by the El Reportero’s staff
OAKLAND — Thirteen developers from across the nation are now competing for the opportunity to develop a 108-acre site within the former Oakland Army Base. On March 10, the City of Oakland concluded a two month “Request for Qualifications” (RFQ) process to identify potential developers for the Army Base. The city received responses from 13 development teams.
“We are extremely pleased by the strong response,” said Mayor Ron Dellums. “This is a tremendous vote of confi dence for Oakland’s economy. It also shows what a unique opportunity we have to revitalize the area, taking advantage of the central Bay Area location, prominent waterfront, and direct visibility and access from the freeways. With its large, open areas of land, the site can attract large-scale developments that can provide signifi cant high-quality jobs, support and enhance Port activities, provide a place for new industries, create new access to open space along the Waterfront, and generate other community benefi ts for Oakland.”
The city has provided a special section on its Web site to provide information to the public on the planning and redevelopment of the Oakland Army Base site, which is available at: http://www.business2oakland.com/main/redevelopment.htm.
Marine Recruiting Center leaving Berkeley agreement
The protest group CODEPINK was delighted to hear the news. “While we still don’t know the details, we are have happy to hear that the Marines will be closing their doors and respecting the anti-war values of the residents of Berkeley,” said CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin.
“The situation was becoming untenable,” says Mr. Shamszad. “The presence of the Marines sparking daily protests have had a negative impact on local businesses.
The city has been forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in police overtime. And some groups have been calling for a national boycott of our city. So I sat down with representatives of the Marines and we worked out a solution.”
“We just came out with a national productivity study by offi ce, and the Recruiting Center in Berkeley was in the bottom ten percentile,” says Michael Applegate, Director of the Marine Manpower Plans and Policy Division. “It’s a three-person office in a high-rent district bringing in an average of only 1.4 recruits per month. This is just not a good use of taxpayer money. So we were happy to work out an agreement with Mr. Shamszad. For us, this has nothing to do with protests outside the station, but is simply an issue of strategic redeployment.”
