Sounds of freeway, nature fill new park
600foot pier built on old Bay Bridge pilings opens in East Bay
Just about everyone was delighted with the new park at the foot of the Bay Bridge, with the possible exception of a certain gray stingray.
The creature was among the first fish to be caught from the pier at the end of Judge John Sutter Regional Shoreline in Oakland the other morning. Fisherman Dom Noa obligingly tossed it back into San Francisco Bay.
“He’s got nothing to complain about,” Noa said. “He ate the bait, got a free lunch and got to swim off. He got his picture taken. He came out ahead.”
Noa was among a handful of fishermen at the end of the 600foot pier that is the main draw at the new park, located a few feet south of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge. The pier runs alongside and is supported by six pilings from the old incline section of the eastern span. That’s the half of the bridge that got replaced following the collapse of a section of roadway deck in the 1989 earthquake.
Conversation at John Sutter Regional Shoreline requires raised voices to be heard above the sound of zillions of passing cars and trucks only a few feet away. Also required are face masks, making conversation even
“The view of the underside of the bridge is something you don’t get when you’re on the bridge.”
trickier.
The new park is also tricky to get at. From the parking lot, tucked into a poorly marked corner of the Port of Oakland and surrounded by ships, trucks and cranes, it’s about a halfmile stroll on the shoulder of the Bay Bridge bike trail approach to get to
Jyl Baldwin, cyclist from El Cerrito
the pier. More than one visitor has gotten lost.
“This is very confusing,” said Cari Pi of San Francisco who took a wrong turn and found herself walking toward a maintenance yard surrounded by coils of razor wire, which is not where she wanted to go. “They need some signs.”
The confusion might be said to start with the name, because the John Sutter that the new park is named after is not the same John Sutter of California Gold Rush fame. This particular John Sutter is a former East Bay Regional Park District director and civic leader who had a fondness for the tuckedaway spot amid the exhaust fumes.
The trek along the bike path to the new pier passes the familiar giant electronic billboards seen by Bay Bridge motorists and past an endless stretch of purple sea lavender. The ceaseless bridge cacophony is broken only by the occasional squawk of a gull or ping of a bicycle bell.
Arriving at the pier, a visitor is rewarded with an eerie view of the underside of the eastern span, a few picnic tables and a half dozen informational signs. One sign includes the unkindest cut of all — a color picture of the collapsed Bay Bridge deck. Another explains that the 395foottall metal horses to the south are actually cranes used to unload “the clothes you wear, the phone in your pocket and the coffee you drink” from the 1,500 freighters that visit the port each year.
The new park also includes the old power substation and maintenance buildings for the Key System electric trains that carried passengers over the bridge from San Francisco to the East Bay in the 84yearold bridge’s first two decades. Those are being remodeled into a snack bar, recreational center and event space.
East Bay Regional Park District General Manager Robert Doyle called the new park, which took about a year to build at a cost of $ 20 million, a “landmark partnership” between Caltrans, the Bay Area Toll Authority and the park district. Some of the $ 20 million was offset, park officials said, because they didn’t have to spend money to knock down the six old pilings used to hold up the new pier.
Three cyclists took a detour from the Bay Bridge bike trail to check it all out.
“It’s nice they kept a piece of the old bridge, instead of just throwing it away,” said cyclist Jyl Baldwin of El Cerrito. “And the view of the underside of the bridge is something you don’t get when you’re on the bridge.”
The new pier, which is open to cyclists, does not take them all the way across the bay. In that way it’s something like the new Bay Bridge bike trail, which does not take them all the way across the bay, either.
The park’s first week of operation has featured sunny sparkling weather for the initial set of thrillseekers. The park can be said to have been officially broken in, as trash has already been deposited in the pit toilets and bloody fish guts already stain the pier deck.
Betty and Dan Breaud of Hayward wheeled their two beagles, Lilly and Trevor, to the bridge in their doggy carriage, to save wear and tear on their little paws. Neither beagle was impressed by the concrete pier, where there was scant opportunity to sniff and to do what a dog does following a sniff.
“The dogs do like being here,” Dan Breaud said. “They like being anyplace. But they could have put the parking lot closer to the pier.”
Agreeing with that sentiment was Robert Bartlett of Oakland, who had trekked from Emeryville to the new shoreline and was on his way back to his parked car. His visit took many hours.
“It’s a nice day for a long walk, if you’re not decrepit,” he said. “I’m not decrepit.”