastewater discharge procedures,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMoreover, as recently as 2025, the City received new complaints about code violations at Bridgeway Marina related to electrical system issues and short-term rental listings,\u201d it said. \u201cThe City and the marina operator cooperated from 2016 through 2024 to address code violations and health and safety issues, with limited success in achieving full compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The staff report also said the lease transfer application lacked sufficient banking, insurance and other financial documentation.<\/p>\n
The council received 15 letters before the meeting \u2014 all opposing the tidelands lease. During the meeting, a dozen commenters spoke out against the proposal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not simply a real estate transaction,\u201d said Rob McCullough, a 26-year Pelican Harbour resident. \u201cThe property involves state tidelands held by the city in public trust with corresponding stewardship obligations.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe staff report formally documents a long history of operational, regulatory and code enforcement concerns including administrative citations, fire and electrical concerns, unpermitted uses, floating dock issues, short-term rental concerns and repeated involvement by multiple city departments and outside agencies,\u201d he said. \u201cTo be fair, the historical record does reflect periods of cooperation and partial remediation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis file is in no way ripe for action,\u201d Sophia Collier said. \u201cThere are many unanswered questions and I think it would be very easy to actually write up findings about why a no decision would be justified.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom what I\u2019ve heard, the city has tried to work with this party \u2014 and with limited, incomplete success,\u201d she said. \u201cWouldn\u2019t we love to hear the record of an operator with a great record?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m concerned about the maintenance of our harbor,\u201d said Allison Deal, a 30-year resident. \u201cThe first thing these people have done is to fire our harbormaster, who is the person that maintains our harbor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lauren de Remer, another resident, presented photos she took a day before of dangling electrical lines at Bridgeway Marina.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really struggling with trust. I\u2019m really struggling with respect when I see something like this,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is about a missed opportunity to find a qualified person to see through the future of our marina and the future of that whole area of the waterfront.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPelican Harbour is not some distressed property that will cease to function if is not rescued,\u201d said Ian Fletcher, who keeps a boat there. \u201cIt is a commercially viable marina, which could easily be sold to another investor, and there is therefore no reason to tolerate transfer of this marina to a demonstrably unsuitable owner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Razavi attended the council meeting but declined to comment. The council discussion was brief.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere appears to me to be ample and sufficient evidence presented in the staff report and briefings that we\u2019ve received that supports a decision by the city to withhold consent for assignment of the leases, and I\u2019m inclined to support a motion to that effect,\u201d said Councilmember Jill Hoffman.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Joan Cox made that motion, citing \u201ccomments from the community\u201d and \u201ckey outstanding items\u201d in the staff report.<\/p>\n
The motion was approved 4-0. Councilmember Ian Sobieski was absent.<\/p>\n
The council instructed the city manager and city attorney to draft a letter saying why the lease was denied.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Razavi said the council vote would prevent the sale from proceeding.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe we\u2019ll appeal the decision; I don\u2019t know yet,\u201d he said. \u201cI want a project that is win-win. I don\u2019t want a project that is adversarial.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sausalito City Council has denied a request by the owner of Bridgeway Marina to lease tidelands under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[387,7,181,23,992,100,180,993,266,39272,101,1914,103,102,3624,3625,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-318665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-business","tag-california","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-marin-county","tag-news","tag-newsletter","tag-north-bay","tag-northern-california","tag-richardson-bay","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-bay","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sausalito","tag-sausalito-city-council","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}