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Oakland Mayoral Candidates Talk Army Base Jobs

Published

11 years ago

August 15, 2014

Oakland is the midst of a hot mayoral campaign season, and the city is beginning to see unemployment and jobs as top issue for candidates, along with public safety and affordable housing.

This week, the Post asked a number of the candidates what their stance is on the $1.2 billion Oakland Global Army Base project’s s promise of thousands of jobs for city residents.

< p>The candidates were asked if they believe results so far of the Oakland Global project are transparent to public oversight and if equal opportunity to jobs is available to all Oakland residents?

If they became mayor, how would they ensure that major development projects that utilize public funds and public land deliver on promises to local and minority residents?

Master developer Phil Tagami of California Capital & Investment Group (CCIG) has played dual roles as the city’s agent on the project. Until recently, transparency on the project has been stifled amid concerns that local, minority residents are not getting jobs on the project.

Mayor Jean Quan and Joe Tuman did not return the Oakland Post’s requests for an interview for this article.

Dan Siegel

Civil rights attorney Dan Siegel said he strongly “disagrees with the model for the Oakland Army Base development where the master developer has so much control over the project. That concentration of authority explains the inadequate efforts to hire local residents.”

The city needs “complete transparency and strict, impartial oversight over city development projects,” said Siegel.

Siegel says his highest priority as mayor would be “creating good paying jobs for Oakland residents…and require a developer such as Tagami to pay for the recruitment and training of workers to fill the jobs at the Oakland Army Base.”

Councilmember and mayoral candidate Libby Schaaf expressed her concerns.

“This half-billion dollar project should be creating thousands of jobs. It’s frustrating to see the

Libby Schaaf

slow hiring process and the slow hiring of Oaklanders,” she said.

However, she says, the horizontal infrastructure development is slow work that will not employ so many people, but later there will be vertical development of warehouses and business that will do better. “I am very optimistic that the vertical construction will indeed hire thousands more!” she said.

Promoting the hiring of ex-offenders, Schaaf says Oakland should “look at hiring Oaklanders first, hiring ex-offenders and taking care of our own,” adding that the also the city must also to ensure that local, minority firms have a fair chance at winning contracts in the city.

“We need to work with a variety of firms to ensure we get great projects, like the Army Base,” she said. “There are far too many locally grown firms already here that we should be using.”

Deeply involved in the port’s side of the Army Base project, Port Commissioner Bryan Parker says the project is in “the first inning of a nine inning ballgame,” referring to the five-year construction phase of the project and the horizontal development that the vertical construction that will come afterward.

“I want to see more African American jobs created – as an underrepresented group, that is fair,”

Bryan Parker

Parker said. “However, we must also recognize Oakland’s overall diversity and also make sure all races, ages, and sexual preferences are addressed in our jobs plans.”

He said that the 425 jobs created – half of which have gone to Oakland residents – is “fairly significant.” A city consultant has projected 1,523 construction jobs for the first phase of the project, he said.

“As mayor, I am going to insist that any developer who develops in Oakland receives all the benefits Oakland has to offer, but in exchange, invests in our economy including vital safety services,” Parker said, emphasizing his support for re-entry residents.

“Investing in our re-entry residents is a step at making a safer Oakland,” he continued.

Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan says she is backing her support for local boy by ensuring that the city addresses “the disparity in city contracting between large corporations and local, minority-owned firms.”

City administration “needs to do a better job when it comes to enforcing the local hire rules in place” at the Army Base Project, she said.

Rebecca Kaplan

As mayor, Kaplan says she won’t “just promise local jobs and do a ribbon cutting but make sure we’re actually creating the jobs.”

“Oakland is the best city in the Bay Area, but it has the worst city government,” said City Auditor Courtney Ruby. “A big part of the problem is a failure in leadership that has squandered opportunities by bouncing from crisis to crisis, always looking for a political solution, instead of implementing sound decisions by focusing on results.”

“The only way we can rebuild trust in local government is to focus on transparency and results,” Ruby said.

Oakland Post

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Related Topics:California Capital & Investment Group CCIG City of Oakland Mayoral Election Oakland Oakland Global project Phil Tagami

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Oakland Housing and Community Development Department Awards $80.5 Million to Affordable Housing Developments

Published

1 week ago

June 17, 2025

Oakland Post

Special to The Post

The City of Oakland’s Housing and Community Development Department (Oakland HCD) announced its awardees for the 2024-2025 New Construction of Multifamily Affordable Housing Notice of Funding Availability (New Construction NOFA) today Five permanently affordable housing developments received awards out of 24 applications received by the Department, with award amounts ranging from $7 million to $28 million.

In a statement released on Jan. 16, Oakland’s HCD stated, “Five New Construction Multifamily Affordable Housing Development projects awarded a total of $80.5 million to develop 583 affordable rental homes throughout Oakland. Awardees will leverage the City’s investments to apply for funding from the state and private entities.”

In December, the office of Rebecca Kaplan, interim District 2 City Councilmember, worked with HCD to allocate an additional $10 Million from Measure U to the funding pool. The legislation also readopted various capital improvement projects including street paving and upgrades to public facilities.

The following Oakland affordable housing developments have been awarded in the current round:

Mandela Station Affordable

238 Affordable Units including 60 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $15 million + previously awarded $18 million
Developer: Mandela Station LP (Pacific West Communities, Inc. and Strategic Urban Development Alliance, LLC)
City Council District: 3
Address: 1451 7th St.

Liberation Park Residences

118 Affordable Units including 30 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $28 million
Developer: Eden Housing and Black Cultural Zone
City Council District: 6
Address: 7101 Foothill Blvd.

