Crime is down, business is up, and the city is avoiding major budget cuts thanks to Bill Lindsay, perhaps the Bay Area’s best city manager.
Article by John Geluardi, East Bay Express, www.eastbayexpress.com

Early each morning on Richmond’s waterfront, just a few hundred feet from where thousands of men and women once feverishly assembled Navy ships, military jeeps, and half-track tanks during World War II, a new type of assembly line busily produces fresh, gourmet desserts.

Galaxy Desserts has been touted as one of the fastest growing businesses in the Bay Area. Its two hundred production workers steadily handcraft delectable crèmes, tarts, cheesecakes, mousse cakes, and the company’s most celebrated item — the three-ounce French croissant, which has so much morning goodness in its fluffy folds that Oprah Winfrey has featured it five times on her favorite things list. The Oprah exposure brought such an onslaught of new orders (the company now makes upwards of 75,000 croissants a day) that Galaxy needed a larger kitchen. So the company moved from its San Rafael facility in 2005 to Richmond, where it found an ideal geographical location, competitive leasing rates, and enterprise zone tax incentives. Read more