THE BEST-LAID PLANS

THE BEST-LAID PLANS

The promise—and the problems—of West Oakland.

At a West Oakland senior citizens center one evening in late January, 200 city residents are absorbing a head-spinning presentation of a city-sponsored plan to revitalize their neighborhood over the next 30 years. In the back of the room, a lanky gray-haired African-American man in a wool coat rustles through a pile of papers on his lap.

Smiling behind a thick mustache and lamb-chop sideburns, Royster Jackson pulls out a newspaper clipping from June 15, 1956. The faded copy announces a newly formed West Oakland Merchants Association dedicated to rebuilding a blighted West Oakland. With a nod toward the architect giving the presentation, Jackson says quietly to a stranger, “Everyone thinks West Oakland is going to be a gold mine for developers, but the fact is, it was a group of African-Americans who wanted to propose all this [in 1956], and this fell on deaf ears.”

It’s no wonder that Jackson and other longtime West Oakland residents have some well-earned reservations. Since the 1980s, city planners have proposed a staggering number of redevelopment plans—25 in all—to boost West Oakland’s economy. Countering the skeptics, promoters say there are good reasons why plan 26 is the one that will finally transform the languishing area, attracting developers to an old neighborhood that advocates call the East Bay’s most geographically compelling location for commercial, retail, and residential growth.

Down and out: Businesses remain shuttered along San Pablo Avenue near I-980. Photo by SpiralA Photography.

The work of drawing up the plan, which is scheduled for completion in April 2013, is funded by a combination of a federal grant and funds from the city of Oakland. Over the past several months, city officials have been busy describing the plan-in-progress to people like Jackson who live in the affected communities, and soliciting their feedback.

Once the plan is in final form, advocates hope, citizens and developers alike will jump on board, launching a golden era for a place that has seen more than its share of bad luck—and, some say, bad leadership—over the past decades. Thirty years down the road, supporters estimate, the transformation should be complete.

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Today, West Oakland is a checkerboard of fine Victorian homes, boarded-up buildings, vacant lots, and new businesses filling in empty storefronts along the broad, landscaped Mandela Parkway that replaced the collapsed Cypress Freeway. It’s currently a far cry from the “epicenter of some of the world’s most thriving, culturally significant, and economically diverse urban neighborhoods,” as architect Morten Jensen of JRDV Urban International, who is helping draft the plan for the city, envisions the West Oakland of the future. But pockets of the area have been acquiring a bit of gloss in the last two decades.

Still, West Oakland’s poor reputation precedes it. Councilmember Nancy Nadel remembers the utter poverty that greeted her move there 30 years ago. “It was like a Third World country, no curbs or sidewalks in many places, toxic waste, concentrations of very low-income housing, where so much retail business had left, and what remained mostly operated behind locked doors,” says the 16-year incumbent, who plans to leave office this year to run her business, the Oakland Chocolate Company, full-time.

Slow going: West Oakland resident Royster Jackson remembers plans to rebuild the area from as far back as 1956. Photo by Paul Mindus.

Now, with community gardens and businesses like the Oprah-endorsed Brown Sugar Kitchen springing up here and there, the West Oakland of today appears economically healthier than that of 20 years ago.

The new West Oakland plan—officially called the West Oakland Specific Plan—would build on this boomlet by delineating new commercial and residential opportunity areas, and transit villages around the area’s four BART stations. Such details, planners believe, will attract developers to a neighborhood awash with vacant property.

And, with the Port of Oakland and the Oakland Army Base next door, the neighborhood should benefit from yet another simultaneous plan, a 20-year, $1 billion upgrade of the former Army base, spearheaded by developer Phil Tagami’s California Capital & Investment Group. Tagami, an Oakland native and former chairman of the Port of Oakland Commissioners, says the project would decrease truck traffic and pollution by bringing modern train-unloading facilities to the Port, relocating recycling plants from West Oakland to the former Army base, and building an overpass for rail and truck traffic at 7th Street. The result, potentially, could be up to 4,000 new jobs, as well as more than 6,000 temporary jobs during seven years of construction. According to Tagami, the city aims to earmark half of the new jobs for Oakland residents.

