North Shore Yacht Club: Taxpayer Money Well Spent?
NORTH SHORE – County officials broke ground on the new North Shore Yacht Club Monday.
Renovating the Salton Sea landmark will cost an estimated $3.5 million federal stimulus dollars. But even some North Shore residents say that’s not the best way to spend taxpayer money.
Riverside County officials say the project will employ 90 construction workers for a year.
The North Shore Yacht Club renovation was pushed forward by County Supervisor Roy Wilson before he died last month. His wife, Aurora, was at Monday’s groundbreaking ceremony. She says this was one of her husband’s favorite projects.
But is this the right project for the area? The North Shore Yacht Club was shut down after heavy damage in a 1980s Salton Sea flood. The future of the Salton Sea is still in doubt.
The sea hasn’t been fixed yet. Some call it an environmental disaster and the ideas to fix it keep costing more.
News Channel 3 first covered the debate behind spending taxpayer dollars on the North Shore Yacht Club when the project was announced in July.
Spending $3.5 million federal stimulus dollars on this empty and abandoned North Shore Yacht Club is meant to revitalize the area. It will be turned into a visitors center with a museum.
“I think that’s the biggest waste of money I’ve ever heard,” county resident Gary Westfall said. “The Salton Sea is going to go away. There’s not enough money in your lifetime to pay to have that thing restored.”
A man fishing on the Salton Sea shore added, “You think they ought to clean up the sea. It used to be corvina, sango, and croaker (types of fish). Now, you got Tilapia. Not sport fishing. No more.”
But the local construction company who has the contract says the money is being spent on something important: their jobs.
“It’s brutal out there. It’s really hard to find a job. We are extremely happy. Our company went from a hundred people down to 25 steady people,” says RDP/SCI Construction subcontractor Louis Vogler.
Those workers have already started construction. They’re expected to finish up the new North Shore Yacht Club within 18 months.
