Economics

Two Developers in Running to Restore Historic Kaiser Convention Center

Published

10 years ago

January 15, 2015

The announcement of one of the most important Oakland public works restoration projects in recent memory went virtually unnoticed during the recent mayoral campaign.

Last September, the City of Oakland issued a Notice of Development Opportunity to restore the closed-down Kaiser Convention Center at the western end of Lake Merritt as a public-private partnership.

Two companies—Creative Development Partners of Oakland and Orton Development of Emeryville—have been listed as finalists for the bid, with the winner expected to be announced this spring.

Under the terms of the city’s Request For Proposals, the center will be used for both public and private use, with the building façade restored and maintained and the ownership of both building and land remaining with the city but rented out on long-term lease to the developers.

Details of the final development plans will not be released, however, until the developer is chosen.

In its original release announcing the Kaiser project, city officials said that “while proposals should include the restoration of the existing Calvin Simmons Theater, the city is open to creative and new ideas for the adaptive reuse of the rest of the building, including uses such as performance space, entertainment venues, conference and event spaces, light industrial or maker space, commercial office uses and retail and restaurant space.”

Oakland’s decision to restore the Kaiser Convention Center as a public-private partnership may have been inspired, in part, by the City of Richmond’s successful restoration of the old Ford Building on that city’s bay waterfront.

In 2011, the online architectural magazine Archinnovations said of the Ford restoration, “The project converted a crumbling historic icon into a model of urban revitalization and sustainability. [The site] now houses an acre-sized public event venue, restaurant/retail, and tenants including SunPower and Mountain Hardwear…The restoration and preservation of the Ford Assembly Building…saved an historic architectural icon from the wrecking ball, and converted a long-vacant auto plant into a current-day model of urban revitalization and sustainability.”

Outgoing Oakland Mayor Jean Quan made little mention of the Kaiser Request For Proposals during her unsuccessful re-election bid this fall, concentrating instead on promoting development plans at the old Oakland Army Base, Brooklyn Basin (the old Oak-To-Ninth site south of Jack London Square), and Coliseum City.

And at least one Quan political associate says it is because the idea came from another powerful Oakland government official.

Saying the Kaiser proposal “obviously came from up high,” Oakland architect and housing activist James Vann says that interim Oakland City Administrator Henry Gardner may have been the instigator of the renovation project.

Gardner, who served as Oakland City Manager in the pre-strong mayor days from 1981 through 1983, was brought back by Mayor Quan to serve as interim City Administrator this year after the resignation of Administrator Fred Blackwell.

It was widely understood that Gardner had only agreed to serve in that post through the first of this year, regardless of the results of the mayoral election.

“I have a feeling,” Vann says, “that Gardner looked at [several] city-owned properties that are either sitting vacant or the use could be expanded and just decided to go ahead with putting out development proposals for them.”

Vann, who walked door-to-door for Quan during her original bid for mayor in 2010, said that the mayor “never mentioned anything” to him about the Kaiser restoration proposal.

“She’s not opposed to it, but I think she would have mentioned it [if she was behind it.] And I don’t think the new planning director, who hasn’t been here a year yet, would have come up with these plans,” Vann said. “So it seems to me that this is something that would have gone back to Henry and he would have gotten various people to sign off on them. But I have a feeling they originated with him.”

The Kaiser Convention Center sits directly across from where the city has made major public space renovations to the lake and to the adjacent Lake Merritt Channel in the past several years. The Center, which includes an arena and a 1,900 seat theater, once served as Oakland’s major event center, was closed in 2005 for what was called at the time budgetary problems.

That was only three years after Oakland voters passed the $198 million bond Measure DD, and long before the authorized bond money resulted in the complete renovation and restoration of the western end of Lake Merritt and the Lake Merritt Channel, the narrowing of the streetway between the convention center and the lake, and the connecting of the two properties by pedestrian bridges.

When those changes were completed in the summer of 2013, they immediately raised the profile of the Kaiser Convention Center as one of the most important, most visible, and most underused pieces of public property in Oakland.

But long before that happened, and almost as soon as Measure DD passed in 2002, efforts were made within Oakland city government to sell off the Kaiser property, including a little-known behind-the-scenes proposal to tear down the Kaiser and include it in an aborted plan by the state school administrator to turn the nearby Oakland Unified School District Administration Building into high-rise condominiums during the period when the Oakland schools were under state control.

In addition, there was a failed effort in 2006 to pass a bond measure to build a new Main Library on the Kaiser property, as well as a rejection by city officials in 2005 of a joint developer/Peralta Community College District proposal to turn the Kaiser into a performing arts center.

But this new effort is the first time since the Kaiser closed that the property is in line to be restored to anything approaching its original position in Oakland public life.

City officials repeatedly failed to answer requests to comment on this story.

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Related Topics:City of Oakland development economic development government Kaiser Convention Center Oakland Politics

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Five Years After COVID-19 Began, a Struggling Child Care Workforce Faces New Threats

Five years ago, as COVID-19 lockdowns and school closures began, most early educators continued to work in person, risking their own health and that of their families. “Early educators were called essential, but they weren’t provided with the personal protective equipment they needed to stay safe,” said CSCCE Executive Director Lea Austin. “There were no special shopping hours or ways for them to access safety materials in those early and scary months of the pandemic, leaving them to compete with other shoppers. One state even advised them to wear trash bags if they couldn’t find PPE.”

