Historic

Sausalito is world-famous and truly beautiful — over a million people visit every year. It is home to a rich historic district, a working waterfront, and hillside and flatland neighborhoods that grew organically over a century. Its cultural legacy includes pioneering musicians, thinkers, and philosophers. Its eclectic houseboats form one of the most original communities in America.

Sausalito’s beauty makes it irresistible target for developers: a still small-scale waterfront town whose modest buildings could be cleared for larger ones, whose views and open water can be claimed for outside profit.

The Sausalito we love exists today because earlier generations succeeded in resisting that pressure, So must we.

The Historic District

One of only twelve federally certified historic districts in California, Sausalito's downtown is the physical record of the families who built this town — the merchants, the working-class and immigrant communities who lived above their shops, the businesses that anchored neighbors through hard times.

In the early 1980s, residents — including a group called Save Old Sausalito — drew the boundaries and won the federal protections that still hold today.

Those protections are now under direct threat. Out-of-scale proposals would gut historic buildings to their facades, threatening not just individual structures but the designation itself — the city's own consultants have warned the wrong approvals could shrink or strip it entirely. We document the record, hold the 32-foot height limit, and fight every proposal that puts the district at risk.

The Marinship

Built in four years during World War II, the Marinship launched nearly 100 vessels and employed tens of thousands of workers — including a deliberately integrated workforce exceptional for its time. Today it remains a working waterfront of maritime industries, boatyards, and small manufacturers, rare in the Bay Area.

New commercial proposals threaten to displace those makers and claim the waterfront for higher-margin uses. We oppose rezonings that would trade the Marinship's working character for office parks and distribution centers.

The Neighborhoods

Sausalito's hillside and flatland neighborhoods — Victorian mansions, small-scale cottages, staircase streets, houses fitted into the terrain — grew organically over a century. Residents shaped them around a shared principle: that every house should be sited to protect views for all, not just those at the top.

That principle is under pressure from proposals that would add bulk and height at the expense of neighbors. We fight to hold the scale and view protections that define residential Sausalito.

Sausalito didn't become what it is by accident, and it won't stay that way without a fight. That's what we're here for.