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Residents urge Antioch to keep Beatty Lumberyard on CIP and pursue $8M parks grant
Summary
During the CIP presentation, residents urged council to retain the Beatty Lumberyard site in the capital improvement plan as a downtown park/event space and push to apply for California park development grant funding targeted to underserved communities.
Several downtown residents urged Antioch City Council on May 26 to keep the Beatty (BD) Lumberyard on the city’s Capital Improvement Program and to pursue state park and revitalization grant funding.
At the public comment period following Public Works Director Scott Bunting’s presentation of the draft five‑year CIP, speakers described longstanding community engagement around an event space on the riverfront lot and cited the California Statewide Park Development and Community Revitalization Program grant, which offers awards up to $8 million for underserved communities.
"Why would you pass up an opportunity to invest $8,000,000 to help revitalize downtown and honor what many residents have begged you to envision for more than 30 years?" Joy Motts told the council.
Multiple residents said the site could host concerts, festivals and events that support downtown businesses and senior programming across the street from the senior center. Others urged the council to balance economic development with green space and to bring back the earlier public engagement results before changing the lot’s designation.
Director Bunting said public works and recreation had previously conducted rounds of community engagement on the site and that staff would research those records and return with options and a timetable to pursue grant funding. He also noted that Park and Rec had identified the Beatty site among potential locations that meet grant eligibility metrics for underserved areas, but that the riverfront location complicates some of the mapping criteria used in the grant portal.
Next steps: staff said they will bring the grant discussion and any necessary outreach back to the council at an upcoming meeting so the city can determine the best site and approach for a potential grant application.
Bunting noted the city will need to define maintenance commitments and clarify funding sources if the council wants to pursue a major capital project downtown.
"If there's funding for it, then I'd be open to reviewing that again," one councilmember said. "If it's not coming from general fund, I'm down for that and seeing how we can best utilize those funds to serve our community."
