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PROFILE•
Photo by Neil Rabinowitz
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rom concept to construction, the harbor located near Pacific Shores Center took more than 14 years to plan, engineer, design and, most importantly, to earn permits from 12 separate federal, state, regional, and local government agencies. Sanders calls the marina “a labor of love” and it’s thanks to his vision and determination that Redwood City boasts today one of the finest recreational harbors in North America — with a hotel and additional shoreside amenities yet to come. Though building Westpoint Harbor has been Sanders’ greatest challenge, he’d never been shy about taking them on. The former high-tech CEO spent 20 years in increasingly responsible management roles at the iconic tech giant, Ampex, before taking the helm of Pinnacle Systems, a foundering 21-person start-up in 1990. When he retired from Pinnacle in 2004 it was a 1,700 -employee industry leader in digital video technology with sales of $350 million.
18 · CLIMATE · May 2021
Today, though ostensibly retired, the passionate sailor is the owner of a marina that realized his personal goal — incorporating state-of-the-art environmental safeguards, premier amenities, and boat-centric innovations. Sanders’ vision and success were validated by the boating industry in 2019 when Westpoint Harbor received the Large Marina of the Year Award from Marina Dock Age magazine. More recently, the harbor was recognized with the Marine Industries Association “Gold Anchor Award” – the first in the country. “One thing I often say about Mark, and I mean this in the best possible terms, is that he is unencumbered by those impermeable barriers that others see,” marvels longtime sailing buddy Bob Wilson, a Redwood Shores resident who first met Sanders when both worked at Ampex in the early 1980s, then followed him to Pinnacle. “He allows himself to dream big, and to see what’s possible and to remove the roadblocks that are before him.”
A Decades-Long Dream How Sanders became the first new harbor owner in the bay for decades is a saga that began in 1988. A lifelong sailor (he grew up in a boating family in San Diego), he was distressed to see marinas and boatyards close in the South Bay. He resolved to reverse the decline of his favorite pastime in his adopted home of Redwood City. “Recreational boating was fading in the South Bay because high land values made other uses more lucrative,” he recalled. “The high cost of maintenance dredging, lack of suitable sites and a difficult legislative environment added to the problem.” Studying maps, he located the only suitable piece of shoreline left in the South Bay that offered deep-water access — where Westpoint Slough meets the bay — and purchased a 50-acre bittern pond that had been part of Cargill’s 1,400-acre solar salt-making plant site in Redwood