"Our name is changing, but our mission stays the same." That's how Rachel Campos de Ivanov, operations manager for the arts nonprofit now known as Radium Arts, described the rebrand her organization announced this season. It sounds like a small detail. It isn't. Radium Arts is one of four separate calendars converging on the same stretch of old runway this month, and each one is quietly answering the same question in a different way: what is Alameda Point actually for.
If you live in the West End, you've watched Alameda Point sit in a strange holding pattern for years. It's not quite finished redevelopment and not quite raw military land either. It's something in between, and this September is the first time that in-between has produced four distinct, overlapping events in the space of about three weeks. None of them were coordinated with each other. That's the point. When four unrelated calendars start landing in the same six-block radius without anyone planning it that way, it usually means the neighborhood has become legible to more groups at once, not just one.
Four calendars, one address
Here's what's actually on the books at Alameda Point this month, in the order it happens:
- Sunday, September 6: The Alameda Point Antiques Faire, held on the first Sunday of every month, with more than 800 dealer booths spread across the old runway.
- Thursday, September 10: Alameda Point: Creative Futures, a community forum hosted by the West End Arts District at the Alameda Point Collaborative Screening Room, 45 West Midway Ave.
- Saturday, September 19: The Awesöme Orchestra's free community concert at Radium Runway, plus the shakeout run and Yoga on the Grass tied to the Alameda Island Running Festival.
- Sunday, September 20: The Alameda Island Running Festival's main race day: half marathon, 10K, 5K, and family fun run, starting and finishing at City Hall West.
- Thursday, September 24: Radium Stories: The Side Show, back under the Big Top at Radium Runway.
Read that list again and notice what it isn't. It isn't a single organization's programming calendar. It's a running club, an arts nonprofit, a neighborhood advocacy group, and an antiques promoter, none of whom answer to each other, all choosing the same address in the same month. That's the tell.
Why the arts got here before the redevelopment did
Radium Runway sits at 2151 Ferry Point, next to the Seaplane Lagoon Promenade, under a tent its organizers call the Big Top. The organization running it just went through a rebrand, from Radium Presents to Radium Arts, and brought on a new artistic director, Jonathan Moscone, who spent 15 years running California Shakespeare Theater and previously led civic engagement work at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. That's not a volunteer board hiring a local favorite. That's a deliberate move to professionalize a program that, by its own organizers' account, is meant to lay groundwork for a permanent performing arts center at Alameda Point, one that is still years from breaking ground.
The tent is temporary by design. Earlier seasons of programming were explicitly framed as a two-year bridge while the group raises money and makes the case for something permanent. What that means for a West End resident is this: the events happening under that tent right now, the Awesöme Orchestra concert on September 19 and Radium Stories: The Side Show on September 24, are not incidental entertainment. They're the pitch. Every sold-out night under the Big Top is evidence the organizers can point to when they go looking for capital for a real building.
The panel nobody expected on a Thursday night
The most unusual entry on this month's calendar isn't a concert. It's a forum. On September 10, the West End Arts District is hosting something called Alameda Point: Creative Futures at the Alameda Point Collaborative Screening Room, tucked beside the main Collaborative office on West Midway Ave. Urban design leader Barry Long, president of a firm with more than three decades of master-planning and entitlement work behind it, will walk attendees through redevelopment case studies from other cities. Then he'll moderate a panel of city council and mayoral candidates, asking them to lay out their actual ideas for what Alameda Point becomes next.
That's a different kind of event than anything else on this list. A concert is entertainment. An antiques faire is commerce. A candidate panel on redevelopment, convened by a neighborhood arts group rather than the city itself, is residents trying to get ahead of a decision before it's made for them. If you've ever wondered where the real conversation about Alameda Point's future is actually happening, outside of planning commission meetings most people never attend, this is it.
The base as a running course
The Alameda Island Running Festival treats the old runways as infrastructure rather than backdrop. The main event on Sunday, September 20 starts and finishes at City Hall West, 950 West Mall Drive, with a half marathon at 7:30 a.m., a 10K at 8:00 a.m., a 5K presented by Penumbra at 8:15 a.m., and a family fun run at 10:00 a.m. The 5K route specifically circles what organizers describe as recently opened trails at Alameda Point, meaning the race course itself is a marker of how much of the old base has become publicly walkable ground in just the past couple of years. A portion of registration fees goes to the Alameda Education Foundation, which is a small but telling sign that this event has built local institutional ties rather than functioning as a one-off tourist race.
The Saturday before, September 19, adds a shakeout run and a session of Yoga on the Grass, which happens to land on the same day as the Awesöme Orchestra's free concert at Radium Runway. That's not a coincidence anyone planned. It's just what happens when a neighborhood's open space becomes attractive to enough different organizers at once.
The one calendar that never needed any of this
The Antiques Faire is the odd one out, and that's exactly what makes it useful as a comparison. It doesn't need a rebrand, a new artistic director, or a candidate panel to keep functioning. It has run on the first Sunday of the month for years, drawing over 800 dealer booths to the runway regardless of what else is happening at Alameda Point that season. The event even operates under its own quiet constraint: because the faire sits inside a wildlife sanctuary, pets aren't allowed under its use permit, service dogs excepted. That single rule tells you something the other four events don't: parts of Alameda Point are still governed by conservation status that predates any of this year's programming and will outlast it regardless of who wins a council seat or whether a performing arts center ever gets built.
What this actually means if you live nearby
None of these four calendars was built to complement the others. A running club, an arts nonprofit chasing a capital campaign, a neighborhood group trying to influence an election, and a decades-old antiques promoter all independently concluded that Alameda Point is worth showing up to this month. That's a more honest signal than any single press release could offer. When four unconnected interests converge on the same ground without coordinating, it usually means the ground itself has changed, not just the programming on it.
If you're already in the West End, the practical takeaway is simple: block out September 19 and 20 if you want to see the base at its busiest, and don't skip the September 10 forum if you actually want a say in what comes next. The rest of the neighborhood's calendar, Park Street, Webster Street, Jean Sweeney Park, moves at its own pace. Alameda Point right now is the one place where you can watch the West End's next chapter get written in real time, one Thursday and one Sunday at a time.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property near Alameda Point, or just want a clearer read on how the base's slow transformation is shaping the surrounding blocks, the Andrea Ruport Team knows this stretch of the West End as well as anyone. Let's Make It Happen.