Published

3 days ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

UC Berkeley photo.

UC Berkeley News

In the first eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic alone, 166,000 childcare jobs were lost across the nation. Significant recovery didn’t begin until the advent of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Child Care Stabilization funds in April 2021.

Today, child care employment is back to slightly above pre-pandemic levels, but job growth has remained sluggish at 1.4% since ARPA funding allocations ended in October 2023, according to analysis by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at UC Berkeley. In the last six months, childcare employment has hovered around 1.1 million.

Yet more than two million American parents report job changes due to problems accessing child care. Why does the childcare sector continue to face a workforce crisis that has predated the pandemic? Inadequate compensation drives high turnover rates and workforce shortages that predate the pandemic. Early childhood educators are skilled professionals; many have more than 15 years of experience and a college degree, but their compensation does not reflect their expertise. The national median hourly wage is $13.07, and only a small proportion of early educators receive benefits.

And now a new round of challenges is about to hit childcare. The low wages paid in early care and education result in 43% of early educator families depending on at least one public support program, such as Medicaid or food stamps, both of which are threatened by potential federal funding cuts. Job numbers will likely fall as many early childhood educators need to find jobs with healthcare benefits or better pay.

In addition, one in five child care workers are immigrants, and executive orders driving deportation and ICE raids will further devastate the entire early care and education system. These stresses are part of the historical lack of respect the workforce faces, despite all they contribute to children, families, and the economy.

The economic impact was equally dire. Even as many providers tried to remain open to ensure their financial security, the combination of higher costs to meet safety protocols and lower revenue from fewer children enrolled led to job losses, increased debt, and program closures.

Eventually, the federal government responded with historic short-term investments through ARPA, which stabilized childcare programs. These funds provided money to increase pay or provide financial relief to early educators to improve their income and well-being. The childcare sector began to slowly recover. Larger job gains were made in 2022 and 2023, and as of November 2023, national job numbers had slightly surpassed pre-pandemic levels, though state and metro areas continued to fluctuate.

Many states have continued to support the workforce after ARPA funding expired in late 2024. In Maine, a salary supplement initiative has provided monthly stipends of $240-$540 to educators working in licensed home- or center-based care, based on education and experience, making it one of the nation’s leaders in its support of early educators. Early educators say the program has enabled them to raise wages, which has improved staff retention. Yet now, Governor Janet Mills is considering cutting the stipend program in half.

“History shows that once an emergency is perceived to have passed, public funding that supports the early care and education workforce is pulled,” says Austin. “You can’t build a stable childcare workforce and system without consistent public investment and respect for all that early educators contribute.”

The Center for the Study of Childcare Employment is the source of this story.

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Trump Order Slashes Federal Agencies Supporting Minority Business and Neighborhood Development

The latest executive order targeted several federal agencies, including the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, ordering that their programs and staff be reduced “to the minimum presence and function required by law.” The executive order targeted more agencies that Trump “has determined are unnecessary,” the order stated.

Published

3 days ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Brandon Patterson

On March 14, President Trump signed an executive order slashing the operations of two federal agencies supporting growth in minority business and neighborhoods as he continued his attacks on programs supporting people of color and on the size of the federal bureaucracy.

The MBDA’s mission is to “promote the growth and global competitiveness” of minority business enterprises, or MBEs. In 2023, according to its website, the agency helped MBEs access $1.5 billion in capital and facilitated nearly $3.8 billion in contracts awarded to minority business enterprises. It also helped MBEs create or sustain more than 19,000 jobs nationwide. Similarly, the CDFI Fund supports economic growth in under-invested communities by providing funding and technical assistance to local CDFIs, including banks, loan funds, and credit unions, that support community development projects in cities across the country. In 2023, the fund supported more than 1,400 local CDFIs across the country, including more than 80 in California — among the highest number for any state in the country.

The MBDA has local satellite business centers operated by organizations that support minority clients with services such as business consulting, contract bid preparation, loan packaging, and accessing capital funding. The San Francisco Bay Area business center is San Jose, operated by San Francisco-based organization Asian, Inc. Meanwhile, local Oakland CDFIs supported by the federal CDFI fund since 2021 include Habitat Community Capital, TMC Community Capital, Gateway Bank Federal Savings Bank, Beneficial State Bancorp, Inc., and Main Street Launch.

“It is clear that the hollowing out of the CDFI Fund and MBDA is not being ordered because those programs have failed in their mission,” the CEO of Small Business Majority John Arensmeyer, a national organization that advocates for small businesses, said in a statement on Saturday. “Instead, it is yet another case of President Trump using DEI as a club to eviscerate programs that seek to level our economic playing field.”

Congresswoman Lateefah Simon also slammed the decision in a statement to the Oakland Post. “As a member of the House Small Business Committee who represents multiple CDFIs in CA-12, I believe Trump’s gutting of operations at the Minority Business Development Agency and at the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund is a direct attack on small businesses, communities of color and other underserved communities,” Rep. Simon said. “Both the MBDA and the CDFI Fund were created with bipartisan support to help historically underserved communities and small businesses — and both programs have helped to dramatically change the material realities of people and bolster entrepreneurship in the U.S. There is no logic to this decision. The point is discrimination and cruelty.”