Billionaire John Fisher proposes putting 3,000 luxury condos, a mall, and a stadium on Oakland’s public port property. Even if the Port could survive a stadium, it can’t survive 3,000 condos and a mall. Oakland’s current life-and-death debate is not about the A’s and a baseball stadium.
It’s about the creation of a new, posh, luxury city built on public property, profiting a billionaire, paid for by taxpayers, and reducing the viability of Oakland’s economic engine. The heart of Oakland as a progressive, working-class city and the unusual reality of thousands of decent-paying jobs employing Black workers are all at stake.
Oakland’s Port is in danger and this has become a nationally recognized problem. A publication on supply chains reports, “The Port of Oakland had recently found itself at the center of a short-term “economic boom,” thanks to U.S. West Coast shippers sending goods to its facility to alleviate congestion of Los Angeles and Long Beach ports.
Though this may seem like a positive for Oaklanders, there is a problem that may prevent the port from acquiring new businesses in the future, and the problem is all too American: baseball. The Howard Street Terminal, which serves as a passage for dock bulk cargo and containers, is likely going to be overtaken by The Oakland A’s”.
The underlying issue here has already been settled in hundreds of communities across the world. You can’t mix heavy industrial uses (a port) with residential uses (condos) and have the industry survive.