Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

I'm writing this from the comfort of a suburban Atlanta home office, listening to Darrel Carrey talk to the Oakland City Council regarding the need for jobs and the importance of redeveloping the Army Base. He is one of 75 speakers and 165 speaker cards (double-counting plus?) and there's a lot of emotion. While the favorite to win the right to negotiate with the Oakland Redevelopment Agency is AMB/CCG over Federal Oakland Partners, it seems in failing to communicate with the Oakland Film Center people, Phil Tagami, who represents the developer team, has angered a ton of folks and they've come to the Oakland City Council to express their anger. Well, not Darrel. Long-time Oakland activist Joyce Roy asked how a developer could get this far without talking to the Oakland Film community. Yikes. This is going to be a long agenda item. After about 50 speakers, the council's talking. Even with the film community's issues with how they perceive Phil treated th...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! The giant 100-acre Oakland Army Base is the focus of a development competition between two groups led by people well-known to many Oaklanders: "AMB/CCG" (for AMB Property Corporation and the "CCG" is California Commercial Group) is directed by Phil Tagami, of California Commercial Investments, and who redeveloped two Oakland landmarks the Fox Oakland Theater and the Oakland Rotunda, and Federated Oakland Associates, who's boss is Michael Johnson, the developer of several multi-unit housing projects in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the builder of the San Francisco version of Yoshi's Jazz Club.   The Oakland Army Base  The developers are engaged in a competition with the Oakland City Council as the final "decider". The winner gains the right to enter into an "Exclusive Negotiating Agreement" with the Oakland Redevelopment Agency, which will lead to the production o...

I read the latest news on the Oakland Army Base with more than the usual passing interest. I absorbed it and chuckled. I could not help it. Why? Because the Oakland Army Base land has sat largely unused for years -- since 1999 -- while the Oakland City Council and whomever happened to be Mayor jockied with the Port of Oakland for control of its development. That struggle is also itself countered by competing ideas of what Oakland Councilmembers want to do with the land. It's these political tug of wars that have delayed development of what is still the Bay Area's best infill development opportunity. I can go over scores of examples of land uses that have been proposed for that area, from a ballpark for the Oakland A's to a farmers market, which was the proposal of long-time Oakland development activist Steve Low, my friend and for some time the with the West Oakland Commerce Association (WOCA). But as much as I like Steve, even he's been part of the enormous num...