The City Council will consider a plan Tuesday to transform the former Alameda Belt Line rail yard into a passive park with picnic areas, walking and bike trails, community gardens and playgrounds.

City staffers are seeking the council’s approval to develop a conceptual plan for the new park on the 22-acre rail yard, which is bounded by Sherman Street, Atlantic Avenue and Constitution Way. The plan will be developed by local landscape architects who volunteered their assistance. Read more >> about Council to consider Belt Line park plan

Updated at 8:04 p.m. Tuesday, April 30

The city is seeking to evict Nelson’s Marine from its perch on Alameda Point. The sheriff’s office could padlock the boat repair yard’s gates today, the head of a nonprofit rescue group that’s based there said.

Ray Thackeray of the International Rescue Group said an attorney hired by the city e-mailed him to let him know the boat yard was being shut down and the gates locked this week. Read more >> about City evicting boat yard from Alameda Point

When a pair of bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, John West was just a few blocks away, waiting for a high school friend he was meeting there to come pick him up.

“I thought, that sounds – that didn’t sound right,” said West, who said he had finished the race well ahead of the explosions. “And my brain was sort of going, ‘What could that mean?’”

West is one of three Alameda runners who offered their accounts of the bombings’ aftermath this week. Read more >> about Alameda marathon runners offer accounts of bombing's aftermath

An evening ferry arrives at the Main Street terminal. Photo by Michele Ellson.

City leaders are expressing concerns about a state lawmaker’s proposal to restructure the board that oversees Bay Area ferry service, calling it a power grab by local officials in East Contra Costa County that could cost the Island its say over two local ferry lines and frustrate plans to move one of them to Alameda Point. Read more >> about Bill could nix Alameda rep on ferry board, local leaders say