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History

In 1958, Dorothy Erskine, Jack Kent and colleagues founded Citizens for Regional Recreation and Parks (CRRP), an organization of environmentally concerned individuals and groups that would later become Greenbelt Alliance. CRRP was created to protect parks and recreational areas in the Bay Area. Two of the first campaigns CRRP focused on were establishing a regional government and saving San Francisco Bay from landfill and development. During the 1960's, CRRP raised awareness of these issues through their publication Regional Exchange and helped save Bay Area spaces such as Fort Funston and Point Reyes.

In 1969, CRRP was renamed People for Open Space to reflect the group's new commitment to preserving additional spaces such as ranch lands, agricultural lands, and wildlife preserves. POS continued the campaign for open space throughout the seventies, helping to establish the Mid-Peninsula Open Space District (1972) and Suisun Marsh (1974). POS was also involved in campaigning for a regional government to protect the environmental and economic quality of the Bay Area, taking the campaign to Sacramento to be defeated by one vote. In 1976, POS added the goal of establishing a permanent regional greenbelt to the agenda. POS established Greenbelt Congress in 1984 as a parallel group that fought for open space through activism and grassroots organizing.

After three years of parallel work, Greenbelt Congress and POS merged to become Greenbelt Alliance—establishing the organization's dual focus of grassroots activism and policy research. During this decade, Greenbelt Alliance published reports on Bay Area farming and affordable housing issues. In 1987, after seven years of researching the effects of affordable housing on preserving open space, Greenbelt Alliance began endorsing affordable compact development housing projects. After 1987, Greenbelt Alliance began developing their presence in the nine Bay counties, starting with the opening of the first field office in the South Bay in 1988. The East Bay and Sonoma-Marin offices officially opened their doors in 1995. In 2001, the Solano-Napa office was opened in response to growth along the Interstate 80 corridor.

With the help of field representatives, since 1996, Greenbelt Alliance has been successful in securing twenty-one Urban Growth Boundaries in Alameda, Marin, Santa Clara, and Sonoma counties. Greenbelt Alliance remains instrumental in preserving open space and protecting the quality of life in the Bay Area. In 1993, Pleasanton Ridge was saved after a twenty-year campaign (13,000 acres). The Santa Clara Open Space Authority was created in 1994. 1995 brought a defeat for the Mid-State Toll Road. In 1999 Bear Creek Redwoods was preserved. Today, Greenbelt Alliance continues to protect open space and livable communities on the ground and through cutting-edge policy research.