Two Private Redevelopment Projects with Public Funding will affect the Uptown Chinatown area. With important cultural heritage in the balance, how do we ensure that when the Projects end we have cultural resources of at least equal value to what we had before?

In this Section

Forest City's Uptown Mixed-Use Redevelopment Project

Proposed Project

City Council's Agreement with Developers

Who to Contact at the City

Community Feedback on the Project's Environmental Impact Report

Environmental Impact Report

Thomas L. Berkley Square Project

Proposed Project

Contacts for this Alameda County Administered Project

Community Feedback on the Project's Environmental Impact Report

Environmental Impact Report

Proposed Project

• Forest City's Uptown Project area includes nine blocks, roughly bordered by Telegraph, the Fox Theater, 18th Street, San Pablo Avenue, 20th Street, 21St Street, and the Paramount Theater. (See map) .
  
  
• The City of Oakland will give Forest City a subsidy between $40 million and $80 million. (Source: Business Times)
  
  
• The proposed project includes approximately 1,300 residential units, 1,050 student beds and faculty units, 43,000 square feet of commercial space, a 25,000 square foot public park, 1,959 parking spaces, and the development of one public street within the project site. (Source: Final EIR, page 142) Affordable housing advocates won concessions for affordable rental units within the project.
  
  
• The project includes an area extremely like to have significant archaeological remains of the 1860s-1870s Chinatown at 19th and San Pablo. Community members believe Forest City needs to involve them in how the archaeological remains or their forebearers will be treated. Working with the community has been a fruitful approach by the developer of the neighboring Thomas L. Berkley Square project.
  
  
• Three historic wooden structures 120 years old are at the northwest corner of the Project area. They're small and at the edge of the project. They represent the 1880s development that displaced the 19th and San Pablo Chinatown. How will we treat these cultural resources?
  
  

City Council Directs Developers to Seek Community Review for Cultural Resource Treatment Plan

Agreeing it's important for community members to have input into how the archaeological study is done, on Tuesday, July 20, 2004, Oakland City Council voted to include community review of the Uptown archaeological sensitivity study and treatment plan in their deal with Forest City. [Click here to read the language adopted.]

After the developer's archaeologist prepares the archaeological sensitivity study and testing plan, community members will have 14 days to review their work and provide feedback. After the archaeologists conduct their tests, if what they find meets the criteria of legally important remains, they'll prepare a plan for additional data recovery of archaeological material. Community members are entitled to 14 days to review that plan as well. Forest City's timetable has not yet been announced. (Contact us to let us know you'd like to hear when the documents come out.)

This pre-construction archaeological study helps the City of Oakland towards meeting the goals it set for protecting significant archaeological resources. (The City Council adopted objectives to identify and protect the City's archaeology in the Preservation Element of the Oakland General Plan.) With the upcoming excavations in the old San Pablo Chinatown area, and the on-going archaeological work at the Peralta Hacienda, it's an exciting time for learning about Oakland's early history!

Community review is also proving useful for developers. Community review of the pre-construction archaeological study of a neighboring property produced information beyond what the contractors had been able to identify, helping them better meet their legal obligations. This demonstrates how important it is to draw on the knowledge among community members, especially when talking about people the old mainstream histories misrepresented or neglected.

Who to Contact at the City

With large public subsidy of this redevelopment Oakland City Councilmembers have authority about how the project will happen. Contacts to email, write, or call Oakland City Councilmembers here

Details about the proposed project are available from the City's Project Manager for the development, Lynn Warner. The case number is ZP03-0122.

Lynn Warner
City of Oakland Planning Division
250 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 238-6191
LWarner@oaklandnet.com

Oakland's Director of Development is Claudia Cappio:

Claudia Cappio, Development Director
Community and Economic Development Agency (CEDA)
250 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza
Oakland, CA 94612
Phone: (510) 238-2229
Fax: (510) 238-6538
ccappio@oaklandnet.com

Community Feedback on the Project's Environmental Impact Report

The archaeologist who headed the archaeological investigations for the Cypress Freeway Replacement Project in downtown Oakland (and the excavation of Sacramento's Chinatown) explains how proper archaeological study before construction can save the developers money.

The President of the Chinese Historical Society of America expresses concern that the City of Oakland not allow the Uptown construction project to "bury this historic Chinese American community permanently into oblivion."

There is strong feeling that the contractor hired to complete the mandated archaeological mitigations must be one with a proven track record of completing quality work--all the way through making results available to the public--on Chinese / Chinese American archaeological sites in mitigation contexts. Here is a list such firms.

An architect explains that "From a Developer's perspective, preservation of history can increase the value of the project. This has been proven, over and over again..."

A historical archaeologist's explanation of the significance of the likely archaeological remains and what we've learned about how not to investigate from a project a few blocks away.

Environmental Impact Report

PDF copies of the Environmental Impact Report can be downloaded from the City's website:
http://oaklandnet.com/government/ceda/revised/planningzoning/MajorProjectsSection/environmentaldocuments.html

Print copies can be obtained at the reception desk of CEDA on the third floor of the City Administration Building, or by contacting Case Manager Lynn Warner.

The EIR was certified by the Oakland Planning Commission on February 18, 2004. The final decisions are up to the City Council.

On the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown, the EIR said:

"A historical Chinese community has been documented on the east side of San Pablo Avenue, northeast of the intersection of 20th and San Pablo Avenues, and east of San Pablo between 19th and 20th [Streets]. These areas of the documented Chinese community are within or near the Project site. There is a high potential for Project ground-disturbing activities to encounter archaeological deposits associated with the remains of the Chinese community. These deposits could be significant for their association with early Chinese-American history in Oakland and other urban West Coast settings. These deposits, if intact, may contain information about the economic, social, and religious lifeways of a Chinese-American community in an era in which the Chinese in California were subjected to de fact and institutional displacement, discrimination, and oppression. These conditions often resulted in only minimal documentation of lifeways, which increases the information value of archaeological deposits. ...these deposits may qualify as historic or unique archaeological resources pursuant to CEQA Guidelines..."