With the buzz of a championship sports match, Skunk Train executives faced off with city leaders in Fort Bragg’s Town Hall on Tuesday night. The Fort Bragg City Council, Fort Bragg Planning Commission and a capacity crowd watched acrimony evaporate in favor of celebratory artistic renderings of the future of the old mill site.
The old mill site is that 400 acre area that comprises all of Fort Bragg’s ocean access from the Noyo River Bridge to Glass Beach.
More than 130 spectators packed Town Hall, with half a dozen watching from outside at the start. The railroad and city had spent years fighting each other in court, at public meetings, and in local elections, before coming to terms behind closed doors. After three hours, most everybody had stayed for the show. Many were thrilled something was happening, while overwhelmed to the point of saying their reactions would have to wait. If the plans shown become reality, the railroad got most of what it wanted back in 2020, before the years of battling with the city commenced.
Joanne Abramson, who came to the Coast in 1978, described how amazing it has been to have the mill site go from closed to one of the best places to walk anywhere. She was one of those who asked the city and railroad to seize this incredible opportunity to do even more, such as wind and solar power.
"A hundred acres isn't a turned over on the coast of California ever," Abramson said. "When was the last time a city had an opportunity to do the things that you have a possibility to do?"
Many in the audience said they would return on March 10, when the city council will hold the first public hearing on these proposed development agreements, which would officially start the biggest development in Fort Bragg in a generation. The council kept quiet and watched on Tuesday, saying they wanted to give the public the time to listen and speak.
"This is a world class stretch of the Pacific Ocean," Jensen said. "It's never going to happen again that we have an opportunity to do the right thing. For that world class stretch of coast, if we're going to develop an on that property, it needs to be with the highest quality materials. It needs to be a model for the world."
There were two informal sessions where everybody explored 8-foot-tall maps along the walls of Town Hall, showing a dazzling conference center surrounded by rows of housing. The middle of the millsite is shown becoming a railroad square complex, where the historic drying sheds and roundhouse would be supplemented by a grand dining hall.
The center of the site would be composed of natural areas, where the still-polluted mill ponds would be remediated.
The south end of the millsite is shown on the maps with a Pomo cultural center adjacent to the existing reservation area, along with property to be developed later.
The proposals include an electric trolley that would carry visitors and residents around the site and to downtown Fort Bragg. All that was presented is preliminary and may or may not be included when the council crafts developer agreements.
Even if it were somehow approved immediately, the vision presented is a process that would likely take up to 20 years to become reality.
Local political activist Jade Tippett said doing something for the Pomo should be integral to this process. "What about land back to the native folks, whose land this used to be and it was taken from them by force without compensation?" Tippett asked.
Tippett also pointed to the downside of tourism-centered economic development. "Tourism is an unstable choice on which to base an economy," he said. "Discretionary spending is the first to go. Efforts to diversifying the economy need to be top priority."
Hart answered Tippett, saying the railroad had been working with tribal representatives since the property was purchased in 2020, and ideas were in the works.
The wall posters depicted a Pomo cultural center next to the current tribal area, located between Noyo Bridge and the south end of the property in question.
For more than a century, the lumber mill was the town’s primary employe, blocking the oceanfront and ocean views. The city of Fort Bragg set up a planning process after the mill closed in 2002. The city, led by Marie Jones, led the way in creating the Coastal Trail that provides ocean blufftop hiking, biking, and picnicking.
The biggest issue has always been cleaning up of the toxic mess left behind by the timber companies. A skunk train attorney said the company had obligated itself to paying for the remaining cleanup, which he said could cost up to $60 million. Most of the pollution left is in the mill pond area, which isn’t proposed for development.
Former Development Director Jones and former City Manager Linda Ruffing are on the city consultants team working on the proposals.
Back in November, the battle between the city and the Skunk Train had again been the top issue in the city council elections, a poll by the League of Women voters showed. In the November 2024 election, people were exasperated with both the city and the railroad over lack of action. Following the election, the two sides announced they were going to negotiate behind closed doors to end the litigation. The litigation was about whether the Skunk was legally a working railroad or a tourist fun ride. A railroad does not have to submit permits to the city and the Coastal Commission.
Although nothing has happened so far with the legal cases, this plan matches what the Skunk proposed. In an interview, Fort Bragg City Manager said this issue has not been resolved and won’t be until developer agreements are approved by the council and make their way through the CEQA process.
Stay tuned and come out for more on March 10th at 6 PM at Town Hall.
