In the wake of the firing of the executive director of the California Coastal Commission earlier this year, real-estate interests in the state seem emboldened to push for badly thought out but highly lucrative waterfront developments.

A case in point is my town of Richmond. Six years ago, the people of Richmond voted 58 percent to 42 percent to stop a mega-casino development planned for Point Molate, a 422-acre natural headland and historic wine port that, in the words of one local, “is the most beautiful part of the Bay Area no one’s ever heard of.”

The casino developer, not seeming to understand his own business model that when you gamble you lose, went on to sue the city. For six years, federal judges have ruled against him, his Upstream development company and the tribe they’d partnered with including in 2015 when they were ordered to pay close to $2 million in attorney’s fees to the city.

Yet now Richmond Mayor Tom Butt is working to cut a deal that has included two city council closed sessions in June and one July 19 with the former casino developer, Jim Levine. Apparently the mayor hopes to settle the suit the city’s been winning by giving part of Richmond’s greatest natural resource back to Levine.

Ongoing private discussions have taken place between the mayor, Levine and others to put 1,100 high-income housing units on Point Molate’s isolated and largely inaccessible peninsular headland. The five proposed housing clusters would include Marin-view mini-mansions on the slopes of the only intact California coastal grasslands watershed in the East Bay that runs down to San Francisco Bay’s healthiest offshore eel grass beds.

In 2014, former mayor and now Richmond City Councilmember Gayle McGlaughlin opened up a public beach park at Point Molate for the first time in a decade. She also established a Point Molate Community Advisory Committee made up of a dozen local citizens who have volunteered their time, efforts and oversight for six years. At the same time, Citizens for a Sustainable Point Molate, a volunteer group that I work with, has been sponsoring daylong field trips for Richmond high school classes that have helped inspire and reconnect our young people with their waterfront while learning about science, health, botany and biology. Some students saw their first seals, deer and other native wildlife. For most of the students, this has been a first-time exposure that’s elicited excited feedback including whoops of joy when, in the middle of an outdoor class, an osprey snagged a fish out of the water with its talons.

Most people don’t associate our low-income city with world-class history and natural wonders but those of us who’ve been working to protect Point Molate for the last decade have a vision on how to develop the site as a self-supporting waterfront park, along with a thriving commercial and retail district. Unfortunately, the city attorney has repeatedly warned the advisory committee not to entertain any development plans because of Levine’s ongoing litigation while the mayor complains that he has to take precipitous action because, “nothing is happening at Point Molate.”

The mayor met with PG&E last year and was told it would cost at least $25 million to bring power onto Point Molate, a good argument for putting private housing on the land to pay for that type of costly capital improvement. When the Trust for Public Land brought in the Urban Land Institute for a quick evaluation (paid for by the trust and the city) Mayor Butt told them that, given PG&Es projected energy costs, housing would be the only practical development plan. The Urban Land Institute provided two plans that reflected the mayor’s wishes for housing, although not in the native grassland watershed or other high-value natural resource areas that the Levine plan has marked for development.

However Mark Howe, a member of the advisory council and a businessman who leases out commercial properties in Richmond, found an existing PG&E power line that runs through Chevron’s property that could re-energize Point Molate for around $300,000. This lesser cost could be covered by temporarily leasing some of the existing buildings and paved spaces on site until a public and transparent plan for sustainably developing this bay area wonder is completed, a plan that might also incorporate clean energy generated by wind or solar.

In addition, rejecting the idea of private housing clusters where they don’t belong would reduce a huge liability risk associated with Chevron’s giant aging oil refinery that sits just over Point Molate’s ridgeline.

A far more credible plan might focus on Point Molate’s existing historic district that could and should be repurposed from the state’s original wine industry port (not far from the state’s last whaling station) to something both useful and fabulous. This 20-acre plus site includes the red brick Winehaven Castle and an adjacent turn-of-the-20th-century workers village. It has potential for a Mount Tamalpais-bayview hotel, food and wine retail shops, start-up offices, a plant nursery, nature center, etc. As a visitor destination, it would have increased value being surrounded by a waterfront park, an extended Bay Trail, hiking trails, native grasslands and family camping sites.

Among those who have expressed interest in managing these natural treasures are the East Bay Regional Parks District and the Trust for Public Lands, while San Francisco State’s Romberg Marine Lab and the nonprofit Watershed Project hope to continue to study and restore Point Molate’s offshore eelgrass beds and historic oyster reefs. A coalition of Richmond and Bay Area political and conservation groups are also coalescing in opposition to the mayor’s planned housing deal with a developer whose previous plans were overwhelmingly rejected by voters.

Instead all interested parties could and should work through a democratically elected community trust for Point Molate involving all the city’s stakeholders, and not least our students and youth who have the greatest stake in what kind of resources and opportunities they inherit. All that’s needed to restore Point Molate’s unique gifts to the people of Richmond and the world is democracy, imagination and a city council willing to stand up to its mayor.

David Helvarg is a Richmond resident, executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean conservation group, and the author of “The Golden Shore — California’s Love Affair with the Sea.”