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The West Oakland project is the top priority of Oakland’s current planning efforts, says Fred Blackwell, the new assistant city administrator who was recently hired away from San Francisco. West Oakland’s nine square miles of prime land just south of Emeryville, north of downtown Oakland, and next to the Port and Army base, make the region “the epicenter of transportation and development in the East Bay,” he says.

Pick of the litter: Illegal dumping one block away from Mandela Parkway. Photo by SpiralA Photography.

The plan is ambitious—a 30-year vision for what planners call “plug-in plug-out development,” which means more flexible development—picture the commerce along College Avenue in Oakland’s Rockridge district as compared to the more set structure of Emeryville’s Bay Street shopping area.

“You don’t want to paint yourself into a corner,” says architect Jensen. “We like funky.”

With some 6 million square feet of underused business property, West Oakland has a large amount of available commercial space, Jensen says.

He describes the area as a possible home to businesses in fields such as life science, clean technology, and digital media, as well as small urban manufacturers. In addition, several thousand new residential units would house new and existing residents.

The plan focuses on four main areas—Mandela Parkway and Grand Avenue, and 3rd Street for new businesses; and the 7th Street and West Oakland BART area, and along San Pablo Avenue, for new housing and shops. Ideas include first anchoring the retail district with a grocery store—sorely needed in these streets dotted with small corner markets.

The plan will also address long-term environmental concerns due to recycling, illegal dumping, and heavy truck traffic. Relocating at least two recycling plants—CASS and California Waste Solutions—to the Army base will help. And loading cargo directly onto ships from trains—instead of trucks—will significantly lower pollution. Suggestions also include creating a streetcar loop to link the area’s four BART stations, downtown Oakland, and Emeryville.

Reaching for the sky: Artist Karen Cusolito built these enormous (some are 30 feet tall) sculptures near Mandela Parkway and West Grand Avenue, then opened a nearby studio for 130 artists; Middle and bottom photos of Cusolito at work. Photos by (top to bottom) SpiralA Photography, Roger Minkow, Sonia Sampson.

And perhaps most important, the proposal aims to keep aspects of West Oakland intact. Neighborhood character would be preserved by using existing buildings, many now vacant or underused, in new ways, and keeping the neighborhood pedestrian-friendly, according to Jensen. The plan’s authors are also committed to not displacing people, businesses, or buildings, he says.

The neighborhood would honor its ethnic mix and illustrious heritage, which includes native sons and daughters such as C.L. Dellums, a founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and uncle of former Oakland mayor Ron Dellums; Black Panther co-founder Huey Newton; President Herbert Hoover; and internationally renowned architect Julia Morgan.

While paying homage to the past, though, planners also need to be mindful that the face—or faces—of Oakland are changing. The 2010 census showed a 25 percent drop in the African-American population since 2000. In West Oakland, the proportion of African-Americans has declined from 77 percent to 53 percent, while the number of white, Latino, and Asian residents has risen. And the neighborhood has seen a huge shift in property ownership, often due to foreclosures.

Alex Miller-Cole, a young Mexican-American candidate for City Council, is seeking to succeed Councilmember Nadel. “Thirty-seven percent of all properties have changed hands in West Oakland since 2007,” Miller-Cole says. “That’s a huge percentage.”

“It’s difficult to predict the future,” says Jeff Chew, senior project manager for the city of Oakland’s Office of Neighborhood Investment, “but we want to be prepared. The basic assumptions of the plan are to grow incrementally, preserve existing buildings wherever possible, and provide an . . . approach to development that is flexible.”

There are reasons to be optimistic, Chew says. The plan draws on the best elements of the 25 previous plans. “It comes as the property market is improving, the economy is improving, the Army base and Port development are driving expansion. West Oakland stands to benefit in many ways.”

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When the transcontinental railroad was completed and terminated at Oakland in 1868, the city began to swell with new residents, and Southern Pacific built a wharf at the end of 7th Street where ferryboats departed for San Francisco.

With 7th Street—and an electric overhead trolley—as a link between downtown Oakland, cities to the east, and San Francisco, West Oakland grew and thrived. By 1878 it was an essential part of Oakland, the second largest city on the West Coast with a population of 35,000.

