With the failure of a legislative solution to keep the Docktown Marina in place for 15 years, Redwood City officials are now preparing a plan to fulfill the requirements of a lawsuit the city settled earlier this year.
The $4.5 million settlement with attorney and Docktown neighbor Ted Hannig calls for relocating residents starting in 2017.
The city must prepare a plan by the end of this year to relocate residents and clean up any hazardous materials left over from old industrial uses along Redwood Creek and then start implementing it by the end of 2017.
State Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, told the Daily Journal last week that he and Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, dropped an urgency bill to keep the marina intact for 15 years because not all Docktown residents were on board with the proposal.
The State Lands Commission approved a legislative plan in April to allow the marina to stay under certain conditions.
Some residents, however, do not support the conditions since it affects their livelihoods.
The city presented a plan to the State Lands Commission to preserve the marina for 15 years with the following conditions:
• The city would prohibit new tenants, new liveaboard watercraft and transfer of existing watercraft at Docktown; and
• the city would mandate that all liveaboard watercraft be owner-occupied or city owned. No subleases would be allowed.
Some residents rent multiple slips from the city and rent out houseboats and others rent their boats on Airbnb. Since they were not willing to accept the conditions, Hill dropped his legislation.
Those residents are now being singled out by others who live there and contend they have derailed the process at the harm of residents, who now must deal with having to relocate in 19 months rather than 15 years.
“There is a very boisterous group of individuals who claim to represent Docktown as a whole, and while at one time that may have been true, they now only represent their own financial interests and do not represent a majority of the residents who have families, jobs and otherwise better and more positive things to do than constantly haggle for every bit of minutiae that doesn’t fit their expectations,” Docktown resident Chris Tavenner wrote the City Council in an email. “These same individuals asked you to go to the state and stand beside them, you did just that, and now they want to bicker over terms that affect their own individual incomes and investments at the expense of everything else.”
Tavenner hopes a legislative solution is not completely off the table and Hill said last week he’d be willing to take the issue up again in January if all Docktown residents unanimously support the legislation.
Other Docktown residents, however, want to see a legislative solution that is fair to all residents. Some want to see legislation that will allow Docktown to stay in the creek forever.
Docktown resident JoAnn McDonnell called Hill’s proposed legislation draconian since it would “destroy the value of our homes.”
She thinks, however, that it could be legislation that saves Docktown.
She also thinks the plan the city must develop under the Hannig settlement does not have to mean the marina must close.
She wants to see legislation that allows for a permanent floating community on Redwood Creek or nearby. However, she admits the marina’s infrastructure “is terrible” and needs to be updated.
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The marina is technically a violation of the public trust but was allowed to exist for 50 years because basically no one complained about it.
That may have changed when the city took over management of the marina.
Redwood City has been the trustee of Redwood Creek and tidelands since 1954 and took over operating the marina in 2013 after its then owner Fred Earnhardt Jr. opted to no longer oversee the harbor, which had fallen into disrepair.
It has about 70 liveaboards and 100 residents on the property now.
McDonnell would like to see Docktown remain in place for 15 years but without the restrictions.
She thinks, though, that city officials are not as supportive of the marina as they have let on.
“I think Redwood City would just like to see us disappear,” McDonnell said Tuesday.
Redwood City Mayor John Seybert expressed disappointment that a legislative solution could not be found.
“We had hoped the legislative approach was going to strike a balance between complying with state law and providing residents a longer time to transition,” Seybert wrote in a statement.
He told the Daily Journal Tuesday that he thought State Lands had approved a “great solution.”
“Some louder voices took over the process,” Seybert said.
When the city settled the $4.5 million lawsuit in January, it agreed to set aside $3 million into a fund to clean up any environmental messes in the creek and to help residents of the marina to relocate elsewhere.
The remaining $1.5 million was paid to attorney Hannig, who filed the complaint against the city in November, 2015.
Under terms of the settlement, the city must develop an action plan by the end of 2016 to bring the marina into legal compliance and must show progress by the end of 2017.
Hannig is also the Daily Journal’s attorney.
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