The waterfront works, because we do.
In 2024, a group of Sausalito citizens and business owners came together, for the first time, to speak with one voice for the waterfront. The Sausalito Sustainable Waterfront Association now counts more than 50 members strong: the mariners, builders, artists, and neighbors who have kept this bay going for generations.
Our members support more than 2,000 boat slips across eight marinas, and the bay economy that comes with them: commercial and recreational fisherfolk, charters and sailing schools, family boaters and kayakers, along with the mechanics, riggers and canvas workers who keep them afloat, our floating home neighbors and the restaurants and studios that keep us all fed and inspired.
The costs and complexities of doing business on the bay are high. As long-time waterfront business owners, no one knows these unique challenges as well as we do.
We work collaboratively with our city and our neighbors and we advocate for what a thriving working waterfront needs, because it's time that experience had a seat at the table. This includes things like regulatory streamlining to allow us to better address infrastructural needs, environmental advocacy to help us carve out a place for ourselves in the Blue Economy, as well as promoting a commercial diversity that is vital to the continued viability of the district as a whole. We know that a thriving waterfront requires a robust, interdependent ecosystem of businesses and services.
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Blue Economies seek to conserve marine environments while using them in a sustainable way to deliver economic growth. A thoughtful Blue Economy program would incorporate the voices of all the professionals along Sausalito’s waterfront and use innovation and diversification to enhance and bolster the delicate network of maritime services along Sausalito’s waterfront.
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The navigational channel spanning Sausalito’s waterfront needs to be dredged in its entirety. The City-owned facilities at Turney Street and the Waterfront center at Cass Gidley Marina need to be restored to fulfill their status as a proper public amenity. We seek a more vibrant waterfront, and streamlining a process for more regular maintenance of the waterfront is a critical part of that.
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The costs and complexities of doing business on the bay are high. We believe that greater mutual benefit would be realized from working together to protect, promote and advocate for our waterfront businesses by educating regional agencies about these costs, and working together to streamline processes for getting things done in a more efficient manner.
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Our City’s marinas are the recreational heartbeat of Sausalito. The Sausalito waterfront offers many ways to recreate and to enjoy the waterfront whether it be through boat ownership, kayaking, chartering a boat, dining, or simply strolling. As such, waterfront properties should have broader latitude in how they activate their sites for the public. From boat shows to pop-up markets and other novel uses, the current use framework is overly burdensome in preventing many of these activities from taking place.
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Both economic diversity AND environmental stewardship can (and must) exist harmoniously - it doesn't have to be one or the other. The Sausalito waterfront should be thriving but is instead being slowly crushed by “anti-gentrification” pressures, regulatory red tape and environmental regulations. As marina operators and waterfront businesses, we are subject matter experts at finding innovative ways to protect and preserve the environment while creating economic opportunities.