At the center of the debate is the parking lot of the Golden Gate Fields horse race track, an expanse of concrete spreading from the shoreline to the track. The owner of this land, Magna Entertainment, would like to turn the parking area into a commercial district, with restaurants and other business venues. Magna presented this project after a year of consultations with citizens’ panels and $2 million of investment by its hired developer, Rick Caruso. But the city put the project on hold at a July City Council meeting this year, and Caruso eventually gave up. Magna has been biding its time, hoping new city council members will re-ignite the process and show themselves to be friendlier to Magna’s idea of a ‘developed’ waterfront.

The most vocal candidates for this position, Francesco Papalia and Caryl O’ Keefe, have been campaigning for what they call “reasonable development” on the waterfront. Although Papalia and O’ Keefe are running independently, they sound similar in their description of a future waterfront, in which the inner land would be developed commercially and the shore would be cleaned for public use. O’Keefe and Papalia say they want more money in the city’s and school district’s budgets. They both say they see Golden Gate Fields as the place to start, because GGF is currently the biggest taxpayer in Albany and could not, they say, be replaced in a short time. Any project presented in Albany by a developer, they say, would not be allowed to disrupt the city’s zoning, because under Albany law voters will have to approve the plan by a two-thirds majority.

On the other side, the Sierra Club, which has a local branch in Albany, opposes the commercial development option. The environmental organization strives for what it characterizes as a greener long-term vision for Albany. The other two city council candidates come from the ranks of the Sierra Club. Joanne Wile and Marge Atkinson are teammates under the one flag of “Save Our Shoreline.”

Atkinson and Wile say they want the Waterfront to be as natural as possible, and that they would ultimately like to see the racetrack closed and replaced by a park. They say the park would provide equivalent, if not richer, tax revenue for Albany, by allowing construction of environmentally friendly hotels on the eastern side of the property, by I-80, where Codornices Creek streams, as far as possible from the shoreline. The park, the candidates say, would serve the city’s financial needs. And it would also serve the wider environmental goal of the Sierra Club.

To the Sierra Club, in fact, Albany’s waterfront is the missing link in the unification of the Eastshore State Park, a strip of protected parks and aquatic areas stretching almost without interruption from north to south along the East Bay – from Emeryville to Richmond, via Berkeley and Albany. But in Albany, Magna’s Golden Gate Fields leaves the state-owned shoreline park incomplete. Despite the campaign slogans, in fact, GGF remains private property. Legally, Magna has the right to stay, even though the green faction of the city feels the waterfront is properly public shoreline. The outcome of the race will depend on which perception prevails.

The election of either pair of candidates – Papalia and O’Keefe, or Wile and Atkinson – would skew Albany’s city council toward stronger positions on major issues like development and environment. Vice mayor and city council member Farid Javandel, who is more neutral on these questions, is likely to become the city’s new mayor. In Albany, the city council elects the mayor from among its own members; traditionally the vice mayor moves into the job. The other incumbent council members, Jewel Okawachi and Robert Lieber, have respectively embraced the commercial and the environmental option. As a result of this balance of forces, two newcomers sharing the same vision on development and environment would result in a steady 3-to-2 majority.

If one candidate from each side won, the Council would be split in two factions, and at that point the new mayor would have the trump vote on any government actions.