Richmond, California
A civic pamphlet. Not a newspaper. No ads. Nothing for sale.
Publius
23 April 2026.
The Craneway is a cathedral of a building. Glass walls, steel trusses, the old Ford assembly line laid out along the water so that, on a clear evening, the light comes in sideways off the Bay and turns the concrete gold. Whatever you think of what happens inside it, the building itself makes a promise about this city. It says Richmond once made things, at scale, and might again.
On April 21 the Council took up item P.2: a donation agreement under which Orton Entertainment, LLC would donate its leasehold interests and related personal property at 1414–1422 Harbor Way South to the City, with the Mayor authorized to sign the escrow papers and “take all actions necessary to complete the transaction.”
A gift. Gifts are supposed to be easy. You say thank you or you say no thank you.
Councilmember Bana moved to deny the donation agreement, and Councilmember Brown seconded. The motion failed 3–3: Bana, Brown, and Zepeda voting yes; Jimenez, Wilson, and the Mayor voting no; Vice Mayor Robinson abstaining. Then Councilmember Wilson moved to accept the donation agreement, and Councilmember Jimenez seconded. That motion failed 3–4: Jimenez, Wilson, and the Mayor voting yes; Bana, Brown, Zepeda, and Robinson voting no.
So the Council would not say no thank you, and it would not say thank you. By the arithmetic of the evening, the gift was neither refused nor received. It simply hung there in the chamber air, like a wedding present nobody will open because nobody can agree on who it is from.
I have some sympathy for every one of the seven votes. A leasehold on a large waterfront building is not a box of chocolates. It comes with obligations: maintenance, insurance, the terms of the underlying ground lease, the risks of an old industrial building at the edge of the Bay. A councilmember could reasonably want to know, before accepting it, what it would cost the City to hold. Another could reasonably think the City has no business becoming the landlord of an event hall. Another could think it the opportunity of a decade. Those are real positions.
What is harder to defend is the result, which was no position at all. The donor, the tenants, the staff, and the public all walked out of the room knowing less about the City’s intentions than when they walked in. And the swing vote, the one that broke neither tie, came from the member who abstained on the first motion and voted no on the second. That is a choice a member is entitled to make. It is also a choice that leaves no fingerprints on either answer.
A Council can fail to decide in many ways: by continuance, by referral, by a plan to make a plan. A pair of failed motions in opposite directions is the purest form. Nothing is continued, nothing is referred. Both doors are closed, and everyone is still standing in the hall.
The building will be fine. Buildings like that have survived worse governments than this one. But somewhere a lawyer is drafting a letter that begins, “In light of the Council’s action on April 21,” and will have to explain to a client that there was no action.
The next regular meeting of the City Council is Tuesday, April 28, 2026.
— Publius