About the organization
Winehaven Trust
A Richmond nonprofit formed to keep historic resources — including Winehaven and the Whirley Crane — from being lost through neglect.
Winehaven Trust is a California nonprofit corporation recognized as a charitable and educational organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (EIN 92-1699195). Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
The Trust was organized by two former Richmond mayors, Tom Butt, who serves as president, and Rosemary Corbin, a board member. Corbin was mayor when the City of Richmond acquired Point Molate from the Navy after the base closed. Both have spent years arguing that Winehaven is not a disposable leftover of old industry, but a Richmond landmark of statewide importance.
Winehaven Trust advocates for historic resources at Winehaven / Point Molate and other historic resources in the City of Richmond through education and public advocacy. That work now includes the last surviving World War II whirley crane at Shipyard No. 3. See Save the Whirley Crane.
The Trust’s purpose is practical: roofs, gutters, brick turrets, weatherproofing, and the other work required to keep National Register buildings from collapsing in slow motion. Historic-preservation law is not a substitute for tarps, flashing, and a long-term steward.
What the Trust has asked for
In April 2023 the Trust filed a lawsuit seeking to compel maintenance of the historic buildings. The complaint and public statements have focused on conditions anyone can see from the road and the bay:
- replacement of failed and worn-out roofs and gutters;
- stabilization of cracked brick turrets and other exterior masonry;
- repair of exterior elements that let water into the buildings;
- security that is more than boarding windows.
Building 1, the primary warehouse and wine cellar, is the district’s visual and physical anchor. It is a steel-framed, reinforced-concrete structure with a brick veneer, unusual among California wineries of its period. The brick at the turrets is structural and has been reported as cracked and separating. Cottage roofs have failed in places, rotting sheathing and damaging interiors.
Trust members have described the alternative — leaving the buildings open to rain year after year — as demolition by neglect: allowing a historic place to fail so that the hard work of preservation never has to be funded.
Winehaven is a Richmond treasure. Rosemary Corbin, Winehaven Trust board member, quoted in the Grandview Independent
What has happened since
Facing the lawsuit and a wet winter, the Richmond City Council voted in 2023 to spend $438,000 on temporary tarping of the worker cottages. That work slowed further rain damage to those roofs. It was not a restoration. The Trust has said there is still no funded, long-term plan for the cottages, the cellars, or the rest of the district.
In 2025 the East Bay Regional Park District completed a $40 million purchase of 82 acres at Point Molate for a regional shoreline park. Park status can protect open space. It does not, by itself, repair brick, roofs, or windows. Stewardship of the historic buildings remains an unfinished public obligation.
What preservation is for
This is not nostalgia for its own sake. Winehaven is one of the last large, intact monuments of California wine before Prohibition — a place that still looks like what it was. Adaptive reuse of the cellars and cottages, whether as park interpretation, public gathering space, or compatible private use, depends on the buildings still being there.
Corbin has put the point in local terms: Richmond has kept fragments of the Santa Fe and Standard Oil era. Winehaven, one of the city’s largest early-twentieth-century stories, has not yet been saved.