Environmental group signs deal to buy Golden Gate Fields horse track with plans to create huge new East Bay waterfront park $175 million deal is “once in a lifetime opportunity” to transform track that operated from 1941 to 2024, supporters say A drone view of the former Golden Gate Fields horse racing track in Berkeley, Calif., on Sunday, March 29, 2026. The track, which closed in 2024, is being purchased for $175 million by the Trust for Public Land, an environmental group based in San Francisco, which plans to transfer the property to the East Bay Regional Park District. 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.” The property includes roughly 1 mile of bayfront land and sits adjacent to existing parks, including the Albany Bulb, Tom Bates Regional Sports Complex and McLaughlin East Shore State Park. Together, they will form roughly 8.5 miles of connected public shoreline. Golden Gate Fields hosted thousands of thoroughbred races over its 83-year history. It was the last major horse racing facility in the Bay Area when it closed nearly two years ago, following the closure of Bay Meadows in San Mateo in 2008. Featured in Jack Kerouac’s 1957 book “On the Road,” the 1941 film “Shadow of a Thin Man” and the 1970s TV show “Streets of San Francisco,” Golden Gate Fields has panoramic views of the bay, San Francisco’s skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge. ALBANY, CA – Aug. 15: Horse racing returns to Golden Gates Fields in Albany, Calif., Thursday, Aug. 15, 2019. The East Bay Regional Park District, based in Oakland, plans to hold public meetings next year to gather ideas on restoring and renewing the property, said Allison Brooks, assistant general manager for the park district. “To have this stretch of incredible shoreline and restore it to its natural habitat and have ways for people to come engage with nature and the views, where they can go for a run or play soccer and rent a kayak or compatible uses like that is very exciting,” she said. “It will become a new place where people can interact with the bay.” The park district is a public agency that operates 73 parks in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. It oversees 126,809 acres, 1,330 miles of trails and 55 miles of shoreline. Under the terms of the option agreement, the Stronach Group will remove all of the buildings from the site. Those include stables for 1,420 horses and a grandstand that seated approximately 8,000 people. The property also includes parking for 8,500 cars. It was unclear Tuesday how much environmental cleanup might be required. A drone view of the former Golden Gate Fields horse racing track and grandstand in Berkeley, Calif., on Sunday, March 29, 2026. The track, which closed in 2024, is being purchased for $175 million by the Trust for Public Land, an environmental group based in San Francisco, who plan to transfer the property to the East Bay Regional Park District. Among the likely possibilities for the property’s future use, Rodriguez and Brooks said, are extending Albany Beach on the northern edge farther south, building trails, restoring wetlands and meadows and constructing sports fields on the southern edge where horse barns are now adjacent to the Tom Bates Regional Sports Complex. That 20-acre park has soccer, baseball and softball fields used every year by thousands of children and adults from nearby communities that have fewer parks than many other parts of the Bay Area. It will likely be about five years before enough improvements have been made to open public access to the whole property, they said. Some see the landmark deal as similar to the transformation of Crissy Field in San Francisco. That 100-acre property near the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge was an Army airfield from 1921 to 1974. In the 1990s, using public funds and private donations, the National Park Service and Golden Gate Parks Conservancy removed acres of concrete, wire fences, and old Quonset huts, replacing them with vast green meadows, a restored wetland, trails and sandy public beaches. The property now receives 1.2 million visitors a year and has helped revitalize the city’s waterfront. “This is a milestone,” said Robert Cheasty, executive director of Citizens for East Shore Parks and a former Albany mayor, of the Golden Gate Fields deal. “It’s wonderful. We couldn’t be happier. We’ve been hoping for this for decades.” The property is currently zoned for recreational use. Albany voters passed a 1990 ballot measure requiring public approval for major new development there. The racetrack property has a long and storied history. Centuries before California became a state, it was a wetland area. In the 1850s, it was used as a transfer point to move cattle from the East Bay to the growing city of San Francisco. Then came a dynamite factory owned by the Giant Powder Company. Between 1879 and 1892, it blew up twice. Everything changed in 1933, when California voters passed Proposition 3, legalizing horse racing and parimutuel betting. Investors, including singer Bing Crosby, built Golden Gate Fields in 1941. The Navy took it over during World War II to use a depot to store boats, barges and other landing craft that were used in battles across the Pacific. During its heyday, the track was a Bay Area landmark, popular for its $1 Sundays when hot dogs and Pabst beer were $1. Famous jockeys like Bill Shoemaker, Russell Baze and Steve Cauthen, along with legendary horses, including 1948 Triple Crown winner Citation, raced there. As public interest in horse racing in California declined, tracks have closed, especially in expensive real estate markets. A number of deaths of horses at Golden Gate Fields and other tracks brought protests in recent years from animal welfare groups. And, in 2020, the COVID pandemic closed the track, taking a toll on its finances. Several major developments have been proposed on the site. In the early 2000s, Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso proposed a $300 million outdoor mall and apartments on the site. Albany residents and elected officials fought it, and, in 2006, Caruso abandoned the plan. Over the next year, Cheasty said, the Trust for Public Land, East Bay parks and other supporters of the deal need to raise money to help cover the purchase price. Much of the cash will come from the trust’s private donors. The group is also in talks with state and federal officials, including to possibly receive some funding from Proposition 4, a $10 billion bond California voters passed in 2024 to address the impacts of climate change. Since 1972, the trust has protected more than 4-million acres of public land, establishing more than 5,500 parks, trails, schoolyards and outdoor sites across the United States, including Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta, India Basin Shoreline Park in San Francisco, and additions to Yosemite National Park, the Appalachian Trail and Cape Cod National Seashore. “When your great-great grandchildren look back,” Cheasty said, “they are going to say our great-grandparents really did a great thing by saving this.” Walnut Creek man allegedly killed three people to be with his mistress. New charges involve alleged hitmanWhy can’t the Oakland airport reverse its downward spiral?This Sacramento suburb is booming. Here’s what you don’t want to missThey want to open 700,000 acres to drilling — including land near Mount DiabloTwo charged with ‘school zone’ gun possession in wild Oakland liquor store shootout