Canal Alliance Weighs in on San Rafael’s purchase of a Site for New Park in ‘Once in a Lifetime’ Deal

After two decades of wishful planning, San Rafael is set to give its isolated Canal neighborhood something it has long needed: a new park that could become a gateway to the larger community.

On Friday, the city closed escrow on a long-vacant boat storage yard along San Rafael Creek, recently identified by officials and community leaders as a rare viable spot for public green space in one of Marin County’s most crowded corners.

The future park would be far more than a patch of grass. Not only would it bring badly needed open space to the 10,000 mostly Latino, working-class residents of the Canal – the most densely populated neighborhood in Marin and the most racially segregated neighborhood in the Bay Area – but it eventually could connect them to the rest of San Rafael through a long-envisioned pedestrian and bicycle bridge over San Rafael Creek.

Transforming the 1.6-acre paved parcel is a long way off, because the money to design and build still must be secured. But the fact that the city of San Rafael, the county of Marin, the Trust for Public Land, the Marin Community Foundation and the Canal Alliance came together as one entity to scrape up the $3.35 million purchase price on short notice was a victory for the Canal.

“It’s what the community has been asking for for decades,” said Marin County Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, who recently joined about a dozen other elected officials and stakeholders to offer the Chronicle an exclusive site tour. “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to make a vision into a possibility.”

It is so early in the process that the future park does not have a name, and there are no renderings of what it may look like. But there are thousands of residents packed into apartments nearby who are served by just one overcrowded open space, Pickleweed Park at the eastern end of the district.

“The only comparable place in the country for density is Manhattan,” said Omar Carrera, CEO of the Canal Alliance, a nonprofit that provides urgent services and community development for the low-lying, flood-prone area. Having a second park to relieve the pressure has been identified as the top priority in the neighborhood of mostly Spanish-speaking Central American immigrants for at least 20 years, he said. Some 500 Canal residents turned up at a recent community fair to voice that priority.

“When you think about the ratio of parkland acreage per thousand residents, the Canal is dramatically lower than all other parts of San Rafael and Marin County,” Carrera said. “The residents of the Canal benefit the least from open space opportunities.”

A 1.6-acre parcel pinned between the water and other buildings won’t do much to add access to open space, but the bigger dream is to build a 50-foot bicycle and pedestrian bridge from the future park across San Rafael Creek and connect the Canal neighborhood to the greater network of recreational opportunities in San Rafael and beyond. A bridge would also provide pedestrian accesst to San Rafael High School, Montecito Plaza and the city transit center, all of which can be reached only by car, bus or foot on the busy frontage roads that run alongside Highway 101.

“The community has been asking for this bridge for more than 20 years,” said Rodoni, whose West Marin district also encompasses parts of East San Rafael. “There are 10,000 people living here who are totally cut off from the network of parks.”

For nearly 10 years, Carrera has been looking for property that would support both a park and a bridge. It came along in August 2024 when a Realtor contacted him to tell him the boatyard formerly known as Hi-Tide Marine could be available in an off the market deal. Located at 620 Canal St., it sits next to a parking lot the city already owns. The acreage, big enough for a playground, is in a narrow spot in the river almost directly across from San Rafael High.

“There is no other property that can accomplish both needs,” said Carrera, referring to both a playground and safe pedestrian access to schools. He relayed that message directly to City Council member Maika Llorens Gulati, whose district includes the Canal. She in turn called Rodoni, and the wheels were turning.

If the consortium of buyers did not meet the time frame dictated by the seller “it would have gone on the open market,” Gulati said. “So everybody came together very quickly.”

Marin County Parks Measure A, a quarter-cent sales tax to fund parks and open space, provided the first $1.35 million, through its Land Preservation and Park Access grant program. It was the largest grant issued by Marin County Parks to support a new park or open space acquisition since Measure A first passed in 2012.

The city of San Rafael came up with $500,000. That left the balance, $1.5 million, to the Trust for Public Land, a national organization that raises private and public funds for land and conservation acquisitions. Working with the Marin Community Foundation, TPL was able to secure $664,000 from the Buck Family Fund.

With one month to go before the deadline, TPL was able to raise $800,000 from a small group of individuals – though it came down to the wire.

“To get the money together in that short of time is pretty amazing,” said Gulati.

Nicole Brown, California philanthropy director at the Trust for Public Land, described the funding effort as a “dream project.”

“The city stood up right away,” she said. “The county stood up right away. We (TPL) found more than a dozen people willing to put money in the ground. That’s the amazing story.”

Once the sale goes through, the park will enter the city planning phase, with neighborhood meetings held by the Canal Alliance to get residents’ input on the design. The alliance has already made a field trip to another project partially funded by TPL, India Basin Waterfront Park in San Francisco, to start gathering ideas and information

For now, Canal Boatyard Park, as they are calling it, will remain behind a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, its asphalt surface waiting for the jackhammer. The aluminum-sided shacks and metal boatracks aren’t worth saving – but a stone hut the previous owner built as an attraction at the water’s edge could become a beacon for people on both sides of San Rafael Creek.

“It’s a two-way bridge,” said Rodoni. “It invites everyone to come into the Canal.”

This article originally published at Exclusive: North Bay city buys site for new park in ‘once in a lifetime’ deal.