Working with Communities to Achieve Lasting, Sustainable, Replicable Change 

February 2021

East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation

45 Stories for 45 Years

Contributor: Romi Hall, Director, Healthy Homes and Communities, NeighborWorks America 

Not so long ago, the California Hotel was a seemingly insurmountable challenge for a community developer. Situated at the heart of the San Pablo Avenue Corridor (SPC) in West Oakland, the legendary venue for jazz and blues greats and other Black culture makers was in severe disrepair. After years of disinvestment, there were many vacancies and costly and urgent repairs. There was rampant blight.  

It was a surprise to many, but not those of us familiar with the organization, that EBALDC saw an opportunity in the California Hotel. The NeighborWorks organization also recognized that simply investing tens of millions of dollars in repairs for the historic hotel would not benefit the surrounding community or residents within the California Hotel. To truly revitalize the neighborhood, the EBALDC team knew they needed to work in partnership with the residents who lived in the neighborhood to determine the priorities for improving the SPC and preserving the cultural legacy that remained. 

EBALDC leadership realized quickly that they alone could not do all the work necessary, and, most critically, they realized that they didn’t want to. They saw their role as both an implementation partner and strategic convener well situated to bring together the necessary people, organizations, and systems to work in partnership with neighborhood residents to re-make the SPC into one that advances health and opportunity.  

EBALDC joined with neighborhood residents, community-based organizations, and city government officials in 2011 to work together to preserve and renovate the California Hotel. In 2014, the organization convened the San Pablo Revitalization Collaborative (SPARC) to improve the health and wellbeing of Corridor residents and neighbors. Rather than reinventing how to create healthy neighborhoods, the SPARC partners sought to build on neighborhood assets, align efforts, and pool resources to better achieve common outcomes in the following areas, creating Healthy Residents, Healthy Community and Housing, and Healthy Economy.

In just six years, SPARC partners have worked together to develop a pipeline of 400 units of affordable housing and attract a full-service grocery store. Through EBALDC’s rehabilitation of the California Hotel, EBALDC and partners were able to attract and nurture a growing Black cultural hub on the ground level of the building and adjacent site at the SPARC-it-Place. EBALDC has also worked with residents to lead community projects to combat blight, utilizing arts and culture, and helped to incubate resident work to bring back a community library that was removed when freeways were introduced to the neighborhood. Most significantly, EBALDC is working with the SPARC partners to support SPC residents to now lead the SPARC Collaborative. 

The collaborative efforts that EBALDC led in West Oakland have been replicated in the Havenscourt neighborhood of Oakland, where partners and residents are working on their own set of community priorities and needs, demonstrating local and national success. Through the exploration and scaling of EBALDC’s convener role, EBALDC has demonstrated the power of what can happen when we center residents asks, support them in building their capacity, and bring together the people, systems, and organizations to work together to get things done in a community. The work EBALDC incubated and scaled in Oakland is a model for the entire community development and housing field to further advance so that, in this generation, we can truly end the war on poverty and inequity. 

As EBALDC marks our 45th anniversary, we will be gathering more stories like this one from our friends, family, community members, partners and more stakeholders that have made our impact possible. We would be honored for you to join us:

  • Follow us on social media: @EBALDC

 

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