After the 1906 earthquake, Oakland flourished as people migrated to West Oakland from San Francisco. During the ’20s and ’30s, it continued to grow, with 7th Street becoming a major entertainment center for jazz and blues artists throughout the Bay Area. Royster Jackson, born in 1945, recalls that a family friend once saw Louis Armstrong at the Overland Cafe showing off a stone-encrusted money clip he had been given by Bing Crosby, inscribed “From the Bing to the Satch.”

The neighborhood thrived during World War II, filling jobs at the Port, the Army base, and Navy supply depot. Jackson recalls a strong sense of community during his earliest years, reflecting the African saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Everyone knew everyone else, he says. “If someone saw me doing something I shouldn’t do, I would automatically stop doing it, or they would tell my parents.”

Split image: Covered with graffiti and posters of powerful leaders, the exterior of this building on San Pablo Avenue in West Oakland suggests the area’s problems—and its promise. Photo by SpiralA Photography.

But the opening of the Bay Bridge in 1936 had slowed development as the connection to San Francisco no longer came through West Oakland. In the late ’40s and early ’50s, the growth of the war boom years stalled. And, says Jackson, “All that prosperity changed with urban renewal in the 1960s—what we call urban removal.”

Although BART developed a West Oakland station in 1969, it was essentially a pass-through for commuters. The construction of Interstates 880, 580, and 980 diverted traffic and created a wall around the neighborhood. West Oakland became increasingly cut off.

Then the October 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake shook the Bay Area as no other had since 1906. Fifty-seven people were killed, 42 from the collapse of the double-decker Cypress Freeway slicing through the heart of West Oakland. The rerouting of 880 carved a new boundary adjacent to the Army base that completed the community’s isolation.

But ironically, the earthquake—and eventual replacement of the Cypress Freeway with a two-mile-long landscaped park—has, to some extent, brought the community back together, at least in the vicinity of Mandela Parkway. Today, urban pioneers are shaping a new landscape, with a smattering of clean-technology companies, restaurants, and service businesses like Allied Painters, Happy Hound dog care, and TV mount company U.S. Brown Bear lining the Parkway.

Affordable large-scale work and living spaces—cheaper than San Francisco studios—have attracted artists to West Oakland for many years. Obsolete industrial buildings have been transformed into workspaces at places like Trapeze Arts and the Crucible, a center for fire arts such as glassblowing and blacksmithing.

Then there’s cavernous American Steel Studios, an enclave for 130 artists that serves as a nexus for industrial art in the Bay Area, and a nationally recognized home to massive installation art and sculpture. Sculptor Karen Cusolito discovered the near-vacant six-acre building stretching 250,000 square feet, built 10 metal sculptures there—some as tall as 30 feet—between 2005 and 2007, then signed a lease on April Fool’s Day, 2009.

“American Steel Studios kind of happened by accident,” says Cusolito. “I didn’t contact the city of Oakland; it grew out of an obvious need for people to have space. To acknowledge that there is a need for this type of space and infrastructure, that alone should ignite the thought process when this revitalization plan is implemented.

“Adaptive reuse of existing buildings is exactly what I am doing. In his presentation, Morten [Jensen] referred to Berkeley and Emeryville. In my opinion, we in West Oakland can do better than that. We have history and a very vibrant community of people who want to be involved in this process.”

A couple of blocks further north is the much-ballyhooed Brown Sugar Kitchen where Tanya Holland has raised Southern cuisine to a fine art; she’s now opened a second restaurant in San Francisco. Across the road, Jerry Lin, co-founder of ON-Q Lighting Systems, an LED light manufacturer of energy-saving green lighting, presides over a steadily growing business.

Slowly regenerating after years of decline, the area is ripe for an infusion of good ideas, energetic people, and, of course, cash.

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After decades of redevelopment plans that never made it to fruition, though, planners have many questions about how to revitalize the area. What kind of development makes sense? How will locals respond to plans for millions of square feet of development? Would the proposed streetcar loop really bring in shoppers and workers from downtown Oakland and Emeryville? And—this is a big one—who would benefit most?

“Oakland’s transformation cannot be one that leaves folks behind,” says Blackwell, Oakland’s assistant city administrator. “That means local businesses getting the job.” And Oaklanders have a better shot at getting those jobs if the businesses actually come to Oakland to begin with.

