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With at least six residential development projects and one cathedral either proposed, approved or actually under construction within 800 feet of Lake Merritt, and the City of Oakland’s zoning code in something of a shambles, close to 150 Oakland residents came out to the Lake Merritt Garden Center on Wednesday night to share their issues about high-rise development around the lake. 

The meeting was co-sponsored by Oakland City Councilmem-bers Nancy Nadel and Pat Kernighan, who said this was the start of a six-month process that they hoped would result in recommendations to City Council on zoning code changes for the areas in the vicinity of the lake. 

“It’s a beginning,” Kerninghan said following the meeting. “Clearly a lot of work needs to be done. There was some consensus that the area immediately around the lake needs to be protected. But the question is, at what distance from the lake and in what directions should higher development take place?” 

But Nadel said that “while we’re working towards consensus, we don’t have consensus yet.” 

Meeting participants broke into discussion groups at 10 separate tables and then reported the results back to the general body. 

Most of the groups reported that the lake itself—home of the first urban wild bird habitat in the United States and considered Oakland’s urban park jewel—should be protected from development along its immediate shores. “The lake provides openness, light and space, and that should be protected,” one woman reported from her group, with another adding that the land around the lake was “precious.” “Development should be targeted to areas that are less contentious than the lake,” she said. “Density in the downtown area is a great idea.” 

But others said that even in areas close to the lake where high-rise development should be permitted and encouraged—such as the Broadway corridor near the Forest City Uptown project—overdevelopment should be guarded against. “We don’t want that to become a concrete jungle.” 

And opposition to unregulated, wholesale high-rising of buildings in the Lake Merritt area was the overriding theme. 

“With high-rises, you get isolation without solitude and density without community,” one woman said, quoting an unnamed Polish architect. And another woman, who said she lived at East 28th Street and 11th Avenue but still has an unrestricted view of the lake, said she wants to keep it. 

“This is one of our spiritual issues,” she said. “People who don’t have parks in their neighborhoods depend on these views. We get up in the morning and are able to look at our city. We don’t want to be blocked from it.” 

But while the sentiment against high-rises was dominant, it was not universal. One table reported that they were evenly divided on the issue. Even the way the meeting was organized was contentious. Another reported that “four people in our group decided that this wasn’t the right process, and left.” 

The meeting itself got off to a rocky start, with several participants seemingly in disbelief that public officials were sincerely asking for their opinions. 

“Are there any assurances that the city will listen to our recommendations?” one woman asked. “You certainly didn’t listen to them around the Estuary Plan.” 

And a male participant said flatly that it was too late for long-term planning, and called for an immediate moratorium on high-rise development until a plan could be developed. 

Another woman referenced the city planning document already in existence, asking, “why weren’t we provided with a copy of the city’s General Plan? The task you’re asking us to undertake is too big for this meeting.” She suggested that instead of providing their views on how the Lake Merritt area neighborhoods should be developed, participants should have gone through the General Plan as a starting point. 

But Oakland Development Director Claudia Cappio said that, in fact, was the purpose of the meeting. She pointed out that when the General Plan was drawn up several years ago, the city was supposed to go back and conform the individual zoning districts to that plan. That action was shelved in the Jerry Brown years, however. 

“It was a political decision under Jerry Brown not to do it,” Cappio said. 

That left the lake area particularly vulnerable to high-rise development because at least three of the zoning districts directly bordering the lake—two on the northwest side along Lakeside between Snow Park and the Main Library and the other on the southern side along Lakeshore—currently have no height limits at all.  

Following the meeting, Cappio said that her office will next develop a working plan for how the meetings will proceed. 

“We’ll take the suggestions that came out of tonight’s meeting and overlay that with what my office is required to do by law,” she said. After consulting with Councilmembers Nadel and Kernighan, Cappio said a plan for the remaining process will be emailed to meeting participants “to see if people buy into it. I don’t want to impose a process.” 

Nadel said that while the general ideas were appropriate for the first meeting, she wants subsequent meetings to get more specific. 

“We will need more details from the public on what they want and don’t want,” the councilmember said, “so that we can go through with the process of conforming the zoning code to the General Plan. That’s the only way we will be able to protect the resource of the lake.” 

Photograph by David Sasaki.  

A participant at Wednesday’s community meeting on development and highrise construction around Lake Merritt holds up an area zoning map passed out by city staff.