Our Neighborhood Area Plan is a go!

Our pilot project for a City-backed community-driven planning process is now underway in Northwest Oakland – Golden Gate, Santa Fe, and Longfellow– and one East Oakland neighborhood. Once completed, this groundbreaking pilot will generate a blueprint for other Oakland neighborhoods. 

Find out more at our next GGCA meeting:

    Wednesday, Feb. 20, at 7:15 pm
    Charles Porter Golden Gate Recreation Center
    1075 62nd Street

   Come early for crime prevention info (6:30-7:15)

Pilot description: GGCA teamed up with Santa Fe CAN and Longfellow Community Association to pitch a pilot to the City that would be affordable, timely, effective, and replicable by other neighborhoods. After meeting with us and high-level Planning staff on a regular basis, Councilmember Dan Kalb successfully advocated for hiring more City Planners, who could lend invaluable staff time and department resources to our Pilot project.

Pilot goal: The City is not, at this time, providing funding for the Pilot or our development projects. Therefore, the Pilot will consider all neighborhood ideas but prioritize only those that can be addressed through existing City programs and projects. For example, many of our requested improvements of Lowell St. and Alcatraz St. can be (with enough planning) rolled into the City’s repaving projects for those streets in 2019.

Types of project improvements include:

  • Transportation safety: signage, bulb-outs, street bumps, parking changes, crosswalks, bike lanes
  • Greening & landscaping: tree planting, median landscaping, parklettes
  • Residents & business/developer collaboration: parking, noise, blight abatement, building design
  • Public art: murals, street painting, green walls, trashcan mosaics
  • Community events: open streets events, festivals

Roles: City Planners will help us align our needs with existing City programs and projects, provide technical assistance, and track project implementation by the City. Community groups will enlist and coordinate neighborhood leads to maximize public outreach and input.

Estimated timeline: The entire Pilot will take just one year and will include: public outreach, project prioritization, plan drafting, the plan’s public review, and plan finalization.

Scope & strategy: Given the Pilot’s compressed timeline, GGCA will create a neighborhood needs baseline using available data from recent public engagements such as the last Participatory Budgeting process. Hundreds of stakeholders contributed to that process, which determined how the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) would be allocated.

What’s next: We need your help to pull off this project. Please attend the GGCA meeting, contact us for more information, and keep checking back here for project updates.

CONTACT US

Want to get involved but can’t make the meetings? Email agennino@gmail.com.

Project Team

GGCA:
– Angela Gennino
– Cathy Leonard
– Tsion McYates
– Sylvia Young

City Council, District 1 
– Dan Kalb, District 1 Councilmember
– Cooper Norquist, Community Outreach Coordinator

City of Oakland Planning Dept.:
– Joanna Winter, City Planner and Pilot Coordinator
– Laura Kaminski, Interim Strategic Planning Supervisor
– Ed Manasse, Interim Deputy Director, Planning and Building