34th & San Pablo

59 Affordable Units including 30 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $7 million
Developer: 34SP Development LP (EBALDC)
City Council District: 3
Address: 3419-3431 San Pablo Ave.

The Eliza

96 Affordable Units including 20 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $20 million
Developer: Mercy Housing California
City Council District: 3
Address: 2125 Telegraph Ave.

3135 San Pablo

72 Affordable Units including 36 dedicated for Homeless/Special Needs
Award: $10.5 million
Developer: SAHA and St. Mary’s Center
City Council District: 3
Address: 3515 San Pablo Ave.

The source of this story is the media reltations office of District 2 City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan.

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Alameda County

Oakland Acquisition Company’s Acquisition of County’s Interest in Coliseum Property on the Verge of Completion

The Board of Supervisors is committed to closing the deal expeditiously, and County staff have worked tirelessly to move the deal forward on mutually agreeable terms. The parties are down to the final details and, with the cooperation of OAC and Coliseum Way Partners, LLC, the Board will take a public vote at an upcoming meeting to seal this transaction.

Published

5 months ago

January 11, 2025

Oakland Post

Alameda County Board of Supervisors Chairman David Haubert. Official photo.

Special to The Post

The County of Alameda announced this week that a deal allowing the Oakland Acquisition Company, LLC, (“OAC”) to acquire the County’s 50% undivided interest in the Oakland- Alameda County Coliseum complex is in the final stages of completion.

Oakland has already finalized a purchase and sale agreement with OAC for its interest in the property. OAC’s acquisition of the County’s property interest will achieve two longstanding goals of the County:

The Oakland-Alameda Coliseum complex will finally be under the control of a sole owner with capacity to make unilateral decisions regarding the property; and
The County will be out of the sports and entertainment business, free to focus and rededicate resources to its core safety net

In an October 2024 press release from the City of Oakland, the former Oakland mayor described the sale of its 50% interest in the property as an “historic achievement” stating that the transaction will “continue to pay dividends for generations to come.”

The Board of Supervisors is pleased to facilitate single-entity ownership of this property uniquely centered in a corridor of East Oakland that has amazing potential.

“The County is committed to bringing its negotiations with OAC to a close,” said Board President David Haubert.

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Arts and Culture

Rise East Project: Part 3

Between 1990 and 2020, Oakland lost nearly half of its Black population due to economic and social forces. East Oakland, once a middle-class community, is now home to mostly Black families living in poverty.

Published

2 years ago

October 12, 2023

Oakland Post

CEO of Black Culture Zone Carolyn Johnson, a native from Deep East Oakland is making the change she wishes to see in her community and in her people. Black Culture Zone has created a power base of Black folks making a difference in Deep East Oakland. Photo by Kumi Rauf.

The Black Cultural Zone’s Pivotal Role in Rebuilding Oakland’s Black Community

By Tanya Dennis

In 2021, 314 Oakland residents died from COVID-19. More than 100 of them, or about 33.8%, were Black, a high rate of death as Blacks constitute only 22.8% of Oakland’s population.

This troubling fact did not go unnoticed by City and County agencies, and the public-at-large, ultimately leading to the development of several community organizations determined to combat what many deemed an existential threat to Oakland’s African American residents.

Eastside Arts Alliance had already proposed that a Black Cultural Zone be established in Deep East Oakland in 2010, but 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic galvanized the community.

Demanding Black legacy preservation, the Black Cultural Zone (BCZ) called for East Oakland to be made an “unapologetically Black” business, commercial, economic development community.

Established initially as a welcoming space for Black art and culture, BCZ emerged into a a community development collective, and acquired the Eastmont police substation in Eastmont Town Center from the City of Oakland in 2020.

Once there, BCZ immediately began combating the COVID-19 pandemic with drive-thru PPE distribution and food giveaways. BCZ’s Akoma Market program allowed businesses to sell their products and wares safely in a COVID-compliant space during the COVID-19 shutdown.

Currently, Akoma Market is operated twice a month at 73^rd and Foothill Boulevard and Akoma vendors ‘pop up’ throughout the state at festivals and community-centered events like health fairs.

“Before BCZ existed, East Oakland was a very depressing place to live,” said Ari Curry, BCZ’s chief experience officer and a resident of East Oakland. “There was a sense of hopelessness and not being seen. BCZ allows us to be seen by bringing in the best of our culture and positive change into some of our most depressed areas.”

The culture zone innovates, incubates, informs, and elevates the Black community and centers it in arts and culture, Curry went on.

“With the mission to center ourselves unapologetically in arts, culture, and economics, BCZ allows us to design, resource, and build on collective power within our community for transformation,” Curry concluded.

As a part of Oakland Thrives, another community collective, BCZ began working to secure $100 million to develop a ‘40 by 40’ block area that runs from Seminary Avenue to the Oakland-San Leandro border and from MacArthur Boulevard to the Bay.

The project would come to be known as Rise East.

Carolyn Johnson, CEO of BCZ says, “Our mission is to build a vibrant legacy where we thrive economically, anchored in Black art and commerce. The power to do this is being realized with the Rise East Project.

“With collective power, we are pushing for good health and self-determination, which is true freedom,” Johnson says. “BCZ’s purpose is to innovate, to change something already established; to incubate, optimizing growth and development, and boost businesses’ economic growth with our programs; we inform as we serve as a trusted source of information for resources to help people; and most important, we elevate, promoting and boosting Black folks up higher with the services we deliver with excellence.

“Rise East powers our work in economics, Black health, education, and power building. Rise East is the way to get people to focus on what BCZ has been doing. The funding for the 40 by 40 Rise East project is funding the Black Culture Zone,” Johnson said.