Broadway Valdez District Specific Plan

Planning process started: 2008
Plan and EIR adopted: July 2014
Campaign team: Greenbelt Alliance, East Bay Housing Organizations
Location on Transit Line: 19th Street BART Station and AC Transit

See the campaign platform here.

Great Communities Collaborative (GCC) launched a campaign in Oakland in 2008 to influence the Broadway Valdez District Specific Plan. The campaign is being led by Greenbelt Alliance, a regional non-profit that defends natural and agricultural landscapes from development while helping create great cities and neighborhoods, and East Bay Housing Organizations, a membership non-profit organization dedicated to working with communities in Alameda and Contra Costa counties to preserve, protect and expand affordable housing opportunities through education, advocacy, and coalition building.

Located just above Downtown Oakland, the Broadway Valdez District is slated for major revitalization and has been the focus of efforts to create a destination retail center for Oakland. Centralized around the “Broadway Auto Row,” the area encompasses large amounts of underutilized land and surface parking lots. Altogether, the Plan Area includes 95.5 acres, which begins about 1/3 mile from the 19th St BART station and is also served by AC Transit along the Broadway corridor.

The GCC Campaign

Greenbelt Alliance and East Bay Housing Organizations organized the Better Broadway Coalition to create a common platform with a robust vision for a complete, sustainable, and equitable community. The Better Broadway Coalition currently consists of the following organizations: Alameda Labor Council, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Building and Construction Trades Council of Alameda County, California Nurses Association, East Bay Housing Organizations, Greenbelt Alliance, League of Conservation Voters of the East Bay, Sierra Club, TransForm, ULTRA-Oakland, Urban Habitat, Valdez Plaza Resident Council, and Walk Oakland Bike Oakland.

Together, these diverse organizations agreed on the following campaign goals:

Viable retail for Oakland’s bottom line: The Plan should include both major retail and neighborhood-serving, “Mom and Pop” independent shops. The plan should build on what works in Oakland, drawing off the success of neighboring districts like The Uptown and cultivate a more complete community.
Homes we can all afford: The Plan should include at least 1,800 new homes. Of these 1,800 homes, at least 15% should be affordable to low-income Oakland residents.
Feasible parking policies: The Plan should have a phased approach to parking and market-based pricing to manage parking supply.
Quality jobs for Oakland residents: The Plan should put Oakland back to work with quality union jobs that pay family-supporting wages with benefits, focus on local hiring, and connect residents to certified apprenticeship programs.
Walkable streets with compact homes: The Plan should create compact infill development enhanced with public plazas, traffic calming measures, wide sidewalks, appropriate set-backs, and linkages to surrounding open space.
Green building and infrastructure: New development in the Plan Area should include green infrastructure improvements and certified green building standards.
Greener ways to get around: The Plan’s transportation focus should be on supporting alternative modes of transportation, including enhancing existing transit options and providing safe and ample bicycle and pedestrian connections throughout the Plan Area and surrounding neighborhoods.
Adaptive reuse of existing buildings: The Plan should prioritize the reuse of existing buildings, especially those with historic significance, for both environmental reasons and for creating a unique sense of place.