Citizens Float Ideas for Suisun Waterfront

Citizens Float Ideas for Suisun Waterfront
By Ian Thompson

SUISUN CITY - Some mixed use development, a restaurant and improvements to the boat launch area if possible were what residents said they would like to see happen to the waterfront area south of Delta Cove.

These were some of the preferred uses that came from a Monday night brainstorming session to help Suisun City planners determine what the best use would be for one of the last undeveloped areas on the Suisun Slough's west side.

"It would be a good revenue source," said Suisun City waterfront resident Steve Lessler of a possible waterfront restaurant.

More than two dozen residents showed up for the two-hour session to first digest three conceptual alternative plans for the area before supporting the parts of the plans they liked and discarding the ones they did not.

The designs ranged from minimal changes that had much of the open land turn into parkland to more intensive changes that had the Adams Marine building moved, docks extended south and considerable development built up.

This all sprung from several possible ideas city planners had sketched out and presented to the City Council in September 2006.

Design, Community & Environment of Berkeley, hired in December to undertake the design effort, took in all the comments, which they will turn into a proposed land use plan that will go to the City Council this spring.

The idea of putting in development which would include a restaurant received support from those present who stated a restaurant, especially a high-end one designed to take advantage of its waterfront location, would bring more people to the area.

Suisun City has been approached on this idea by two interested developers during the past two years, but the proposals have gone nowhere in City Hall.

A suggestion by Design, Community & Environment to move the Adams Marine building was shot down with residents saying it would be too expensive and that the building is just fine where it is.

Boater John Scaff strongly recommended improvements in and around the boat launch area be made to allow large boats to be pulled out, repaired and maintained in Suisun City.

"We have no pull-out facility," Scaff said. "We haul them over to other places for repair and maintenance, and this city is losing money."

Suisun City can't do much to the boat launch because any changes are heavily restricted by a California Department of Boating and Waterways grant.

The city does have the option of "buying out" the grant to allow it more leeway in what it can do with the boat launch area.

Reach Ian Thompson at 427-6976 or at ithompson@dailyrepublic.net.