In a historic land conservation deal, a San Francisco environmental group has signed an agreement to purchase Golden Gate Fields, the site of a famous horse racing track from 1941 to 2024 along the eastern shores of San Francisco Bay, and preserve it as open space and a panoramic new waterfront park.
The Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit organization, secured an option to pay $175 million to buy the 161-acre property west of Interstate 80 in Albany and Berkeley from the Stronach Group, a Canadian company that has owned it since 1999. The deal is scheduled to close early next year, after which the trust said it will transfer the property to the East Bay Regional Park District.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put nature and public access at the forefront, expand recreation and restore the waterfront so it is much more accessible,” said Guillermo Rodriguez, California state director of the Trust for Public Land . “The views are spectacular out there.”…