Developer Rick Holliday, whose Pacific Cannery Lofts have sold 125 of 163 housing units in a pioneering site on Pine and 12th streets, says, “This area will develop in spite of the bureaucracy and lack of leadership in Oakland.”

“West Oakland has had 50 years of broken promises, and lots of jobs disappeared when the base closed,” says Phil Tagami, speaking from his office in the landmark Rotunda Building—which he owns (and recently renovated for $50 million). “I am an Oaklander, I am part of the community,” he continues. “I haven’t conceded my being an Oaklander to anyone. There are a lot of people who talk, and not enough people who do.”

In recent years, nearby Emeryville has attracted stores like Target, Best Buy, and Ikea, as well as high-end retail, frustrating many in Oakland, including Jensen, the architect. “Do you know how much retail leakage there is from Oakland every year, people who go outside the city to shop? Over $1 billion dollars!” he says. “That’s millions lost in sales taxes to Oakland alone. Imagine what this city could do with [that money].”

Greg Harper, former mayor of Emeryville, calls it the tale of two cities—“Emeryville is a can-do community while Oakland puts everything under study.” Other Emeryville officials add that smaller and more manageable Emeryville makes it easier to quickly take advantage of developers’ ideas.

Tagami, however, defends Oakland’s reputation for fairness. “Oakland has a strong progressive political tradition of tolerance in our community, and we listen to and understand there are other points of view,” he says. “Giving people a chance to speak up, and explain why they oppose something is reasonable but it should not be just a way to delay things. Is there a commercially viable alternative to hear? At some point action must be taken, progress must be made, if our society is to evolve.”

Zeal for development is often tempered by worries about whether it’s possible to shed the area’s reputation for crime, homelessness, illegal dumping, lack of jobs, and “broken-window” blight. Virian Bouzé, a lifelong resident who went to school with Huey Newton, struck a jarring note when he called for new leadership at a recent West Oakland Commerce Association meeting. “We used to be a well-organized community,” he says. “Now we have to start putting in people who know how to lead, who know how to make things work.” And he worries that he and others who live in the area will be left behind by outsiders with “caviar appetites.”

West Oakland also has to face the truth, agree city officials, residents, and developers, that no serious community development plan can move forward unless crime and its many causes are directly addressed.

Police Captain Ersie Joyner III, now working in East Oakland, says bluntly, “Unless there is an influx of jobs, until some hope is given to residents, I don’t see the cycle of violence ending. You still have large groups of young people who have no hope, who have no jobs, who are stuck in the rut of a cycle of violence. Until something is done about that, the violence will not stop.”

As Blackwell told the West Oakland Commerce Association, “We need to address the perception and the reality of crime. The perception is worse than it is, but the reality is bad as well.”

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Questions and calls for effective leadership are not confined to Bouzé’s outburst at the commerce association meeting. Oakland’s political leadership has struggled since Jerry Brown’s tenure as mayor from 1999 to 2007, through the eerily quiet years of Ron Dellums, to the Occupy Oakland preoccupations for Mayor Jean Quan. In many cities, high-profile civic leadership groups are composed of heads of industry, banking, law, business, and sports franchises joining forces for the future of the city. The Greater Baltimore Committee, the Downtown Denver Partnership, and the Cleveland Foundation, for example, create and channel community support for urban renewal in those cities. Here, however, it is left to planners, architects, and elected officials to sell the vision, and some visions are hard to change.

“One of the most valuable uses of the plan is that it becomes a marketing tool for attracting new business and development to West Oakland,” says Jeff Chew, who has seen so many plans come and go. “The plan will match potential markets with opportunity sites for development. It needs to be presented to companies and investors.”

Like Chew, Phil Tagami is looking to an influx of investors to jump-start the area’s so-far sketchy redevelopment. Who wouldn’t like to see a brighter, safer, more economically sound West Oakland? But successfully wooing investors is not necessarily the endgame. “Getting the basics right is the basic challenge,” says Tagami, “to come together as Oaklanders to provide basic services, so we can live together and support each other.”

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A former reporter for East Coast dailies and Reuters, Paul Mindus is director of business development for the Saint Consulting Group, a land use consultancy. He lived in London for 22 years and moved back to the United States last fall. He lives in Oakland.

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