Martinez Waterfront Summer 2026: What to See Before It Changes

Something quietly unusual is happening at the Martinez Marina this summer. The old marina is functionally on its way out, and the redesigned one hasn't broken ground. If you live here, that puts you in a narrow window: the last full summer of the waterfront as generations of Martinez residents have known it, with the city's 150th birthday sitting right in the middle of it.

That's the frame worth carrying into July, August, and September. Not "what's new," but "what's about to change, and what you can still do while it looks the way it does."

The calendar residents should actually mark

The single date to hold on the fridge is August 29. The City is hosting its Sesquicentennial Festival at the Martinez Marina and Waterfront Park from 11am to 7pm to celebrate 150 years of Martinez. It's the anchor community event of the summer, and the location is not incidental. The waterfront is where the City wants residents rethinking the site as a destination rather than a place they drive past on the way to the pier.

Behind that festival is a longer process that started moving fast in the last six months:

• December 17, 2025. The Martinez City Council unanimously approved an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement with Tucker Sadler Architects, the San Diego firm now leading the redesign.
• February 25, 2026. The first Sesquicentennial Community Session ran from 6–8pm at Alhambra High School, 150 E Street, gathering initial resident input on the concept.
• March 9, 2026. The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission Design Review Board received a preliminary, high-level overview of the Marina and Waterfront Vision, the first regulatory step in a long permitting road.

The public engagement window is still open through the summer, which is why the August 29 festival matters beyond the cake and the music. It's a chance to see the design concepts staged in the place they'll eventually reshape.

What's open, what's closed, what to plan around

If you haven't walked the marina recently, a quick recalibration helps. The site is not what it was five years ago. Per the BCDC's March staff report, the waterfront amphitheater is currently out of service, and marina infrastructure built in the early 1960s is in poor condition, with aging docks, utilities, piles, and a deteriorated breakwater. Facilities such as the restaurant, amphitheater, and bait shop have been closed.

That's the honest baseline. What is still very much open and worth using this summer:

• The 332-slip marina and public launch ramp
• The fishing pier, portions of which the city has kept accessible
• Waterfront Park and Ferry Point Picnic Area
• Shoreline trails connecting to the Radke Martinez Regional Shoreline
• Bocce courts and Joe DiMaggio Field, home of the semi-pro Martinez Sturgeon
• The horse arena and EBRPD open space on the 65 leased acres

A Sunday routine that combines a Sturgeon game, a bocce match, and a walk along the shoreline still works. It just won't work in exactly this configuration for much longer.

The 22 acres that are actually changing

The number that clears up most of the confusion about this project is 22. Every headline says "135 acres" or "the whole waterfront," which has understandably made some longtime residents nervous. The actual footprint of the proposed redevelopment is smaller than the coverage suggests.

Tucker Sadler CEO Greg Mueller has been direct about this. Of the site's 70 acres, his company would only be developing about 22 acres, the area already developed or now covered by parking lots. The trails, the open space, the EBRPD-managed fields, the marshland, the shoreline itself — those are not on the redesign table.

Here is what the change actually looks like across those 22 acres, based on the concept the Council advanced:

The Martinez Yacht Club and the Sea Scouts are named participants in the new plan, not casualties of it, which is a detail worth stating clearly because it hasn't traveled well through the general coverage.

Downtown is where the summer actually happens

While the marina works through its design process, downtown is where residents can most easily feel the "regional draw" argument the City is making. The two are being planned as one experience. Tucker Sadler's Mueller has described the intent as creating nodes of activities, so that if there is a festival happening at the waterfront, there is an aspect of it in downtown, complementing one another.

Downtown Martinez already carries that weight. The quaint downtown features historic buildings with small restaurants and antique shops. Two operators to know if you don't already:

• Brix and Craft. Owner Corey Katz has been one of the more vocal downtown voices on the waterfront project, framing the goal simply. "The new thing is to make Martinez a destination," Katz said.
• The Antique Corner. Owner Ray Jensen has been open about how dependent the shop is on foot traffic. "Foot traffic is like 90 percent of our business," he said. "When it's dead here, it's dead all day. And when we have people, it flourishes."

A useful working theory for the summer: the more residents show up downtown on festival and event weekends, the stronger the case the City can make to BCDC and to state agencies that the waterfront investment has a customer base already in place.

Why this summer matters more than the last several

The pattern in Martinez has been decades of proposals that didn't move. This one is different in a specific, verifiable way: the money picture has changed. The city is using all its allotted $9 million in American Rescue Plan Act federal stimulus money on the waterfront, and it also got $2.6 million in federal money for the fishing pier. A private partner is now under an exclusive agreement. Regulatory review has begun. None of those were true two years ago.

Councilmember Debbie McKillop, a fourth-generation resident, put the scale of it in local terms. She said the massive project could be the most important thing that's happened to Martinez since the Benicia-Martinez Bridge opened in 1962.

Whether or not that turns out to be accurate, the practical read for residents is this: the summer of 2026 is the last summer where the marina looks and functions the way it has for years. The Sesquicentennial Festival on August 29 is both a birthday and a soft farewell to that configuration. The bocce courts, the current pier layout, the walk from the parking lot to the water — none of it disappears, but it changes.

A few things worth doing before Labor Day, in that spirit:

1. Walk the shoreline trail from Waterfront Park east toward the Radke Martinez Regional Shoreline at least once when the tide is out.
2. Catch a Martinez Sturgeon home game at Joe DiMaggio Field.
3. Attend the August 29 Sesquicentennial Festival and read the concept boards carefully. Public comment still shapes what gets built.
4. Pair a Saturday downtown visit with the waterfront, not one or the other. That's the pattern the next version of Martinez is being designed around.

The neighborhoods around downtown, the Alhambra Valley streets, and the hillside pockets above Marina Vista are all going to feel the ripple of what happens on those 22 acres. For now, though, the assignment is simpler: enjoy the version of the waterfront you have, and show up for the meetings and events that will decide the next one.

If you're a longtime Martinez homeowner curious about what waterfront revitalization tends to do to the character and value of a downtown-adjacent neighborhood over time, or you're weighing a move within Contra Costa County and trying to read where Martinez is heading next, I'd love to talk it through. Reach out through Danielle Campbell and let's connect.