Excerpt:

Alameda’s city leaders offered a unanimous show of support for a future nature reserve at Alameda Point on Tuesday, approving a resolution that affirms the city’s commitment to a wildlife conservation area at the former Navy base and offers support for formally designating more than 500 acres as a conservation area.

The resolution will have little formal impact on the fate of the land, since it’s being transferred from one federal entity to another and the city has no control over who the Navy gives its property to or how they choose to use the land. But it does let the Navy and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is hoping to acquire 624 acres of the Point from the Navy this year, know what the city wants, City Councilman Stewart Chen said during an interview Wednesday.

“This is just a reaffirmation of what we believe in and what we agreed to in 1996,” said Chen, referring the 1996 plan that details how the base will be reused, which city leaders have been using to direct their current revitalization efforts. “I’m not against the VA moving to the Point. I just want (them) to know where we as a community stand.”